I’ve been having a bit of a Spielberg-fest recently. Re-watching some of his old films. It got me wondering how his films are rated by the internet. A search of “Spielberg ranked” gave loads of sites. Rolling Stone, Time Out, Esquire, The Independent, etc. Most I disagreed strongly with. Outraged, I was! But what really struck me was the large variation in lists. Films that made top ten in some lists were near bottom in others. So I thought, I’ll ask the AW what the correct order is.
Ranking Spielberg
by 113 Comments
Here’s my ranking of those I’ve seen:
26. 1941
25. Hook
24. Crystal Skull
23. Lost World
22. Always
21. Temple Of Doom
20. Lincoln
19. Bridge Of Spies
18. War Of The Worlds
17, A.I.
16. War Horse
15. Terminal
14. Minority Report
13. Munich
12. Amistad
11. The Color Purple – A decent screen adaptation of a brilliant book, raised up a notch by the perfect casting of (a then unknown) Whoopi Goldberg.
10. Raiders Of The Lost Arc – This generally gets rated a lot higher and I can totally understand why. It should do. It’s a superb kids’ adventure flick, with iconic scenes and costume and character. But there’s no real depth to it. Hugely enjoyable as it is, it doesn’t say anything to me.
9. Duel – A TV movie, but I’m counting it anyway.
8. Catch Me If You Can – A thoroughly enjoyable romp!
7. Empire Of The Sun – Still Bale’s best performance. Ballard and Stoppard! P-51! Cadillac of the sky! Suo Gan! Bowie and Sakamoto! Er, hang on a sec…
6. Saving Private Ryan – This is a hard one to rank. Some of the best war scenes, indeed, some of the best scenes in cinema history, ever. Then it all goes a bit rubbish really. But those beach scenes alone make it unmissable. I remember watching it in a really beautiful open air, brilliant sound cinema in Santa Barbara and thinking “I don’t think I can sit through this” but with my eyes glued to the screen.
5. E.T. – It’s wonderful, magical, pure childhood magic. The best kids’ film ever. But it’s for kids.
4. Schindler’s List – I must rewatch this one. It’s incredible, of course, but given its subject matter, I find the prospect of rewatching a little daunting. To think he made this and Jurassic Park in the same year!
3. Jurassic Park – Easy to forget now, in this age of ubiquitous CGI, how impacting the first sight of the dinosaur was. I remember wishing my Dad had lived long enough to see such a spectacle. (In his lifetime, special effects had only reached the heights of Christopher Reeve in Superman.) Pity it spawned so many crap sequels, including the director’s own.
2. Jaws – Kept off the top spot solely because of the rubber shark at the end.
1. Close Encounters – It encompasses all the childhood wonder of Spielberg while being more for adults than kids. It has no flaws.
I love the ‘fact’ that Indiana Jones has virtually no real impact on the outcome of Raiders Of The Lost Arc.
It’s like he’s just along for the ride.
I think “Raiders Of The Lost Arc [sic]” sums it up nicely. Not a big fan of his œuvre (Fr. egg), but Empire Of The Sun is refreshingly grown-up and under-played. Close Encounters was good, but he should never have re-made the ending – not seeing the interior of the mothership was crucial, and too many wavy-armed ETs did nothing to help the moment. So that’s a big fault, you ask me.
I forgot he made an extended versh. I’m not even sure I’ve seen it.
Keep your memories sacred.
Surprisingly, I’ve seen quite a lot of those. 1941 was an absolute stinker!
1. Schindler’s List
2. E.T.
3. Jaws
His 3 masterpieces, the rest rank from really good to pretty ordinary.
I think you forgot The Post (and a couple of others), but it is very forgettable.
I only listed the ones I’ve seen. Loads I haven’t.
Thing about Spielberg is that whatever you think of his movies, so many of his scenes and imagery have achieved iconic status. That’s pretty remarkable in itself.
Gary, if you haven’t seen The Post I recommend rectifying that ASAP. It’s a terrific film – actually quite baffling and obtuse for at least the first half hour or so, but once you get into the rhythm of it, it’s very moving. And the ending is wonderful.
Ah – for me The Post despite terrific performances from Hanks & Streep was worthy where worthy equals dull. And as for the ending…what a (not) surprise. All IMHO of course
I agree. I was very disappointed.
A friend of Saucey’s has offered to get me a copy, no questions asked, so I’ll certainly give it a spin.
Re: Jurassic Park.
