A Steven Spielberg Poll (1974-1993)

top 2 are E.T. and Empire of the Sun

Raiders or Schindler's List

my 2nd tier is CE3K, Temple of Doom, Jaws

A Steven Spielberg Poll (1994-2018)

Wouldn't Schindler's List be where he "became an artist"?

nah, I regard it as the culmination of the imperial phase

Most inclined to vote for:

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
The Color Purple (1985)
Jurassic Park (1993)

Jurassic Park or Jaws for me. With Raiders and Close Encounters close behind.

Three of these movies are good and I like another one

SUGARLAND!

Actually, it's been a while. I should rewatch.

why is duel not here, the only film of his I like

TV movie i guess

Ya, that's quite an omission. Would've liked to see some TV stuff thrown in here (his Amazing Stories episode with Costner is A+).

I suppose Duel deserves to be in here. I'll see if a mod can fix that.

can't mod poll options, you'd have to start a new one

Not terribly saddened about that. Anyone who'd vote Duel over E.T. deserves disenfranchisement.

my favourite bits of ET are before ET appears tbh

the only good part of E.T. is when he washes up on the rocks and you think maybe they killed E.T. with half an hour to go

Maybe we can do a separate TV poll. I'm curious to see how his Night Gallery installment ranks against the Columbo pilot.

the first 3 movies are basically the only truly good stuff he's ever done. (I am voting Sugarland)

Same.

the first 3 movies are basically the only truly good stuff you've ever done, Le Bateau Ivre?

-_-

gonna vote for jaws bc i'm boring

Probably gonna vote for jaws bc it's perfect.

yeah it's also that

although i'm really due for a rewatch of close encounters

Raiders

might vote for 1941 just out of badness and because 14 year-old me was badly lied to by the front cover of the VHS

I don't like his mawkish, feelgood holocaust movie at all these days. It has really aged worse than any of these imo.

Voldemort is good value imo

1941 is so underrated, love that film. However, probably will go with Raiders.

Recently watched the remastered Close Encounters. It still doesn't quite hang together as a film but it is absolutely gorgeous to look at.

Raiders is probably the one film of his that front-to-back i wouldn't change a single thing.

dismissing post-'81 Spielberg = arrested cultural development

tbh i've only seen about half of these

prob raiders

i actually like hook

i actually like hook

i watched hook on repeat when i was like 5-6 years old and obsessed with peter pan so i have no ability to determine whether it's good

I remember liking the half hour or so of 1941 I caught on TV when I was 10. Maybe I should revisit.

many xps
had to google that, yeah he usually delivers. Neeson is so dull and lacking in the obvious moral complexity his character required, by the end I want him to get ratted to the Gestapo ffs!

are you sure you're not thinking of The Sound of Music?

Pia Zadora playing Anne Frank iirc

I was of course being facetious--you can guess which half of his career I count as more artistic--but glad Eric started this. I do consider Schindler's List as the obvious beginning of the other phase; no big deal, especially if it doesn't win. 1. The Sugarland Express, 2. Jaws, 3. Close Encounters of the First Kind. I think they're all amazing, and the first two especially are among my favourite films ever. Not sure if I'll vote in the concurrent poll--just don't feel that strongly about anything on there.

I don't see how Schindler's List is feelgood and I think it's aged very well.

i can't choose between:

Jaws (1975)
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)

Hook is the worst spielberg movie. that much i know.

Neeson is so dull and lacking in the obvious moral complexity his character required, by the end I want him to get ratted to the Gestapo ffs!

idk I though the point of the movie is his motives are inscrutable until the end.

Neeson is great, i think. his emergence as an iconic actor too.

Fiennes is incredible though...i kinda want to say he gives the best performance in any Spielberg film but i don't want to commit to that statement. there's plenty of competition.

Raiders over E.T., Close Encounters, Jurassic Park and the other two Indys.

Haven't seen: The Sugarland Express, 1941, The Color Purple

i'm not going to say hook is great exactly but i do think it's better than its reputation, w/ some good performances, and it is definitely way better than a movie with that concept would be likely to be now. it's telling that when spielberg says he doesn't like it his take is "too bad i didn't wait two decades so i could have done it all in cgi."

Raiders: Taut, suspenseful, fun and funny and beautifully produced. CE3K a close second though the middle sags a bit and Dreyfuss can get grating. But Truffaut is in it so it has my heart, though Raiders is a better constructed film.

"i'm not going to say hook is great exactly but i do think it's better than its reputation..."

no.

Hook is like if THE GOONIES sucked and had Acting

Bangarang!

The four I haven't seen are all bunched together: The Color Purple, Always, Indiana Jones sequel, and Hook. No interest in any of them. 1941 and Empire of the Sun I saw so long ago, I don't remember anything.

