Steven Spielberg - classic or dud

The Terminal stripped him of any claim to classicness.

It's one thing to get excited in a 'film school' sort of way about his technique. It's another thing to sit in a dark theater and be moderately entertained by his movies. But has Speilberg overcome the limits of his medium to create great and lasting art in the way of Cocteau or Fellini or Howard Hawks or Preston Sturges? Not in my view. He generally makes clever confections. He's a great chef.

However, his depiction of the D-Day landing in Saving Private Ryan is a classic that stands head and shoulders above his normal work, including the remainder of SPR.

Take, for example,Brininging Up Baby. It aims at nothing more than sheer entertainment, but it is so entertaining that it sheerly delights me with its artistry and wit, its little-red-wagon sense of fun. It is an exemplar of light-hearted foolery, a gush of google-eyed silliness, a whole 'nother world you step into.

E.T. - The Extra Terrestrial aims at something a bit more than 'mere' entertainment. It wants to achieve a certain modicum of significance, in a warm and fuzzy sort of way - as a statement about wonder and innocence or something like that. But it doesn't really work on that level. It achieves a sappy, happy sentimentality about wonder and innocence. You cry when ET is dying at the hands of the mean, cold-hearted scientists because, um, never mind why. But can you take any part of it back into your life and make it work for you.

That's why Spielberg is meh. He's a perfect B+ student. He gets all the low-hanging fruit and most of the middling stuff, but never quite bags the topmost stuff.

He may be pretty middlebrow, but stuff like Minority Report, Catch Me If You Can, WOTW etc is very entertaining, well made cinema. I agree that he often feels like he's trying to make a bigger statement than he actually achieves, but I cannot think of another director working currently who has consistently entertained me so well over the last 25 years.

No mention of it yet here, but I'm on the side that feels A.I. is one of his best films, too. There's plenty not to like about it, but the stuff that works (the whole opening act, the journey to drowned Manhattan, fuck it, even the ending) is some of the most mesmerising, compelling sci-fi I have ever seen. Real cinema of wonder in a very pure form.

xp

i actually LIKE spielberg and feel he gets a bad rap from "entertainment is not art" types, but howard hawks is a greater director than spielberg for the same reason charles schulz is a greater artist than dave sim.

i. dis. agree. there, that wasn't so hard. in this context, i don't care about great directors. i care about entertaining films. hawks' films are *quite* entertaining. but they don't stand out particularly from hollywood films of the 'classic' (c. 1930 - c. 1960) period.

he has a slightly nasty, right-libertarian view of society based on the rugged-individualist/masculinist ideal (women have to be men). it's this glib view of 'how to deal' that i mean by 'audience-minded'. he's all about winners.

expressive editing (blah phrase, but whatevs) is not film school bullshit. following the aesthetic choices of 1950s cahiers du cinema is film school bullshit!!

point is the kind of stuff spielberg does, like the beach scene, was beyond the dreams of any classic hollywood director. they'd have fucking killed to have done it. maybe sam fuller with spielberg's crew would be the best thing.

# Indiana Jones 4 (2006) (announced)
# Untitled Steven Spielberg/Abraham Lincoln Project (2007) (pre-production)
# Untitled 1972 Munich Olympics Project (2005) (filming)
# War of the Worlds (2005)
# The Terminal (2004)
# Catch Me If You Can (2002)
# Minority Report (2002)
# Artificial Intelligence: AI (2001)

This list, of films I have seen, arranged more or less in descending order of quality (last = best) is the reason why I'm not interested in any of the films above:

# Saving Private Ryan (1998)
# The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
# Schindler's List (1993)
# Jurassic Park (1993)
# Hook (1991)
# Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
# Empire of the Sun (1987)
# The Color Purple (1985)
# Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
# E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
# Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
# Jaws (1975)
# Duel (1971)

In conclusion, Thank You Mr. Spielberg for bringing some really fantastic adventures to the big screen, and showing us some highly exciting moments, No Thank You Mr. Spielberg for saddling nearly all of them with increasingly awful casting as time marches on and for trying to choke us to death with your faith in the human spirit or whatever you want to call that unbelievably smug annoying self-congratulatory horseshit.

xpost,
more complexity and disturbingly adult themes
So do the fucking Matrix movies. OMG HE DIES TO SAVE EVERYBODY

this is kinda otm -- it's there in the movies -- but the horseshit bits are outnumbered by the highly exciting moments. or, they're *both* there. same way fall-flat bits of unfunniness and misanthropy coexist with real chills in hitchcock.

otoh, is 'saving private ryan' really that smug? it has those terrible bookends, and the matt damon bits are really annoying, but i've seen far less convinving movies about war.