The performance of the Tyrannosaurus Rex was certainly a lot more subtle and nuanced than that of Dickie Attenborough.
That’s true. One of the worst accents ever on film.
What accent was he meant to be? I took him to be British.
It kept changing from English to an appalling what I think was meant to be Scottish.
Oh I forgot about that! Yes, he was Scottish wasn’t he?
Ugh. Being Scottish myself I have a real aversion to bad Scottish accents in films. It can ruin a whole film for me. Or series of films, in the case of bloody Shrek. ‘Don-keh!!!!!’
Have to say I find most of those pleasurable but most have no depth. It’s like eating a pack of ready salted and liking it but thinking “Wish I’d had some cheese & onion”. Saying that we watched Ready Player One a few weeks back and thought it great fun.
I agree with LoW here. I feel somehow … soiled.
You feel soiled agreeing with me? How darely dare you… I feel strangely proud
No love for The Last Crusade? My favourite of the Arcs.
I agree with Gary about Jurassic Park; it’s easy now to forget how amazing that was on a big screen in the early 90s. Also the line “well…. we’re back in the car again” made me giggle for a month.
I quite like Jurassic Park, but I remember feeling then (and still feeling now) it was a bit strained. It felt like a director who was past his best going through the motions, rather than someone at the top of their game.
That said, there are little bits and pieces that crystallise Spielberg’s genius eye for detail. The classic ‘ripples in the coffee cup signalling an approaching T Rex’ for example.
Schindler’ List, immediately after, finally earned him the genius label from me.
Agree 100%, Jurassic Park didn’t really do it for me. I also seem to have something of an aversion to Laura Dern which didn’t help.
She was excellent in Twin Peaks.
Oho!
I’m surprised how few of those I’ve seen, and would not argue with the ranking, and there are several I regret wasting time on (usually involving Mr Cruise coincidentally).
When it comes to Spielberg’s movies I just feel manipulated in very obvious, heavy handed and cloying ways by most of them, which is what led to not seeking the others out even when they’re on free to air TV.
True, but in the period between Rocky and Pulp Fiction there weren’t that many really successful movies that weren’t manipulative in that sense. In fact, I’d go further and say that -some very notable exceptions aside (stand up Robert De Niro)- there weren’t that many great movies coming out of America (and European cinema was, generally, miles better). In that fallow and shallow period, Spielberg made several films (Close Encounters, Raiders, ET, Empire, Jurassic and Schindler’s) that still stand among critics’ and audiences’ all-time favourites.
Out of interest Harold, what’s my highest ranked film that you haven’t seen?
Jurassic Park. I’ve only seen clips, bits here and there.
I recently watched it with a friend who had never seen it. I thought he’d be disappointed on account of what made it so impressive back then, the CGI, is fairly standard now. But to my surprise, he absolutely loved it nonetheless.
The thing about Spielberg is that he’s an old-school director of motion pictures, in that there’s no more auteur-y connection between, say, Lincoln and Catch Me If You Can than there was between Double Indemnity and The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. Spielberg, like Billy Wilder, has devoted his career to making discrete films that either stand up in their own right or, very occasionally, fail to entertain, amuse, thrill, shock or whatever their specific intention was. Comparing them is a barren exercise, because there is no overarching “arc” to consider. Well, at least not with a “c”, there isn’t.
The much-maligned 1941 is indeed not very good. But it’s not very good because it’s a lame-o goofball comedy, with more budget than sense, not because the Jaws and Close Encounters guy came a creative cropper. Barely anybody remembers who directed the similarly overblown and similarly unfunny It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. It happened to be Stanley Kramer, but nobody wags a finger claiming that he let himself down after Judgment at Nuremberg, because that’d be silly. It’s unfair and unrealistic to treat Spielberg’s “eggs” any differently.
That first point’s a right goodun, Arch. I hadn’t thought in those terms and you’re dead right. Not sure I’d agree with the words “very occasionally” though. He’s made shedloads of right guff.
I’m no great fan. His best wouldn’t make my all-time Top Ten. Perhaps for the very reason you state (I tend to go for the so-called auteurs). But so many clear-shining iconic gems from one man’s vision is remarkable by any standards. And even in his worst films you’re going to find some glimpse of that sparkle. That’s what links his films: visually, he really knows what he’s doing.