Why are all the ILX boys and girls attacking cinema tonight.

Voted Raiders. Although Empire of the Sun is the first film I ever saw in the cinema.

Hook is like if THE GOONIES sucked and had Acting

― omar little, Thursday, February 1, 2018 4:27 PM (thirty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lmao amazing capsule review

Yeah, Hook is terrible. Those Lost Boys scenes are fucking endless.

Jaws is his best film.

Best adult relationships, fresh characters and dialogue, enough Spielberg before Spielberg went full Spielberg.

Indys one and three are great, perfect.

CE3K is perfect cinematic transfer of seventies college American sci-fi therefore quite shit. Soulless and dull.

ET is too much even tho it's perfect tbf. Parodic of his stuff in its delivery of max Spielberg.

Jurassic Park a towering technical and marketing achievement but heartless.

Anything worthy in this period can get to fuck, the guy is painfully heavyhanded and clumsy even in the worthy bits of his fun movies ffs.

Hook is bad but at least it's entertaining. 1941 is like a Naked Gun movie without the jokes or a lead character

this would be Jaws for me if he'd gotten the running time under two hours, preferably by cutting a lot of Dreyfuss mugging ... it drags a little too much for a suspense film

Raiders

Seeing Jaws and Raiders here just makes me depressed thinking about modern day summer tentpoles. I can't think of anything released the past ten or so years that comes close. So one of those two films for me.

Don't sleep on Spielberg's segment from Twilight Zone: The Movie if you've an interest in OD-ing on whimsy and wonder at its schmaltziest.

kinda would like to see Dr. Morbius make the case for Spielberg the Genius. I was seeing his big movies as they were released, following the zeitgeist, and none of them ever struck me as particularly great. Well-done kitsch. Close Encounters I like pretty well as a kid; Raiders, same, nowhere near as big a deal to me as to my buds; E.T.? GTFO w/that shit, I was 14 by then and felt way too old for that shit. It mystifies me that a film dude like you is so in the tank for this guy, his shit is basic next to the big names whose moves he cops visually.

I'm mystified that a guy who appreciates good populist art doesn't get Spielberg, especially compared with contemporaries were putting out.

Even after fans have acknowledged his flaws and his crap movies, I'm sorry he triggers the wrong sort of suspicions for you.

Can't forgive Jaws for having the boring humans defeat the sublime shark. It also doesn't seem as if Spielberg himself believed that was a happy ending. Close Encounters and Jurassic Park are the best, because those are the films where his sublime filmic concoctions stay sublime.

You honestly thought they'd let the shark kill the three principals?

E.T. will win this, I'm sure, and that's fine--it's fourth for me. I've been watching it annually with my classes the past few years; because I'm back to teaching a younger grade now, and because almost all of my students are Indian or Pakistani, it's the first time seeing it for all but one or two kids. It's fun witnessing that.

I think much of it's great, highlighted by Drew Barrymore's first encounter and the Quiet Man reenactment. I find the sentimentality is dragged out to the breaking point the last five minutes.

Oh man but those last five minutes break my heart every fuggin' time.

jaws and raiders are perfect movies. ET and Close Encounters are, ahem, close.

You honestly thought they'd let the shark kill the three principals?

― clemenza, 2. februar 2018 02:31 (twenty-six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well, no, but it's still so disappointing when they win. Imagine Jurassic Park if the humans had killed the T Rex :(

Jaws, it's not even close

Well, no, but it's still so disappointing when they win. Imagine Jurassic Park if the humans had killed the T Rex :(

― Frederik B, T

glad to see you're on record writing that a T. Rex is as easy to kill as a shark

http://horrorcultfilms.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/jaws.jpg

so much winning

In all honesty, you are a pisspoor writer if you can't kill a shark as easily as a dinosaur. It's all imaginary.

voted Raiders as despite being comprised of so many fun set pieces it maintains such a clean arc, not sure that can be said about any of these others, even Jaws which is great

Raiders is practically perfect, too, but it's just a relentlessly fun adventure. Jaws wrings drama and suspense from an innately ridiculously premise, and I really like the relationship between all the characters. Plus, perhaps tied with Godfather as the best adaptation of the worst book.

Spielberg doesn't really cop from too many guys visually except when he wants to, eg Ford (even Lucas was more blatant about it). Nothing "basic" about him, his camera movements in something like The Post is peerless in this age.

I've seen CE3K and Empire again in the last 2 years and dissolve in tears in the last 10 minutes, same with E.T. I also saw Raiders last summer and calling it "perfect" is just nuts. Doom improves on it in every way, per Pauline Kael.