The first time I saw Duel I knew it was supposed to be "atypical" Spielberg but I still spent probably half the movie waiting for some insipid deus ex machina to rob me of all my actual emotions and replace them with spoonfed lotus blooms. This is what he's done to his legacy.

Looking at that list above I realize I've disliked a LOT of his movies, without even really realizing they were Spielberg flix. I mean the only movies that I like in that list are Raiders, Last Crusade, Duel, Catch Me If You Can (and that's not even an active like because I forgot I saw it until recently) and...uh...well, I don't actually like Jurassic Park at ALL but Jeff Goldblum dresses fantastically in it so I'll give it a little bit of a pass (THAT FINAL SHOT OF THE T-REX AND THE RAPTORS IS THE ABSOLUTE WORST SHOT IN THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF CINEMATOGRAPHY AND DIRECTION AND THAT IS A STONE COLD FACT PEOPLE). I'd like Saving Private Ryan better if the bookends were deleted and it was about a half hour shorter.

Dr. Morbius, how about you discuss the "disturbing adult themes" in, say, Catch Me If You Can?

jaws fucking rules ally. jpark3's pretty great, the best of the bunch no doubt. poltergeist was pretty great. band of brothers was incredible. into the west was rousing fun.

Jaws does NOT fucking rule!

It's kind of like "Enemy of the State" with alien MacGuffin magic.

I liked it. I might even love it.

I kept thinking, "This is Spielberg's Rio Lobo," an auteur's flex, cribbing from Close Encounters, E.T., Minority Report, etc., but with decades of craft. He and Kamiński are master visualists: the dissolve from Margaret's giddy weather report on hail to falling Fruit Loops; a tracking shot from the back of a truck to a driver side rearview mirror, a shorthand for the film's obsession with mediated surveillance; the dolly following Daniel around the farmhouse fence as the Wardex shock troopers close in.

So, of course, it's steeped in nostalgia for events that could stop time, maybe war; nostalgia for TV media. I expect nothing less from a guy his age, but instead of getting sappy he's finding new ways to risk stepping on rakes. The stag, fox, and cardinal – my god, anybody else and we'd be laughing in the theater.

I don't get the ugliness complaint, in short.

otm

Prada aside, this is the first time in years I've accepted Emily Blunt's unusual screen presence. She's terse, clipped, yet for the purpose of concealing eddies of emotion. Colin Firth modulated his gingerbread voice to chilling effect. And Josh O'Connor – well, he nails again his put-upon everyman.

which is more tell than show and still not enough

I mean, it was ALL show until driblets of info at the end: why Firth can be at two places at once, the purpose of those magic sticks, the empathy with animals.

Rather generous of you.

(I don't deny the craft. But there's no there there.)

No idea what he would've thought of West Side Story (same reaction Ned had to DD) or The Fabelmans (wonderful), but I've no doubt Morbs would've embraced this one.

the fence shot was my favorite.

Ugly as in it looks like awful, excellent tracking shots aside - yeah, that fence to SUV one was a beaut.

The best thing about WSS too.

Took me an hour to realize who Eve Hewson's real life dad is.

I kept thinking, "This is Spielberg's Rio Lobo," an auteur's flex, cribbing from Close Encounters, E.T., Minority Report, etc.,

This is making some big claims for Rio Lobo! I like that movie fine, but it would be a much greater work if it was cribbing from various Hawks films and not just Rio Bravo.

Ha! Well, I make no big claims for Disclosure Day other than as excellent distillation of other Spielberg.

Took me an hour to realize who Eve Hewson's real life dad is.

Yeah I wasn't clocking her at all and then the credits rolled and I went "Oh wait, gotta be."

Two hearts beat as one.

I really liked this! Trains in Spielberg movies hit differently now. The end needed to elevate/levitate for me and it didn’t but that didn’t erase my enjoyment of everything leading up to there. Perhaps better to cut out as relatively abruptly as it did than keep straining for something it wasn’t going to achieve.

The childhood home existing on a soundstage moment yet another of Spielberg’s work increasingly literal depictions of his own process.

lol my first thought was Nathan Fielder, actually.