Absolutely. Whatever he turns his hand to – from high-concept thrillfests to human-rights pamphlets – and however successful the results in each case, the man’s a pro. His failures – and I still reckon that the “right guff” in his filmography is relatively rare – are hardly ever because of inadequate directing, but can be put down to script “issues”, miscasting, right movie at the wrong time, etc. In Hollywood, a place where famously “nobody knows anything”, Steven Spielberg has been showing for four decades now that he knows his craft more than most.
Other words… he’s Macca in a baseball cap.
Spielberg is more director-for-hire than auteur. Nothing wrong with that. But I’d argue he has never come up with a truly great film. Huge box-office successes, yes, great entertainment, yes, professional product, yes … but a great movie? He doesn’t quite have it in him. Empire is a very very very good movie indeed, without the flaws that scupper Ryan, but great? This isn’t a cineaste put-down, the old argument of art vs. craft. The best Hollywood directors produced great movies without straining for art. Look at it this way – he’s so far from being a Kubrick (whose movies are also radically different) it’s almost a joke. I know that not every director can be a Kubrick, and we must take all movies and all directors for what they are, but Spielberg is fast food – prepared from the best ingredients – and never a meal. In a baseball cap. cf also – George Lucas.
I think Jaws is a genuinely great film. Possibly ET as well, if only because it captures childish wonder so brilliantly.
Tedious “my kids are great” anecdote involving ET. My daughter was watching it for the first time, aged about seven or so. We got to the bit where ET is fading in hospital, and she looked at me with big trusting eyes and asked “Daddy, is ET dying?”. I bodged something about let’s see what happens, and she replied “If he is, at least it won’t hurt when they cut him up for experiments”.
Your kid is great, Kid.
But isn’t making lots of films that millions of people enjoy what a film director’s job description is? Why do we demand of directors that they should remake The Magnififucking Ambersons when they’d be far better off aiming to emulate a Michael Curtiz potboiler horse opera? Spielberg’s “serious” films – Color Purple, Amistad, Schindler, Lincoln… – aren’t my bag, but would they have been better films if directed by anybody else with the same scripts and same casts? I doubt it.
Spielberg isn’t Kubrick, dead right. But AI was a shit idea to start with; Spielberg didn’t “destroy Stanley’s vision”, as so often claimed.
My take [*spit*] on Spielberg is that mainstream cinema for that last half century has undoubtedly benefited from having had such a competent hack (in the positive sense) as him helming [*spit*] such a ridiculous number of its most successful films.
That’s what I meant by the Macca comparison. Macca keeps knocking out the choons and Spielberg keeps knocking out the flicks. They mostly hit the mark and sometimes don’t. But they’re much better at what they do than practically everybody else.
(I think your George Lucas “cf” is unkind to Spielberg. Lucas has made one acceptable film. One, in a 45-year career.)
We’re all thinking it but I’ll do it. Howard the Duck?
“But isn’t making lots of films that millions of people enjoy what a film director’s job description is? [more like this]” Oui, et non. My point, which I made already to pre-respond to this very argument, is that great cinema has been made (many, many times – that’s Hollywood) by directors with no pretensions of doing anything other than making lots of films that millions of people enjoy. Spielberg has yet to make a single great movie, while making lots of films that millions of people enjoy. Saying he’s a better film-maker than George Lucas is like saying …. oh, I don’t know. Think of your own simile. Like that. They’re neither of them (say) John Ford.
Isn’t there room for everyone? Francis Coppola made four astonishing films: The two Godfathers, the Conversation and Apocalypse Now. But he made them over a period of six years, then his bolt was shot. Scorsese’s golden streak was similarly brief. Both have been riding for decades on the artistic reps those short streaks gave them. Spielberg’s path has been different. Neither Duel nor Wolf of Wall Street is truly great, of course you’re right, but they’re damn good films 45 years apart, with God knows how many – 20? 25? – other damn good films between them.
It’s often said of Mendelssohn, always negatively, that the history of orchestral music would have been much the same if he’d never existed. He wasn’t a groundbreaker or trendsetter, in other words. But Daniel Barenboim has pointed out, rightly, that the classical canon would be much the poorer without all those brilliant tunes. That’s pretty much how I feel about Steven Spielberg. Never mind the art; feel the craftsmanship.
“Isn’t there room for everyone?” Of course there is – please refer to my comment of 01/08/2018 at 11:46. Totally agree with you about him being a craftsman. He is an extremely accomplished and successful director. Surely that’s enough? I don’t knock him down for what he’s done, but I am aware of what he hasn’t. You mention Coppola and Scorsese, both of whom have made truly great movies from the same raw material available to Spielberg. Who hasn’t.