The 10-year-old me would've voted for Raiders in a heartbeat. The 20-year-old me would've voted for Empire of the Sun. The 40+ me trusts the 10-year-old me more, but probably owes Empire a re-watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCQqM-kaAG8

Plus, perhaps tied with Godfather as the best adaptation of the worst book.
― Josh in Chicago

I was thinking about that today too, even though I've never read The Godfather. Think I did read Jaws as a teenager, after seeing the film--vaguely recall that Hooper has an affair with Brody's wife in the book, and that Spielberg wisely ditched that.

Hooper also dies! Maybe in the cage, as opposed to swimming to safety.

I love Doom, sometimes, but the only way it improves on Raiders is by being even pulpier and sillier, though the intro sequence is superb. If it happens, I'm sort of surprised West Side Story would be his first musical.

It ramps up the casual racism, if that's your thing

I also saw Raiders last summer and calling it "perfect" is just nuts. Doom improves on it in every way, per Pauline Kael.

― ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius), Thursday, February 1, 2018 9:24 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

THIS is just nuts. Kael Schmael. Yawn.

Ya'll the JP on this poll isn't the OG, it's the terrible sequel where a gymnast somersaults and kicks over a dinosau

Lol oops wrong thred

Close Encounters was the first Spielberg movie I ever saw, at the Ziegfeld Theater, and it was one of the more memorable experiences of my life, so that is what I'm going with

Just bought close encounters on dvd for $3, haven't seen it since I was about 10: looking forward to rewatching

i have a lot of good memories/associations with Hook

mostly cos, like Brad, my brother watched it every day when he was little and still knows every line. i can't be objective about it either

It ramps up the casual racism, if that's your thing

yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawn

I'm mystified that a guy who appreciates good populist art doesn't get Spielberg, especially compared with contemporaries were putting out.

yeah I mean it's just pleasure-center response for me. I was the target market for those movies when they were coming out; I did not enjoy them. I think the last Spielberg movie I saw from beginning-to-end was The Color Purple, which I saw in the theater. A couple years later I caught the first half hour or so of Empire of the Sun playing on a VHS in a facility where I was working I and said to myself, self, you've been checking this guy's stuff out for ten years now and it never really does the trick for you, move along.

I thought Empire of the Sun held up really well when I saw it again last year or so. Between that and The Color Purple (and Always?), felt like Spielberg (who was prolly what, 35?) was then trying to prove his worth as an adult director of grown up stuff, which is crazy, since his mastery of material, actors and filmmaking was already pretty unimpeachable.

This almost has to be CE3K for me.

kinda would like to see Dr. Morbius make the case for Spielberg the Genius.

naaah, you don't want me doing that. Even tho I don't think she evaluates him as a genius (nor do I!), you're better off with Molly Haskell:

https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300186932/steven-spielberg

Or Eric!

No way am I recommending myself over Molly Haskell

One of my favourite bits from that amazing Quincy Jones GQ profile is when he describes seeing Spielberg's E.T. prototype.

"They made that little monster, and he looked too much like a brother. That's why the second one had blue eyes."

between close encounters and et

i wrote this before reading any of the comments, but it's interesting how most people who regard close encounters as his best also consider et as a contender too

i was just talking to a friend a few days ago about how i find the indiana jones movies so boring

haven't seen sugarland, purple, always, or schindler's. do i need to see any of those before i vote? sounds like more people put sugarland in the top tier than i'd ever realized.

of the ones i've seen it has to be jaws, close encounters, raiders, or ET. that's a VERY tough choice tbh. close encounters really shook me up on recent viewing but i suppose i have to dock it points for some dropped threads and underdeveloped supporting characters versus the flawless, every-beat-is-perfect craft of the other three there. it probably has the least mawkish but still powerful sense of wonder, because mixed effectively with the darker notes of the sublime. neery at night on the road by himself, encountering the thing for the first time... finding that little group of ufo-watchers who are out waiting for Something, it rushing by in the cold night air - wow.

love jurassic park but it really does get sloppy in the last act as i've mused elsewhere. temple of doom has the racism and that can't be handwaved or yawned away, sorry - these are fun action-adventure films, so if it takes on the water of "i can't recommend this to friends" then it's halfway to sunk. last crusade is great fun but can't help but feel a little redundant or flabby next to raiders. hook is awful - the prestige treacley junk haters accuse his good films of being. also the plot doesn't work and neverland consists of four hideous expensive sets. 1941 has entertaining and charming aspects but is mostly an unfunny slog with no memorable characters or jokes. empire of the sun is flawed sure but definitely interesting. duel rules, though i admit i haven't seen it since high school.

Raiders has p much the same racial content as ToDoom w/ the non-Nazi supporting characters

disagreed!

do you remember Alfred Molina waggling his fingers in the first scene? "Adios, Dr Jones." Can't trust em.

it's extremely racist against the French

I love the Indiana Jones movies (well obviously not the fourth), I would probably rank them in the order of release.

