A Steven Spielberg Poll (1974-1993)

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.

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.