I agree with you, Saucekraft. Non of his films wow me like, say, Goodfellas or Apocalypse Now or what have you. They’re somehow slightly too commercial, with the audience too much in mind, lacking in auteur gravitas. But there are so many wow moments spread among them to compensate for that lack.
Gary, absolutely. I don’t happen to admire him too much because I’ve fallen asleep during too many of his movies (as I do for George Lucas).
But that’s probably because you’re very, very old.
I fell asleep during the first showing of the first Star Wars movie. At the time I couldn’t have been more than sixty or so.
Read the line about Spielberg never making a truly great film and nearly spat my lunch across the screen.
Honestly, this place.
Oh right. You’re a populist. Macca’s as good as Mozart “IMHO”. We get it.
Macca’s wig is far superior to Mozart’s.
Mozart’s wasn’t even the best wig in Salzburg, etc.
What was the lunch?
Argh ! Archie! I want to join that exchange above but the comments are getting squashed now so I’ll add it here.
Spielberg a competent, populist hack whose films don’t have unifying, auteur quality?? Nooo! I would fight that assertion to the death. I think there are stylistic and thematic obsessions that crop up time and time again in his films. You can ‘smell’ a Spielberg film, in a nice way, and you can also smell the stink when someone tries and fails to copy him.
It’s art. Whether you want to find the art in the quality of his crafting skills (the deliberate left field step of starting Temple of Doom with a song and dance number, waking up to a torn landscape in War of the Worlds, Edith Piaf echoing round an abandoned town in Saving Private Ryan…) or in the resonance of his psychological obsessions (the fleeting grace of the tyrant in the ‘I pardon you’ scene in Schindler’s List, the plight of the little man railing against an unprincipled world in Bridge of Spies, the primal man vs beast climax of Jaws…), I still read it as art and still consider him to be as lofty and intellectual a storyteller as Kubrick or Scorsese.
His closest comparison is Hitchcock, and I would argue the only other 20th century director who managed to do successfully pair proper filmmaking nous with bums on seats.
There are certainly Spielberg traits (some of which recall certain aspects of Frank Capra and of Stephen King – small town American childhood, small guy vs faceless institution etc ), but Archie’s point that there’s little to link Lincoln with Catch Me If You Can seems fair to me. It’s like he’s a director-for-hire more than an auteur, albeit one amazing director-for-hire. I think what separates him from an “auteur” is his evident desire to please the audience. He could clearly never make a Taxi Driver or a Raging Bull for that reason. But if that makes him less interesting in one sense, like I say, he certainly compensates with his other, superlative, filmmaking skills.
I think Ranking Roger is better than Ranking Spielberg. OOAA
Wha’ppen?
That’s some top ranking there, Fatima.
Close Encounters an ting
I played my old vinly of I Just Can’t Stop It very very loud yesterday and I heartily concur.
My first thought was indeed that Spielberg had made some sort of ska film. I’m not sure whether I’m disappointed or relieved.
What the late Roy Jenkins would have made of this thread doesn’t bear thinking about.
I think that perhaps he suffers from expanding into every genre: sci-fi, history, childrens, romance, war. I recently rewatched The Birds and Vertigo, both of which captured my 15-year old son. Hitchcock was also a director-for-hire, in the studio system, with big stars, frequently working with adapted material; he managed to entertain the audience consistently (like Spielberg he was adept at audience manipulation). The biggest difference between Hitchcock and Spielberg is that Hitchcock had a set of ideas about cinema that he refined and constantly worked on: hence working in thrillers, suspense, heists and not sci-fi, childrens or fantasy. For Spielberg I suspect the material (only ever a starting point for Hitchcock – viz Psycho) is the idea. Close Encounters is possibly a masterpiece though, and ET one of the best ever non-animated children’s films.
I wrote my Hitchcock comment above before I saw yours. I agree with the conparison, but I maybe don’t see ‘audience manipulation’ as a shallow thing as you seem to. The best directors (arthouse and multiplex, and Spielberg spans both) are the best audience manipulators.
I didn’t realise Duel was a TV movie. Whatever. It is my favourite Spielberg followed by ET and Schindlers list. Close Encounters was tedious for about three quarters of the film. Not sure Spielberg is as good as the Movie Industry think he is.
I think Duel was a cinema release in Europe.