I've said it elsewhere but I think there's a particularly haunting undercurrent of dread that builds throughout, leading to the opening of the Ark, that is more effective here than in any other film I've seen. it's in the background of the entire movie and usually plays out with a bit of wind or unsettling pauses. it's exceptionally well done.

also Brody and Sallah are outstanding characters as opposed to buffoons (though Elliott and Rhys-Davies both play buffoons well.)

Always is my least favorite Spielberg and that's including Hook. A totally charming cast wasted in a totally superfluous remake. I'd much rather watch the original.

Sallah is a buffoon by the time we get to Last Crusade; we've long forgotten he's the "finest digger in Egypt" when he's reduced to saying shit like, "in the belly of that steel beast."

yeah i mean those guys in Raiders are great characters vs their revisitation in LC.

all that shit about his brother in law's car is good for a smile, but he's playing a cartoon (like Brody is)

my least fave Spielberg is his Twilight Zone segment

Brody in Raiders had a sort of extremely casual confidence and wary nature and was clearly Jones' equal, just more of a university guy as opposed to an adventurer. I liked the knowing looks they'd share during the initial expository scene w/the government agents.

Denholm Elliott's name was Brody? why do you ppl remember that?

(i know youve watched RotLA 36x)

cuz he's called Marcus or Marcus Brody in two of the films?

omar little so otm about the "undercurrent of dread" throughout Raiders. it's in the supernatural music queue that comes up when the Top Men are informing Indy of the Biblical reality his mission, the queue pops up again on the ark's reveal, etc. there is a spookiness and a heaviness to the macguffin that works really well as isn't as strong in any of the other films. Temple of Doom feels way more cartoonlike in that aspect.

also i love Sallah's little singing "I am the monarch of the sea..." just before they find the bad dates.

xps well yeah, when it comes to Twilight Zone, Miller = Dante >> Spielberg >>>>>> Landis. (Killing a pair of kids moves you way down the list.)

so i gather, Alfred, and why wd a person use up memory with that?

You mean ears?

It's okay we don't know that the head German in Raiders is called Dietrich; he's only referred to by name once.

i prefer 'cartoonlike' to Frank Buck/James Bond with a whip, if such a distinction can be made

i can't help it, I'm like Marilu Henner over here, I can't forget anything, even the fact that she played Belinda in Noises Off with Denholm Elliott in his final film role.

i also remember that it's Sallah who calls him Dietrich. I don't think Toht is ever referred to by his name.

yep

(i know youve watched RotLA 36x)

this is an odd zing from one of the only people on ilx who seems to be expecting good things from ready player one, whose premise could be boiled down to "the protagonist has watched RotLA 36x"

I'm pretty sure I have seen Raiders at least 36 times. I think I saw it three times in the theater!

It takes more effort to push a memory out than to just let it hang around.

haha Dr C, I expect nothing, I just roll

probably have seen Raiders 3x total, 4 tops, i was in lolcollege when it came out (went opening night)

ive probably seen Raider 36 times. in none of those times there was an extended food gross out sequence where our heroes are disgusted by the food of their hosts. and that happens twice in Temple.

gotcha. love the monkeybrains sequence, wish i had em tonight.

i prefer raiders because it feels more like a classic carl barks uncle scrooge story. plus temple just feels like it goes on forever, i always start to feel claustrophobic about an hour from the end.

Thought you guys were referring to Roy Scheider re "Brody" for a moment

xxxxpost

Schindler's List, easily.

Also, lotta Kate shrieking in Doom, lotta Short-round, Kane Hodder in Indian-face... The Orientalism very much in character of cheesy, dubious old serials, though that is a weird defense. From an interview I did with Kal Penn:

I was probably in fourth grade when Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom came out. I remember when we went to see that movie, and there all these Indian characters that were eating monkey brains and snakes for dinner, and doing all these things that had absolutely nothing to do with being Indian at all. I went into school, and myself and every other Indian kid I know, and nobody would sit next to us at lunch, for months, because they were convinced we had monkey brains in our sandwich. Similarly, when the Simpsons first started airing, the character of Apu was so degrading, in my opinion. A lot of people disagree with me, but those are the media images that go into people’s heads, and if you don’t have close friends to disprove that, or even if you do but you’re only in fourth grade, that’s pretty powerful. That’s something I was very aware of/

That said, I own this shirt:

https://lastexittonowhere.imgix.net/uploads/catalogue/productimage-picture-lao-che-air-freight-2809.jpg

Dr. C, watch Sugarland Express! I first watched it as sort of a perfunctory completist gesture but I got converted. I really don't understand why it's so consistently underrated.