The whole Jane character, maybe a lot of what I didn't think the movie did well revolved around her. She has no chemistry with O'Connor, she's the fulcrum of the (barely explored) faith component, she exists mostly as a plot vector to get the widget to the TV station. Also, when she was possessed and was gonna get him, I had to stifle a giggle, though that kinda campiness was another element that reminded me of Hitchcock; I kept thinking of "North by Northwest" throughout, except this one wasn't particularly fun, per se (and if fact, a handful of lines/glances/punchlines/gags fell totally flat when we saw it).

Also, come on, the whole idea of these two people being essentially sleeper agents was kind of dumb, imo. Like, why? Why them? Why were they imbued with these abilities as kids only to just kind ... exist for years until called into action (again, with no real imperative or stakes, at least not for the aliens, afaict). Like, I wish there was some fated confluence of things happening that pushed this story forward, rather than the hoary "brink of war" nothingburger. Might have also played up the surface-explored faith stuff. (Or perhaps related, and to make explicit, I wonder what a thinker like Tony Kushner might have done with this story rather than the hacky Koepp.)

I keep reading dismissals of Koepp all over the place, and I don't understand what makes him more hackish than the rest. If anything, he takes his portents too seriously.

I thought it amusing how the three leads are all English.

I'm surprised you liked Firth, I thought he was particularly miscast and his bad guy motivations muddled, or at least another thing not really explored. And also kind of silly, the notion there would be a covert extra governmental super spy organization dedicated to keeping this a secret that is massively staffed, armed, and highly visible everywhere, but I suppose silly is not a deal-breaker

Koepp, he seems to specialize in good enough at best, and bad at worst. He is just really serviceable and nothing more than that, but I think his greatest weakness is not having any fight in him to push back against the indulgences of his collaborators. I think perhaps that is why he keeps getting hired!

I was never really aware of Koepp as a writer to follow, even though it turned out I'd seen a lot of movies he wrote, until the 1-2 Soderbergh punch of Presence + Black Bag. I'd been anticipating this one as much for him as for Spielberg. The range of DD reactions in this thread definitely has me curious.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXlYNEej9t0

Seeing it tomorrow :D

Kushner with Spielberg: Munich, Lincoln, West Side Story, Fabelmans
Koepp with Spielberg: Jurassic Park, Lost World, War of the Worlds, Crystal Skull, Disclosure Day.

Aside from the more or less perfect Jurassic Park, the failures (relative) of the others are baked into the scripts, imo. But clearly Spielberg likes him, just as he likes Kamiński, who has, incredibly, shot every Spielberg film since Schindler's List. His presence probably accounts for some of Spielberg's productivity, because he's really good, I just sometimes wish Spielberg's movies had a different look. I'd have to see it again, but I find that some of the overexposure or bleach-process or whatever technique it is that leads to that look often erodes the shadows that might make the thriller-menace more intense.

Where did they find Elizabeth Marvel, she's got presence! More than Wyatt Russell, who I generally don't mind but who I also thought was miscast here.

Well, not miscast -- that role, I'll agree, is a victim of mediocre writing. Thirty years ago it would've been the Clueless Girlfriend.

Ordering my tickets for tomorrow as soon as the work day ends

xpost Hmm. I think he was miscast *and* poorly written, heh. I think the role might have been better served by a less recognizable actor. Likewise Firth's cartoon baddie had nowhere near the drive or menace of (iirc, I only saw it once) someone like Ben Mendelsohn in "Ready Player One" or ... hmm, it's interesting how few Spielberg films have conventional bad guys. Anyway, Firth character was a victim of mediocre writing, too, imo, and Domingo as well. Hewson, she's maybe miscast but for sure poorly written, just mostly there for the sake of plot expediency, getting the story (and people) from point A to point B without making much of an impression. Even O'Connor, he's kind of a black box, affable though he is. There are lots of relationships and turns in this film that are sort of just hand-waved away but probably needed more time to land (like the whole pay-off of the childhood home, the "what are they building in there?" mystery the film kept trickling out, or even the why-them? of O'Connor and Blunt in general).

It's weird, I don't feel like this movie was out of Spielberg's grasp or anything, he still seems every bit the astute technical master. It's no flop just, as I said, an ambitious failure, imo, and I am genuinely surprised Spielberg couldn't quite find a way to make it work. That's why I'm torn blaming the cast or writer or even the DP. Spielberg's the director, the buck stops with him.

I agree the building of the childhood home wasn't worth the suspense.

Oooh, if there's a list of actors I can't stand in any shape or form today it's Ben Mendelsohn.

