A Steven Spielberg Poll (1974-1993)

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.

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.