The Spielberg Shrine thread

[Jim 6,164]

Finally, a thread for the fans (long-term and lapsed) dedicated to the GOAT. A thread to celebrate (and berate) his movies, TV, media appearances and his general persona. What a legend!

 

 

 

 

 

 

What a funny stoory

 

My top 3 Spielberg movies are:

Jaws and Raiders tied for the top spot.

E.T. The Extra Terrestrial

 

Tell us what your favourite Spielberg movie is and why it probably has a shark or Indiana Jones in it.

[FBC Director 10,721]

Who?

[filmmusic 3,007]

Spielberg is my favorite director.

Many of his films are among my favorite films ever.

 

5 most favorite:

 

E.T. The extra terrestrial (it's also my favorite movie and score of all time!)

Schindler's List

Jurassic Park

Indiana Jones and the temple of doom

Hook

 

(I was never a big fan of Jaws)

Not all is gold of course.

I would like to mention what I think are his 5 bottom movies (disclaimer: I haven't seen the non Williams scored ones except for The Color Purple):

1941

The BFG

The Post

Indiana Jones and the kingdom of the Crystal Skull

The Lost World: Jurassic Park

 

By the way, I'm not seeing with a good eye his revisionisms in the blu-rays or mostly in the 4k releases of his films.

While they're not as extensive as e.g. Fincher's or Cameron's, I prefer to have each film in my collection as originally released.

Those changes are uncalled for, and we should always preserve the legacy of films, no matter what limitations they might have had during their creation.

[Jim 6,164]

15 minutes ago, FBC Director said:

Who?

 

The world famous director of Poltergeist.

[Naïve Old Fart 12,650]

20 minutes ago, filmmusic said:

(I was never a big fan of Jaws)

Jaws was never my scene, and I don't like Star Wars.

 

 

Has there never been a Spielberg thread? Oh, well.

My top-5 Steve movies are:

1. CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND 

2. 1941

3. EMPIRE OF THE SUN 

4. MINORITY REPORT 

5. E.T. THE EXTRA TERRESTRIAL

 

No sharks, or Fedoras, sorry.

That doesn't mean to say that these are in any way bad, just not my faves.

[Jim 6,164]

27 minutes ago, filmmusic said:

By the way, I'm not seeing with a good eye his revisionisms in the blu-rays or mostly in the 4k releases of his films.

While they're not as extensive as e.g. Fincher's or Cameron's, I prefer to have each film in my collection as originally released.

Those changes are uncalled for, and we should always preserve the legacy of films, no matter what limitations they might have had during their creation.

 

Hasn't he publicly rolled back on this though and since expressed that he was wrong to mess with them?

[filmmusic 3,007]

4 minutes ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

2. 1941

Oh, that is funny!

That you have it among your best, and I have it among my worst.

Outside of Close Encounters and E.T., an unusual list.

Just now, Jim said:

 

Hasn't he publicly rolled back on this though and since expressed that he was wrong to mess with them?

I only know about E.T.

Since the 4ks of his films do have, subtle though, revisionisms, it seems he still approves of them.

[oierem 240]

35 minutes ago, filmmusic said:

5 most favorite:

 

E.T. The extra terrestrial (it's also my favorite movie and score of all time!)

Schindler's List

Jurassic Park

Indiana Jones and the temple of doom

Hook

 

 

I would only swap Schindler's List with Minority Report. Other than that, I agree completely.

[Andy 7,129]

I think Spielberg’s reputation is better than his actual batting average.  A lot of missteps and highly flawed films in that filmography, especially post 80s.  I hate that he “grew up” after Temple of Doom and primarily played to the Oscars.  Even as a producer, he left the edgy-but-PG thrill rides behind.  I miss the “Amazing Stories” Spielberg. 
 

Jaws

Close Encounters 

Raiders

E.T. 
Temple of Doom

 

are my favorite. 

[Tallguy 6,897]

It would appear that my bottom 5 (best to worst) are:

The Color Purple 
The Adventures of Tintin 
The BFG 
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Hook 

 

(I think Tintin / BFG are probably a tie. As are Skull and Hook.)

 

And my top appear to be:

Raiders of the Lost Ark     
Close Encounters of the Third Kind     
Jaws     
Jurassic Park     
Empire of the Sun

 

I guess I'll give it to Raiders. But it could easily be Close Encounters.

[Naïve Old Fart 12,650]

Oh, right! Bottom five in no particular order:

THE COLOR PURPLE,

HOOK,

INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL,

THE B.F.G.,

and probably THE TERMINAL.

