Quote:
Originally posted by xiying
I want to chime in here and say that in my estimation Saving Private Ryan was not a great film. I have no problem with Shakespeare in Love winning, and would have chosen Elizabeth over 'SPR' as well.
I feel 'SPR' had a brilliant opening and faded into typical Spielberg over-sentimentalization.
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I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who feels this way. Shakespeare in Love is a brilliant and dynamic film with a sharp writing, direction and acting, and of the films I've seen from that year, I think it's the best. (It's worth noting, BTW, that it was very much a "small" film despite its star power.)
Saving Private Ryan, on the other hand, fell far short of the mark. The opening sequence is incredible, but it's only 20 minutes of the film. The rest is old-hat combat formula, complete with corny dialogue and gross stereotypes, with extra gore and political correctness the only things identifying it as a 1990s film.
I thought Elizabeth was superior to SPR, but I found it uneven and a little lacking in focus. It also had the misfortune of coming out at about the same time as SIL. It was easy enough to keep the two stories separate, but the appearance of Geoffrey Rush and Joseph Feinnes in both films had a mild tendency to pull me back to reality during Elizabeth, which I saw after SIL.