Bridge of Spies
Virgil Tracy
Posts: 26,806 Forum Member
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saw this last night -
its alright , but it feels very long , and for not much story . Hanks is fine as always , Rylance is very understated and he's not in it much .
it captures the period brilliantly , but I just got the sense that it thought it was being far more sophisticated and meaningful than it really was .
its alright , but it feels very long , and for not much story . Hanks is fine as always , Rylance is very understated and he's not in it much .
it captures the period brilliantly , but I just got the sense that it thought it was being far more sophisticated and meaningful than it really was .
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An interesting interview with Rylance at BBC News today:
Mark Rylance: From Bridge of Spies to BFG
Munich is brilliant , this is much more ponderous , like Lincoln , the trailer makes it look tense and exciting but it isn't .
I'm not a spy story person, but the superb acting. pacing and filming kept me enthralled.
I'd say there's a few Oscars coming up.
Tom & Steve, at their best....fascinating story, period detail perfect and the running time, didn't feel like 2+ hours, it went by very quickly.
Emotional by the end too...which I wasn't expecting.
I don't have a problem with slow, as long as it's well done. For eg, I loved A Most Wanted Man, but then Hanks isn't Hoffmann, nor did I like the script. Very disappointed.
I was looking forward to the end from about an hour in, about the same time the guy behind me started snoring away!
That's not faint praise, btw. In an age when even prominent directors show a fumbling hand with the basics his smooth, consumate control of scenes, dialogue etc isn't something we should take for granted. Perhaps it could've been a bit harder here and there, but this is still fine enough, and may bag a few noms in the coming weeks. 7.5/10
Agreed, though I'd probably rate it 8/10. It's a proper old-school film where every shot is correctly composed, the lighting is just right (you can see what's going on even when it's dark!) and the dialogue is both audible and worth hearing (presumably the Coens' handiwork). Some of the photography just made me smile with pleasure because it was so well-done.
Anyway, saw this last week. Yeah, it's solid and workman like. A mature work from Spielberg. You get your money's worth - so to speak, in terms of a solid film trying to be intelligent and not talk down to you. I guess people still underestimate Hanks as a dramatic actor - but he is very good in this film - has good chemistry with Rylance(I hope they do more work together). Sadly, Rylance isn't in it that much - I would have wanted him more in this film.
Good, but not spectacular.
Though the wall wasn't built in '61, there was demarcation between West and East Berlin from '47 onwards , so even without a wall there were official crossing points between East and West Berlin where Western officials were required to show papers before entering East Berlin
I know that - but this film specifically talked about & showed a wall.
This has reminded me of another problem I had with the film - what was with his accent??? It didn't sound Russian, Donovan said at one point that he thought Abel was from "the north of England" which to me was at least heading in the right direction as he sounded kind of Scottish - but that was never expanded on.
The thing to remember about Hollywood films and British Accents is that the UK are the only ones who care. If you could hear some of the atrocities visited by Hollywood on the French Accent then UK accents would look remarkably accurate
It's a fair point. If an actor studies an accent and makes it so realistic that the people who live in that specific location will champion it as sounding genuine...they will be the only ones. The rest of the world will be none the wiser.
The film has to work in all territories, and accents have to be as generic as possible. Most people have a vague idea as to how they think people speak in various parts of the world...it often bears no relation to the accent itself but it's what they want to hear.
So bad accents in movies are often not the fault of the actor, more to do with the dictates of the filmmakers who have one eye on the global market.