 

 

Actually... does 'Kick The Can' count?

 

[FBC Director 10,721]

1 hour ago, Jim said:

 

The world famous director of Poltergeist.

 

Brian Gibson?

[Tallguy 6,897]

13 minutes ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

Oh, right! Bottom five in no particular order:

THE COLOR PURPLE,

HOOK,

INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL,

THE B.F.G.,

and probably THE TERMINAL.

 

 

Actually... does 'Kick The Can' count?

 

 

I didn't count Twilight Zone. Does anyone else? 

 

Oh, forgot to add:

Never seen - 

Duel
Munich
War Horse
Lincoln
The Post

[Xander Harris 9,055]

 

[Jim 6,164]

9 minutes ago, FBC Director said:

 

Brian Gibson?

 

Steven Spielberg.

[FBC Director 10,721]

4 minutes ago, Jim said:

 

Steven Spielberg.

 

Gary Sherman.

[Andy 7,129]

22 minutes ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

Actually... does 'Kick The Can' count?

Oh I like Kick the Can.  Of course Goldsmith’s score is lovely.  As a kid I found it charming and novel. As a parent it struck me that one day my kid will be an oldster looking back on their life. 
 

I’ll take Kick the Can, Ghost Train, and The Mission over mediocrity like Ready Player One, which feels like anyone could’ve made it.  Those golden oldies have that Spielberg feel, that Magic, which is largely gone now. 

[Xander Harris 9,055]

Kick the Can is fine even if those bizarre close-up laughing shots of the old farts are Spielberg at some of his worst. It has its place in that movie, which begins with an episode that is simply too dark and disturbing. Spielberg lightens the mood a bit from Nazis, the KKK and American soldiers in Vietnam being likened to them or whatever the hell John Landis was trying to turn The Twilight Zone in to, and it's all uphill from there.

[FBC Director 10,721]

Landis was so clueless, no wonder he was acquitted.

[Tallguy 6,897]

3 minutes ago, Andy said:

mediocrity like Ready Player One, which feels like anyone could’ve made it.

 

That's an interesting way of looking at it. Maybe that's what I'm missing when people hate on RPO. I enjoy RPO as a movie. More than many of its contemporaries. But probably not as a SPIELBERG MOVIE. OTOH, I don't enjoy The Fableman's that much but you can't miss the SPIELBERGNESS of it.

 

I probably enjoy Always more as a SPIELBERG MOVIE (OK, I'll stop now) than as a movie. But I enjoy it on both levels immensely. 1941 might be in the same bucket. I enjoy it as a goofy comedy, but I enjoy it more because it's SO Spielbergy. It's like if Hitchcock made a musical but kept it feeling like a Hitchcock movie. It's not that the bear dances well, it's that it does it at all!

 

Come to think of it, Always might be the last Spielberg movie that SPARKLED like that for me. Hook certainly wanted to but it feels so stagebound. Ugh. Jurassic Park is obviously a cinematic masterpiece but it doesn't have the same "organized chaos" that Jaws and Close Encounters have and to a lesser extent the rest of his 80's movies do. (Hook is neither one thing nor the other.)

 

And Schindler's List desperately wants to not be a Spielberg movie. Between JP and Schindler's he definitely moved to a different phase at this point.

[Xander Harris 9,055]

Ready Player One is way too FX heavy as I recall from my one viewing and I never sensed Spielberg's fingerprints on it in any of those scenes. It's like it was handed over to ILM at that point and he had nothing to do with it. In Avatar, for example, when the movie is all CG, you can still detect Cameron's fingerprints somehow. Ready Player One is like a video game. Computerized headache-inducing chaos, really.

[FBC Director 10,721]

Cameron has a corny writing style you can just sense.

[Mr. Hooper 7,943]

10 minutes ago, FBC Director said:

Cameron has a corny writing style you can just sense.

[Naïve Old Fart 12,650]

Taken as it is, TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE is not bad.

It's just a shame that, like BRAINSTORM, and THE CROW, it will only be remembered for one thing.

[The Score Cleaner 9,505]

Just gonna point out this is the Spielberg SHRINE, you are not supposed to take a dump on a Shrine.

[FBC Director 10,721]

3 minutes ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

Taken as it is, TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE is not bad.

It's just a shame that, like BRAINSTORM, and THE CROW, it will only be remembered for one thing.

 

 

[The Score Cleaner 9,505]

4 minutes ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

THE CROW... will only be remembered for one thing.