That’s such a radical film for the time, so bleak and lonely and hopeless. It takes Hitchcock’s Persecuted Man motif and drowns his redeeming humour in diesel, because it’s the seventies, maaaan.
Wasn’t the 70s the greatest for movies? Yeah, I’ve never regained the enthusiasm for movies that I had then.
Grrrreeat question. I’m not going to try to answer it though – I would lose a week of my life trying to work out the list.
I think Spielberg is probably, push come to shove, my favourite director. In fact, I just watched Temple of Doom the other night again for probably the 200th time. Absolute, class A popcorn movie genius.
I love the structure of Temple of Doom, the tension and release. After an initial fifteen minutes of non-stop thrills, we get a looong hour of exposition and mystery until things just explode for a series of unbeatable (and yes, ludicrous) action setpieces over the last half hour. It left me gobsmacked, wide eyed and dazed when I saw it as an eleven year old, and no repeat viewing has been enough to dilute that feeling.
What I will give you is:
Spielberg’s biggest clunker (when he’s bad he’s BAAAD): Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull.
(This film is so much worse for the fact that in the first twenty minutes there ARE glimpses of a master’s touch, in the subtle world-building of post-war America and the physicality of the motorbike chase, making it so much more painful when he throws it all away in the messiness of the remaining ninety minutes).
Spielberg’s top five UNDERRATED films (these are all genius and deserve a second chance):
– War of the Worlds
– The Lost World
– The Terminal
– Munich
-Lincoln
(The last two, I know they are well thought of, but I don’t get the sense they are considered to be the A-grade Spielberg they deserve to be considered as).
Jaws, Encounters, Jurassic, Schindler’s, ET, Ryan and Raiders are all, for one reason or another, special landmarks in movie history. The likes of Munich and Lincoln aren’t. And as I say, while there are flashes of wonderful filmmaking talent in all his films, they’re not enough to rescue the likes of Lost World.
Finally someone mentions Munich. Well done, @Arthur-Cowslip. Thought maybe I was the only one.
High five.
Sorry, I’m flooding this thread with my comments this morning but I just thought of one particular Spielberg scene that is maybe my single favourite scene in his whole canon.
That horrific bit in Saving Private Ryan where the wee guy is getting the ammo and comes up the stairs to find his friend having a brawl with a German soldier. He has a whole arsenal strapped to him but is absolutely frozen on the stairwell while the German, ever so slowly and quietly, slips a knife into his friend. That agonising pause while he dies! It’s as powerful as any horror film.
And the real kicker – the German then sees the wee guy on the stairs, and DOESN’T kill him. He just laughs and slowly pushes by him and walks down the stairs.
I’ve never watched a scene which so perfectly and horribly captures what fear in the face of death must actually feel like, being frozen to the spot like that even though you have the power and the opportunity to do the courageous thing. I’m sure if I ever experienced any kind of war or conflict, that’s EXACTLY what I’d be like.
Yep, a very memorable moment. (I’d be more like Mr Godfrey, asking permission to use the toilet).
Btw, Art, regarding your apology for flooding- I’m loving your comments. Really interesting to hear a total fan’s view. I’m going to watch Lost World again to check I’m not totally wrong.
(Thanks to your thread on M. Night Thingummy I’m also inspired to watch Unbreakable and Split again. I don’t remember much about the former and didn’t realise the latter was connected to it).
Aw thanks! Nice to feel appreciated!
Yeah, I AM a fan, aren’t I?!
Absolutely spot on. It’s the reason I don’t watch SPR again. I always get it out of the box and then remember that scene, and back in it goes. The pleading when he realises he’s lost the fight…. if that’s not genius film-making I don’t know what is. Although being able to make someone not watch one of your films is a special kind of genius, I admit.
I note that Norah Ephron had that skill as well….
The special effects in J Park still impresses today because the film itself treats it like a very big deal. Similarly (for random example) the singing contest in Pitch Perfect 3 doesn’t matter because the characters and the film itself doesn’t care.
The weirdly tedious 150 min HBO Spielberg doc had precisely one interesting moment. It was about the only negative thing said. It was about Color of Purple (I haven’t seen it). They said that it was very manufactured feeling and the harsh emotional reality of it was smothered by the excellent production design, the perfect lighting etc. The high quality craftsmanship got in the way of any authenticity and emotional punch. A few minutes later they showed a clip from Empire of the Sun (another film I’ve not seen). It was the climax when the sun shines on the stadium full of confiscated possessions. To me that emotional scene seemed to suffer from the exact same problem as Color. Style and craftsmanship came through instead of emotional weight. It was too perfectly composed.