if anyone doesn't know why Raiders feels like Carl Barks: http://www.dialbforblog.com/archives/429/

i'm pretty sure Spielberg would not make Temple of Doom the same way today. I think he would still marry Kate Capshaw.

capshaw another major block on recommending that movie; i can picture very few of my non-male friends finding that character/performance enjoyable.

i dig it. less misogynist than drag. #challops

yeah I have no problem with Capshaw. She played the Dizzy Dame about as well as anyone could in 1984.

one shriekin' gold-diggin' blonde does not necessarily represent women any more than I Love Lucy did. Sometimes a comic stock character is just that.

and I've said before on ILX that Marian's value as a character is overrated too -- she turns into a screaming wuss by the second act too!

yeah but she also pulls a knife on a Nazi in that second act. and after that she comedically slaps a wounded Indy with a mirror.

also that intro where she drinks the patron under the bar at the frozen Nepalese tavern she runs is pretty badass

sometimes you would rather see something like that then a lady complaining about having to ride an elephant

it being a comic stock character doesn't mean it's something one wants to watch for ninety minutes! there are lots of stock characters that i think we're all glad have bitten the dust after all. in this case, the stock from which the character is ladled is sexist as well boring. willie is stupid, slow on the uptake even in the most obvious situations, cowardly, unhelpful, and rude, and the film's main interest in her is how to take her down a peg. spielberg doesn't do anything to reinvent or recontextualize or renew this very dicey material and occam's razor (given the racism and general laziness of this film's conception) would suggest he just thinks it's crowd-pleasing entertainment to watch a woman screw things up and be annoying. call me when this kind of worthless role for the leading female character has been abandoned by hollywood and i'll entertain the idea that including one could be some kind of clever throwback to a forgotten archetype. meanwhile though i still don't think any women i know would find this enjoyable. maybe you two dudes are right though.

This is a movie in which everyone, including Indie, gets taken down a peg and made a fool of; everyone's a cartoon.

I don't mind if someone dislikes Willie, nor will I fight it.

pop culture of all eras sure is rigorously vetted these days (except for Fay Wray)

I like Kate Capshaw in TOD (she's pretty funny in the comic scenes and quite good at being seductive once she gets Indy in her sights), I just don't like her more than Karen Allen in ROTLA.

I got no problem with Franklin Pangborn's prissy fags ftr

"Is there anyone I haven't offended?" - Lenny Bruce, who's glad he's dead

vetted? i mean all i was saying was i don't think I'd recommend the film to a friend. out of all the thrills-and-chills adventure movies out there, why pick one with THIS stuff in it? if it doesn't bug you that's fine but i was, as i said, thinking of non-male film buff friends of mine, so you going "hey, *i* find it entertaining, what's the big deal??" isn't really answering to that. obviously i can't speak for their tastes either, just my own barometer of "will i later feel like an asshole with male-privilege blinders for blithely proclaiming this to be a fun popcorn movie that lets you have a good time and forget your cares" ?

You can recommend the film with caveats? That's my job as a reviewer.

I'm just not seeing the big deal in explaining to a friend what you dislike and letting him/her make up his/her mind. Also, if you wouldn't introduce a film patterned after 1930s serials with ethnic and sexual stereotypes to a friend, then don't.

That sentence is garbled: if your friend normally has a problem with such movies, etc.

I'm mostly annoyed that for all that's, well, annoying with her character, Indy inexplicably doesn't rip her heart out later. They never explain that, do they?

I recommend things with caveats all the time! I'd recommend Raiders with caveats, happily. But the more caveats that I have to layer onto a funtimes popcorn movie specifically, the more it's like, maybe I should be recommending a movie that involves less work and fewer "now, you'll want to brace yourself for..." moves. Life is too short; I'd rather recommend things that are fun all the way through, and it's a bummer that Spielberg didn't always pull that off.

Dr. C, watch Sugarland Express! I first watched it as sort of a perfunctory completist gesture but I got converted. I really don't understand why it's so consistently underrated.
― Cork Taint (Old Lunch)

Keep fighting the good fight, OL.

i dig it. less misogynist than drag. #challops

I note that this thread has strongly shifted to arguing between Indiana Jones movies. This seems predictive of the outcome, unless a presently-silent majority rules the final results.

Raiders will be in the top 3. The other two somewhere in the bottom half of the top 10.

my names not gareth its brodie

― brodie, Sunday, January 23, 2011 5:32 PM (seven years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Best silly: Raiders.
Best serious: Empire of the Sun.

Voted for Raiders.

Although fuck it, maybe I should have gone with my heart and voted Temple of Doom.

i wouldn't change a thing. somehow even him holding the rocket launcher backwards makes perfect sense in this world. and the end of the film, with the power of God being unleashed and just destroying a canyon filled with Nazis in the most demonic-metal special effects extravaganzas of all time. then there is still the final shot of the guy in that giant room of government secrets.