 

[Naïve Old Fart 12,650]

3 minutes ago, The Score Cleaner said:

Just gonna point out this is the Spielberg SHRINE, you are not supposed to take a dump on a Shrine.

You can... if the gods are false... 

[Mr. Hooper 7,943]

9 minutes ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

Taken as it is, TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE is not bad.

It's just a shame that, like BRAINSTORM, and THE CROW, it will only be remembered for one thing.

In the case of 'The Crow,' yes Brandon Lee's accidental death cast an enduring shadow over it, but the movie is still well regarded and would've enjoyed a cult following even without the layer of tragedy, IMO.

[Maurizio 6,744]

Spielberg is the director of his generation who is perhaps the closest to the great studio directors of Hollywood heydays that he grew up idolizing, i.e. Michael Curtiz, Victor Fleming, Howard Hawks, William Wyler, John Ford. He inhabited his career following those footsteps and integrating personal obessions/themes à la Hitchcock into big studio crowdpleasers. He certainly also have auteur traits in his approach to filmmaking, but his ideal is still the great Hollywood storytelling that becomes a paradigm of classic cinema--E.T. is as timeless as The Wizard of Oz.

 

In the end, I think he's also the closest ever that was to Alfred Hitchcock, i.e. a star director who has been able to take in the masses just by the promise that his name carries to the audience. Like him, he has a hefty filmography of highs and lows, but the highs are VERY high.

 

2 hours ago, filmmusic said:

By the way, I'm not seeing with a good eye his revisionisms in the blu-rays or mostly in the 4k releases of his films.

While they're not as extensive as e.g. Fincher's or Cameron's, I prefer to have each film in my collection as originally released.

Those changes are uncalled for, and we should always preserve the legacy of films, no matter what limitations they might have had during their creation.

 

What are you referring to, specifically? The color grading of 4K releases or something else?

[Jay 45,124]

7 minutes ago, Maurizio said:

he has a hefty filmography of highs and lows, but the highs are VERY high.

 

That's a GREAT way of putting it!

[The Score Cleaner 9,505]

19 minutes ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

You can... if the gods are false... 

That explains your post in the Christmas thread  

16 minutes ago, Maurizio said:

What are you referring to, specifically? The color grading of 4K releases or something else?

Alleged CG clouds in CIMYC, recompositing shadows in Temple of Doom etc.

[Tallguy 6,897]

29 minutes ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

Taken as it is, TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE is not bad.

It's just a shame that, like BRAINSTORM, and THE CROW, it will only be remembered for one thing.

 

The composer?

[filmmusic 3,007]

24 minutes ago, Maurizio said:

What are you referring to, specifically? The color grading of 4K releases or something else?

Little things and fixes, like eg. the clouds in Catch me if You can.

Or the little fixes here and there in the Indiana Jones trilogy. (eg. see here for Temple of doom https://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=596106)

The E.T. surround remix revises the dialogue in the "hospital" scene, and I can't experience the full glory of Williams's score which sounds tremendous in the remix, due to that, since I use the stereo track now.

I think there were some changes with AI too in the 4k of The Sugarland Express, but I'm not sure since I didn't buy that.

 

[Xander Harris 9,055]

He replaced the walkie talkies with guns in E.T. and took out the bathtub scene. Also the word Hippie has been replaced with Terrorist. 

[Jim 6,164]

For a person under a certain age, it'll perhaps be difficult to really understand and fully appreciate the enormous cultural impact and enduring zeitgeist of Spielberg during his long peak period, which spanned three decades. For a while he was as big as biggest A-list actors of the time, who queued up to be in his movies (even though he generally preferred casting lesser known character actors).

 

We all know that he invented what became known as the summer 'blockbuster' with Jaws, but by the early 80s they were calling him the Wunderkind. Has there been a filmmaker since who has given that label? No there hasn't. Spielberg had the midas touch, and yet he had the artistry to go with it. Sure there were a couple of misses (these movies have legions of fans btw), but he always bounced back with a movie so well crafted that audiences quickly forgot about them; eventually he'd make a classic film in pretty much all genres such is the director's versatility.

 

It'll possibly sound like hyperbole to you, but Spielberg (along with Michael Jackson) basically moulded the Western world's pop culture of the 1980s. You have to remember that the guy was also a major executive producer throughout the 80s and 90s, his name being regularly emblazoned atop many entertainments he didn't even direct: Steven Spielberg presents was a common feature at the beginning of movies and cartoons at the height of his fame and influence.