Maybe that would have made him a good villain rather than some inexplicable wannabe evil lair Bond-baddie, lol. I did see an amusing take that Frith might be the first villain who gives up just because he's ... tired. He gets this look of resignation and just sits down. I thought that was funny.

Oral history of Spielberg's career by Bilge Ebiri in NYMag/Vulture: https://archive.ph/7s01X
While I read it this morning, I had the half-formed idea to take 6-8 months or whatever and do a full viewing/re-viewing of his full filmography.

Would love someone to do a Truffaut/Hitchcock type book where they go through each of his films.

That would rule, not least because he doesn't do commentaries. He seems to get along with Sean Fennessey, he should do it.

Or Soderbergh, who has been writing a book on Jaws.

I developed some of the ideas I posted yesterday.

Took me an hour to realize who Eve Hewson's real life dad is.

you guys skipped Bad Sisters?

I just saw a slop story saying her performance is already generating Oscar buzz, and lol, no it's not.

I saw this today & mostly loved it! I think I’m def on the Alfred-side re my thoughts.

This was a blend of so many of Spielberg’s big ideas & recurring themes that it really was kind of a blender-smoothie (but not in a thin-gruel/resultant paste way, lol)

The fact that the home they return to is a recreation on a soundstage was meta in so many different ways but unavoidably so following on from Fabelmans. All of his father-angst of Close Encounters now gives way to something much bigger & less self-centered; this movie reflects much more a Spielberg who feels firmly part of the world, and who CARES for the world, than the angst of a single 20-something dude who stilll believed his dad had abandoned him.

And there’s something moving about found families, and the larger spiritual story here may not go over with everyone but I like that Spielberg is the guy to go to those emotional places, the places that we all fear are “corny” but it’s so nice to be in such good, skilled hands with those feelings, in that territory. If we’re going to go there, I’ll always go there with Spielberg.

The last 10 mins or so took me out of it in a way I didn’t love. but the enjoyment of the rest of the film made it worthwhile.

Also: yay trains! That whole scene was cool as hell.

The fact that the home they return to is a recreation on a soundstage was meta in so many different ways but unavoidably so following on from Fabelmans. All of his father-angst of Close Encounters now gives way to something much bigger & less self-centered; this movie reflects much more a Spielberg who feels firmly part of the world, and who CARES for the world, than the angst of a single 20-something dude who stilll believed his dad had abandoned him

Love this.

I enjoyed this. My only gripes:

-Having the most generic, boring creature designs for the aliens

-Spielberg's naive hippie optimism doesn't play as well in 2026

Colin Firth's character was also comically bad at his job but that is actually fitting for 2026

Nothing deep to say, I just loved this movie.

xps Joseph McBride's book on Spielberg is likely the best one out there by a wide margin. Spielberg's never been one of my favorites - while I appreciate his natural gifts as a storyteller and enjoy his work enough to see almost everything, I also have strong reservations about most of his work - but McBride does a thorough and fantastic job detailing each film as both a critic and a historian. Spielberg is pretty much his favorite filmmaker since John Ford, and he makes clear and strong arguments as to why that is with each of his films. (By the same token, his criticisms of his lesser work are about as convincing as well.) Spielberg himself has read McBride's book and word got back to McBride (I think through Spielberg's assistant) that he absolutely loves it. If anyone should do a Truffaut/Hitchcock-type book, it's McBride, and it would be fitting - McBride was also close friends with Truffaut, wrote the definitive biography on John Ford (perhaps the greatest influence on Spielberg's work) and actually wrote a great Truffaut/Hitchock-type book on Howard Hawks, i.e. he's done this before.

Correction: it was another (unnamed) director, not Spielberg's assistant. Per McBride:

Adrian Hennigan in the Israeli publication Haaretz thinks someone should have adapted my STEVEN SPIELBERG: A BIOGRAPHY instead of Spielberg making THE FABELMANS. But I don't want any of my books adapted into movies. I've turned down several offers. James Lipton's questions to Spielberg -- including the comment mentioned in the article -- were discoveries from my book, used without credit. Spielberg did seem stunned to be asked about them. A director who worked with Spielberg told me that as a result of my book, "Steven loves you, loves you, LOVES you."

McBride's books about Frank Capra and Billy Wilder also good.

Ernst Lubitsch too. There are some others I don't have so can't comment.

Random thought, but would this movie have been improved like 5% if 20 seconds of this song (or just the chorus melody, maybe as a ring tone) were shoehorned in at a key moment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUm96Zij-tE