Raiders is efficient, well-made, unparalleled pulp. the end of TOD is them on a bridge with a bunch of guys falling down to get eaten by crocodiles offscreen. then the guy tries to do the heart thing on Indy, which is the 3rd or 4th time we have seen that trick in action, and it never works in the good guys. then he falls down to again get eaten by crocodiles. i do like the fakeness of the effects, but it is cheaper, far less visually and thematically impressive, then the ending of Raiders. in Raiders we never see the power of the ark until the ending, making it all the more impressive when it happens. it is like the shark in Jaws, used sparingly, the tension building throughout the movie between brief scenes of the main monster or whatever. ofc this is pulp/b-movie making 101.

him riding on the submarine is the maybe the best part, that they never explain that. it effectively turns him into a superhero, which, come on, he always was. this is the kind of folk legend that would be used in a comic strip.

also that wordless scene of the ark burning the whole through the crate in the submarine base is beyond cool. it starts with a shot of some rats and there is this ominous hum and then it pans to show the Imperial Eagle symbol and the ark from within burns it and chars the box black so the Nazi symbol is destroyed. it is a really cool shot of magic happening onscreen when nobody is looking.

The Raiders template is sending up Crap Movies. Which is also what Tarantino's career has been, but Spielberg's pastiches are much better and don't run 3 fucking hours.

is the ending to "Raiders" sort of a nod to DeMille's "The Ten Commandments"? the animation in parts kind of resemble the pillar of cloud and other effects from that classic film.

It's interesting, that sort of is the Raiders template, but that might be more Lucas than Spielberg. I never got the same film historian vibe (pulp or otherwise) from Spielberg that you get from erstwhile peers like, say, Scorsese. Spielberg always seemed more of a savant. Like Coppola, maybe, but less grand Great American Novel ambitious.

xpost Raiders is silly but also has some moments of real drama and portent and menace, not least the intensity of the ending. Doom is just silly, for better or for worse. One can (and we have) made the case that that makes it more faithful to its source inspirations, but ... nah. Still fun, but that's largely linked to Ford, who is perfect in the role.

Adam:

http://www.theraider.net/features/articles/demille.php

Has Spielberg talked much about specific film influences, either directors or movies that made an impact on him?

He has, a fair amount -- not in encyclopedic Scorsese fashion -- but I don't have one source for you.

Assuming Spielberg saw it in its theatrical release when he was about 9, you can imagine how The Ten Commandments would ring all his bells.

I always got the impression he was as or more influenced by pulp fiction: Weird Tales, pulpy sci-fi-fi novels and stuff. But I'll look into film specifics.

That was easy, this one was great and recent:

http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/lists/10-great-films-inspired-steven-spielberg

http://www.bfi.org.uk/sites/bfi.org.uk/files/styles/full/public/image/secret-of-the-incas-1954-001-charlton-heston.jpg?itok=y5A4vU5u

get your stinking scales off me, you damn dirty snakes

Q: Why doesn’t Jurassic Park enter into the discussion anybody higher? Is it the fact that it is so overrepresented in nerd culture? Technically speaking, I think it’s one of Spielberg’s best.

I saw it once, and thought all the accomplishments were technical, aside from Goldblum's meta japery.

I like that the people are all pulpy archetypes, but the dinosaurs are realistic and scary. It's a nice contrast.

i will always sit and watch jurassic park if it's on. the first two-thirds is impeccable spielberg craft with SO many small but effective choices, notwithstanding some kinda thin characterization compared to what we get in jaws or close encounters, say. last third still has real genius (the kitchen) but it's carrying you through on momentum and busy-ness. i babbled about this a little starting at this post: jurassic park

up until that rewatch though i probably would have put it right up there with jaws. it's still one hell of an entertaining movie but i see the seams more now.

Jurassic park has nothing on rewatch morbs otm about it

all accomplishments are technical

Re: that BFI list the one thing I unashamedly love about "War Horse" is how he was able to fuse a sentimental John Ford patina over a weird pastiche of Kubrick-goes-to-war.

I won't disagree with anyone who claims that JP is technical exercise and not much else, but I like it for what it is: a beautifully made monster movie. See any of the sequels (yes, even the one Spielberg directed; if not his worst film--which I might argue it is--it is certainly his laziest) for what this film would look like if made without Spielberg's impeccable craftsmanship.

I went to see JP when it came out not knowing anything about it, and it scared the shit out of me.

Jeff Goldblum has that effect on people

Has Spielberg ever made a movie that was not at least technically competent? It's kind of weird, the things that make his movies good or bad seem to be different from the things that make most movies good or bad. His acting and actors are almost always good, his direction is almost always impeccable. Whenever he is let down it is usually by the script.