PS Jaws is his masterpiece.
I wouldn’t dispute that critique of The Color Purple. (As I say, raised a notch by Goldberg.) Empire doesn’t seek or need emotional weight or even authenticity. It’s not about a downtrodden woman’s triumph, it’s about a young boy’s loss of innocence at the hands of humanity. Spielberg’s tendency to go overboard on the emotions and with an abundance of touchy-feely goodness are kept in restraint by the source material. As so often with Spielberg, it’s not perfect, but some of the scenes are just “wow”!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNTQSbvlutg
Actually, I just re-watched both those scenes and must contradict myself. They are pretty open to accusations of heavy handed emotional manipulation. But they’re so beautiful to watch.
Hence my comment below about JG Ballard. A man whose relationship with emotional manipulation was shall we say somewhat different to Spielberg. You are certainly manipulated reading Crash shall we say, but not in the way you are when watching a Spielberg movie.
I’ve never seen Empire and am only vaguely familiar with the plot, but can I ask how a boy who’s grown up in China and spent years in an internment camp knows enough about P51 fighters to be able to identify them by sight?
As a pre-war posh schoolboy he’s into planes.
@LOUDspeaker I haven’t seen Jaws for about 30 years or more. Has it stood the test of time? I seem to remember being slightly underwhelmed when I saw it although it was probably on VHS rather than the cinema
I saw it recently and thought it stood up very well. I’m a big fan of films with the sea in them, and shark movies are my favourite subset within that unrecognised genre (although shark literature surprisingly holds no appeal at all). As fab as the various Open Waters and The Shallows and The Reef are, Jaws is still very much the daddy of shark movies.
You might enjoy this from today’s Guardian @Gary , throwaway filler though it is https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/aug/02/the-10-best-movie-shark-performances-ranked
Excellent! Will read right now. Thanks for the tip, Gatz.
My review of Jaws (1975). Note I talk about documentary atmosphere instead of immaculate craftsmanship.
‘Wonderfully directed movie. Everything is pretty much pitch perfect. The way it’s been made gives it a nice hint of documentary atmosphere. I can’t think of anything to moan about. The shark looks okay and only becomes weak when out of the water, and even then it’s not that bad. One of the greatest movies ever made.’
Spielberg (2017)
Oddly dull documentary about the career of Steven Spielberg. The films are well documented elsewhere and no new analysis or behind the scenes information comes to light. Spielberg’s own recollections add nothing as he has no new introspective insights to share that he hasn’t already discussed at length before. There’s a lack of other critical voices so very little of interest is said about the movies. I can’t help feeling that there’s continued truth in Pauline Kael’s comment that there’s a lot of attractive, audience pleasing surface but not much depth beyond that. This means there is very little to say about his films and so a documentary about them has little of substance to go over when discussing them.
The original of course, as a Ballard-head is a far stronger, stranger and more complex piece than Spielberg’s film which tries gamely to fit JG into the coming of age movie arc. Though I think the source material suits Spielberg more than Purple, a great piece of literature generally does not make a great film. Second-rate literature (viz Jaws here, also Psycho) often makes first-rate film.
It’s probably the rule more often than not to be honest!
I sometimes think the whole emotional experience of literature as opposed to film is so different that never the twain shall meet.
The Princess Bride? Great book, great film. But that’s the exception.
Well Kubrick said that he preferred to take books that were not masterpieces and turn them into movies. Polanski, on the other hand, insisted on trying to turn literary classics into movies. (I tried to watch Macbeth twice and fell asleep both times.)
However there are occasions when a truly great book becomes a truly great film, e.g. Remains of the Day.
Possibly a very shallow observation but one that I can’t stop myself sharing. In ET and Close Encounters the normal, suburban households that have children living in them are authentically messy and it looks to me that a lot of thought was put into that aspect. Film and TV houses usually have gleaming, uncluttered surfaces and pristine living areas.
Yes, that’s a brilliant little aspect of both those films.
I love the bit in CE3K where Roy looks in on his boys and we get this brief tableau of them slumped about amid absolute carnage – you know, the way real people sleep. And later on Barry’s toys all over the floor, not neatly piled on shelves or in cute little boxes. And the fridge in ET is ace.
