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Saving Private Ryan  (1998)
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1999 Academy Award:  Best Director - Steven Spielberg

..  Steven Spielberg can be aggravating. In Schindler’s List, a fine and well wrought film, he nearly blew it by tacking on a superfluous ending. In Saving Private Ryan the same flaw is evident - the lack of editing discipline. This is an intense, technically brilliant, wonderfully acted film. At its core is a series of incidents experienced by a squad of soldiers, each incident raising interesting variations on the moral question: How do sane people behave in the most insane of circumstances - mortal combat?
    But Spielberg undermines his own brilliance with the opening and closing sequences of the film which are cliched, sentimental, and manipulative. Why does he pander to his audience this way? Saving Private Ryan would be a near perfect film if it started with the invasion and ended with the bridge battle.
                      ...............                                         - Arthur Lazere