Both technically and thematically speaking, I think he's fallen into a creative rut in the last decade. Excepting BFG and Tin Tin, which are kiddie-flicks more animated than not, I think he's constricted his palette and moved toward a pokey, less-inspired staging/editing approach than he used during the '70s - '90s. It's probably because he's made so many damn movies. He doesn't strike me as terrifically inventive, which he once did, nor as fun, and I find his choices more frequently eye-rolly. I think a lot of prestige television owes him a debt, and so much of what seems "blah" about his current work is that his style/influence is now ubiquitous. But subject-wise, I'm less sympathetic. Of his output post-2000, he's devoted way too much of his time to making competent, mostly uncontroversial films about and for serious white people. The fun/kineticism of his earlier stuff is mostly missing, and there's a lot of conservative dudes talking in brownish room in its place.

depends what counts as technical competence i guess. i'd say hook blows it but not necessarily in the places you just mentioned. his instincts just fail him as to what's a good story, what's a good emotional arc, what needs to be in the movie and what doesn't, what level of overacting to direct everybody to... it's the one that feels the most like you got some sub-spielberg person to try and do a big hit family movie with prestige actors and a sense of "wonder" and "magic" that turns out to be hollow and mean if you think about it.

One reason I like, for different reasons, his sci-fi resurgence with AI, Minority Report, and War of the Worlds is that a lot of them flashback to his early days of wide eyed wonder, at spectacle, at technology, at just something that warrants the trademark look of his characters, slack-jawed and staring. The irony of many of his more recent works is that they seem very much indebted to backroom 70s paranoia thrillers, like All the President's Men or the Conversation or something like that. When in the 70s of course he was making movies that largely went in the opposite direction.

His filmography is so diverse at this point, it's really hard to pinpoint what makes a Spielberg movie a Spielberg movie, not in the way you can do the same with, say, a Scorsese film.

JP is absolutely one of spielberg's best, what's special about it seems more and more clear when you compare it to the fx blockbusters that followed it (including a couple made by spielberg himself).

yeah JP probably changed blockbusters filmmaking more than anything here except jaws but including raiders. there are soooooo many wannabe-JP movies from that point on and almost nobody has any idea what they're doing.

OK, voting E.T..

Voted Close Encounters

Me: 1) The Sugarland Express, 2) Jaws, 3) Close Encounters, 4) E.T.

Prediction: 1) E.T., 2) Raiders, 3) Close Encounters, 4) Jaws or Jurassic Park.

Without having seen them all, my vague sense is that the Spielbergs are very much of their eras, with the '70s expressive of an unconventional individual, the long '80s of someone serving a conventional audience in personal fashion, the '90s of someone seeking to nudge it marginally in a positive direction, and much of what followed more explicitly political/philosophical while remaining in a fairly conventional mode. I like the '70s films best, especially Jaws and its more transitional follow-up, but that may also have something to do with the fact that I regard Wyoming as the most spectacular thing he's put in a movie.

I'd say his '70s are the same as Altman's and Scorsese's: they've got more energy and ideas than they know what to do with. Not everything worked--Altman really misfired sometimes--but they regularly amazed.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Well, at least Jaws didn’t win.

I was waiting for this result like

https://i.imgur.com/hUrf67F.gif

Yay on Close Encounters doing so well :)

wow at ET so low! that was my pick in the end. i didn't have a super strong relationship with it as a kid, probably only saw it once, but it's really spoken to me as an adult. absolutely wrecked me and my stepmom, watching it a few days after my father passed away. i remember hugging her, both of us crying, and just saying "he goes home. he goes home." maybe of all his films it has the most to say, in a small story of a child and his friend, about the big and fundamental things - life, death, loss, watching someone you love go, and carrying on with the things they left you still in your heart. it's able to get there because all the everydayness works, because the movie magic of things like the bicycle flight have us totally wide-eyed and accepting in our hearts that elliott and e.t.'s connection is important. "this means something," one might say.

speaking of which, close encounters gets really, well, close. what ultimately proves to be the throwawayness of melinda dillon's character is a real achilles's heel tho imo. there are also a few sequences that drag on a little long. but this one, too, moved and affected me in recent times. raiders and jaws are fantastic entertainments, probably pinnacles of the medium in certain ways, but i'm more interested in and compelled by the things e.t. and close encounters have their minds on.

ilx went mindless

I would've gone:

E.T.
Temple of Doom
Jaws
Empire of the Sun
Raiders of the Lost Ark

Except for something like this thread, I doubt I've thought of Raiders of the Lost Ark once the past 35 years. I remember the snakes and the big rock.