Taxi Driver, CE3K, Aliens – 70s US cinema put some grunge in it for sure.
I love the bit in ET where Eliot calls his bother “penis breath”. Mostly because of the words “penis breath”.
And I love that Jim Carroll plays on the kitchen radio and he gets a credit for it.
Elliot’s brother sings Accidents Will Happen under his breath. I think EC made a few bob outta that.
Oh, the domestic scenes in Close Encounters are incredible. It could almost be a portrait of a delusional man going mad within a family unit he doesn’t belong in. Were it not for the big spaceship at the end.
It’s got to be said… that sculpture of the Devil’s Tower that he builds in his living room is bloody good isn’t it? Dude missed his vocation!
There’s a lot going on in that film in terms of post-Vietnam/Watergate/JFK paranoia about the government – it’s almost as close to The Parallax View and All of the President’s Men as it is to 2001.
Dreyfus’ performance is brilliant, and the domestic scenes are the best parts of the movie. But that over-long third act, where we get the fibreglass rocks and the lights swung over the soundstage and the Bontempi Chord Organ and -aaaargh! – the wavy alien puppets derails what could have been a great movie (albeit one that made no money). In my version, it’s a story of how one man’s obsession breaks up his family, and ends with him on the mountain watching the empty skies. That’s what makes Spielberg rich and me poor, of course.
But…their arrival means that he was right all along. He didn’t know what his obsession was leading to. I love the fact that he finds Francois Truffaut and the rest of the secret Government/military people preparing for the planned arrival of the aliens.
And they just let him walk right on in. Not even a lanyard check. You’d get more security backstage at a Jedward gig.
The whole “secret Government/military people preparing for the planned arrival” theme is a thin tissue of plot holes and inconsistencies which all the carefully-built character development falls right through. Those studio-lit fibreglass rocks our hero climbs over mark the point where realism tips into directorial demands for suspension of belief I’m no longer prepared to make.
That gives me the image of the Jules et Jim hitmaker communicating with Jedward using hand movements.
….They can talk !!
Btw, if anyone hasn’t seen Henry Thomas’s audition for ET, check it out. No wonder he got the part.
Forgot about that! Oh yeah, absolutely amazing stuff. There’s something special about a really good child actor.
Barry in CE3K is tremendous. And, because she grew up in public and we now take her for granted, it’s easy to forget how good Drew Barrymore was as Gertie.
The way you lot go on about films, you’d think it was a serious art form or sumfink. It’s 90 minutes of your undivided attention STOLEN. They even turn the lights out and whack the volume up to 11. You can’t watch a movie while hurtling down the motorway. Or while cooking yourself a good curry. It’s surrender as an art form.
90 minutes IF YOU’RE LUCKY. People emerge after watching Hollywood blockbusters at the cinema to find that not only is the babysitter not home any more, but that their children have actually grown up and gone to university.
Movies take me out of my miserable life for all too brief periods of time. Sob.
I thought from the title of this post the celebrated director had joined a reggae band.
Spielberg! Rankin’ Spielberg!
I tend to enjoy any film I make an effort to go and see in a cinema – I just like the experience. If I really think about it, the “bad” experiences are due to what was going on at the time, who I was with, that kind if thing.
An observation I would like to share with you all is that I like to talk about the film afterwards while it’s fresh in the memory. Not everyone does – almost as if it’s not British.
Ooh no, I don’t like that. I hate being asked ‘so what did you think?’ as soon as the credits roll. Need time for it to settle, need pondering time.
I like to talk about the movie as it plays. There’s nothing like giving a running commentary in a loud, clear voice (employing terms adapted to the meanest intelligence) to enhance the experience for the common man in the stalls.
There are special singalong screenings of The Sound if Music and Mamma Mia – so why not special Kernode screenings where you are in a safe environment to spout forth with like-minded patrons throughout the film. I’m aware that sounds like ‘commode’ and I think the same rules would apply there.
I know this is a joke but actually if this was real I’d be tempted to go – if only once to see what it was like!
If there’s any Spielberg film I’m likely to rewatch, it’s 1941.
Yes, it’s unfunny, overblown, bombastic….but it’s also a paean to the now long-lost craft of miniatures in film work.
I watched Jurassic Park again tonight with my daughter, first time since it came out. I was mean to it above, but actually found it to be far better than I remembered and it still stands up today. Only the last 20 minutes let it down with raptors opening kitchen doors and suchlike, until then it was a great ride.