Nice to see three other Sugarland votes, though.

ilx went mindless

― ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius), Thursday, March 15, 2018 10:56 PM (yesterday) Bookmark

wait weren't you stanning for Temple of Doom over Raiders?

I love that there were actually two votes for Hook. Hook!

The Sugarland Express (1974) 4
1941 (1979) 4
Schindler's List (1993) 3

never change ILX.

The Sugarland Express is a great, underseen film--according to Kael, "one of the most phenomenal debut films in the history of the movies."

Having said that, I can see where that would be hard to stomach for anyone who loves Schindler's List. Which is why I thought it more properly belonged in the other poll.

TBH, while I do greatly appreciate and enjoy most of the big Spielbergian cultural depth charges from this era, none of them aside from maybe Raiders really rocks my world the way Sugarland did when I first saw it.

who voted for Always?

i think i forgot to vote. but any of the first four up there is fine.

xpost the only thing I remember about that movie was a nebbish confused man at the movie theatre box office trying to buy a ticket to the 3:15 showing of Always and having to be told repeatedly that the showing was cancelled, Stuwall style.

Assuming that both Hook voters haven't seen it since they were 10.

Hook voters need to be watched VERY closely. there is something wrong there. unless it was some sort of post-modern Andy Kaufman kind of vote.

Hook is every bad maudlin idea/thought/memory SS ever had made into a movie.

RUFI

I voted for CE3K.

Thudbutt is one of cinema's great characters

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)	2
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)	1

It has all been worth it.

watched "Empire of the Sun" last night. it was really good! wonderful on a technical level -- those scenes with massive crowds brought to mind Grand Old Hollywood. great use of light/shadow throughout, with some nice shots of silhouettes against the sunrise or a shower of sparks from nearby plane mechanics.

the class dynamics were very interesting. it starts out with a spoiled British imperialist youth frightened of the teeming masses living at the edge of his privilege. soon enough they are ransacking his abandoned house (the scene where his former servant goes right up and slaps him before moving on was hilarious & devastating). soon enough, he is banging a dish pan in an internment camp, a nice callback to the homeless man camped out near the driveway of his mansion from the start of the film.

there is so much to dig into here. just thinking back on it, so many themes and motifs are bubbling up for me. the little toy plane he starts off with, taken on this journey, seen in all these different contexts, later taken a more grown up form in the larger toy plane that he and his Japanese counterpart take joy in flinging back and forth across the lines. that scene where he is trying to bring back someone to life and they turn into... well not gonna give it away for those who haven't seen it. the moment is a little on the nose but the movie is very good at show not tell so it's an earned moment.

beautiful movie. John Malcovich is even tolerable! the scene with all the discarded pianos, china sets, luxury lounges, crystal chandaliers, etc. all the trappings of wealth in the abandoned stadium littered with the bodies of the dying ruling class was eerie and surreal (perhaps like something he would do later in AI). i feel like this is a film you could watch over and over again and even use to teach a class, it is really well put together on every level.

finally watched Sugarland Express last night. the most "of its time" spielberg that i've seen - we get slight variations on the many-cops-chasing-one-car formula rather than a total overhaul into streamlined blockbuster. zsigmond's photography is the biggest reason to see it imo, i was stoked for a spielberg movie starring goldie hawn but she's rapidly demoted to just one of several people yelling at each other. it's also too long and there are times i genuinely couldn't tell what was happening to who (too many similar-looking cars and hats). but other times you can see exactly where spielberg's injecting some energy and drama through the storyboarding....
idk it's more fun and certainly better looking than Dirty Mary Crazy Larry. still need to see Badlands and Thieves Like Us tho.

The biggest blind spot for me has always been “Hook”. I tried to watch it last night. Didn’t make it past the kid’s baseball game. The treacly John Hughes-ness of the thing made me stop watching. Please convince me to sit through it and that I will be rewarded.

nope

it gets worse rather than better. i guess if you're really into lavishly expensive but pretty ugly 90s set/production design, there'd be things to look at.

I have a real affection for Hook because it was one of a handful of movies we had on VCR when I worked in the electronics dept of a K-Mart in the early 90s and I've seen it dozens of times in bits and pieces (others: 2001, The Fugitive, Mrs. Doubtfire). It's also one of the only Robin Williams movies I like, probably because he is playing against type most of the movie. It's the ultimate of the Spielberg missing father movies and kind of hits you over the head with that. I guess I like the recontextualizing/updating of the Peter Pan story and how you get to gradually uncover those elements. I wouldn't argue for it being good.

Hook is such a 1991/1992 film in an intangible way, just switching it on you can instantly tell that it's not from 1989 or 1994

Down to the score.

Yeah, that's a weird score. Otm. Not gonna revisit. Nope.

The England-set scenes in Hook are actually quite lovely. Shame about the rest of it.