 

This was the pre internet era: nobody was gathering in packs to consume and deconstruct movies and their trailers on forums and twitter; nobody was shredding pre-release promos on YouTube. It didn't work like that. Instead we just heard rumours of pictures being made and if we were lucky we would happen on a trailer whilst at the cinema, or during the trailers section of a video tape rental before the main feature. We didn't already know everything about the plot and spoilers basically didn't exist, nobody was ragging on an upcoming movie for being woke. Movies were just released into the wild, and the Spielberg ones were huge deals.

 

By the time the 90s rolled around, just after Spielberg had boxed off his now legendary Indiana Jones trilogy, he would debut Jurassic Park and shoot and release Schindler's List in the same year. With this Spielberg had sealed his almost ethereal status as the undisputed king of Hollywood.

 

Thirty more years later and he is a lot older and perhaps rather more cynical now, but so what? Let him make his personal movies that don't have the same broad appeal and crazy dollar return. He's got more clout than anyone to make whatever movie he wants, nothing more to prove.

[Edmilson 11,597]

Spielberg's top 5:

1. Raiders;
2. E.T.
3. Empire of the Sun;
4. Last Crusade;
5. Temple of Doom;

Honorable mentions: Munich, Jurassic Park, Schindler's List, CE3K, Saving Private Ryan, Minority Report, Catch me If You Can, War of the Worlds... and I like War Horse, shoot me.

 

I need to rewatch A.I., though. Seeing it now as an adult, I could find a spot for it in the top 5.

 

Bottom 5:

1. The BFG;
2. Crystal Skull;
3. Lincoln;
4. Hook (sorry, nostalgic kids from the early 90s );
5. Ready Player One - It's a watchable popcorn movie, sure, and Silvestri's score is great. But the CGI is nightmare-inducing and the plot is pretty dumb.

I'm conflicted about Lost World. The plot is pretty crap and some scenes are ridiculous, but John Williams' score is absolutely terrific (it's on his top 10 IMHO). And since it was made in the early 90s, it doesn't have those horrible CGI sets and motion-capture characters and that alone makes it more watchable than Tintin, BFG and RP1.

 

Speaking of Tintin, it may have a (slightly) better script than TLW, however it's still not "good enough" to make me say I actually enjoy it.

 

I've never seen:

• Duel;
• The Sugarland Express;
• 1941;
• The Twilight Zone;
• The Color Purple;
• Amistad;
• The Terminal;
• West Side Story;

Out of all of those, the ones I want to see the most are Duel and Amistad.

[Xander Harris 9,055]

You've never seen Jaws?

[filmmusic 3,007]

6 minutes ago, Edmilson said:

Out of all of those, the ones I want to see the most are Duel and Amistad.

Yeah, I think these 2 are the best from the bunch you mentioned.

8 minutes ago, Edmilson said:

Empire of the Sun

A good film, but I'm always amazed that people pick this over Schindler's List which I think is a masterpiece.

[Mr. Hooper 7,943]

I just can't get excited for or warm up to 'Empire of the Sun.'

 

I mean, it's good, but I just can't care about it. Which is perhaps why I can't really connect to the score, though it's a fine listen.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 11,808]

57 minutes ago, Jim said:

For a person under a certain age, it'll perhaps be difficult to really understand and fully appreciate the enormous cultural impact and enduring zeitgeist of Spielberg during his long peak period, which spanned three decades. For a while he was as big as biggest A-list actors of the time, who queued up to be in his movies (even though he generally preferred casting lesser known character actors).

 

For the last time with Jurassic Park though.

 

11 minutes ago, Mr. Hooper said:

I just can't get excited for or warm up to 'Empire of the Sun.'

 

You dont like David Lean?

Empire Of The Sun is is third best 80's film. Though Alex would probably put it at #1

[Mr. Hooper 7,943]

2 minutes ago, #SnowyVernalSpringsEternal said:

You dont like David Lean?

The ones I've seen have left me cold, too.

[Xander Harris 9,055]

Empire of the Sun is an early example of Spielberg making a movie that's just way too long. You don't need to make everything for General Audiences and cap it around 2 hours (which he was absolutely the best at), but when your movie just drags, it's a problem. That one certainly does for me. And I don't dislike it. Later films of his I enjoy like Catch Me If You Can also have this problem. It doesn't need to be two and a half hours.

[Loert 3,089]

The last Spielberg film I've watched in full is AI: Artificial Intelligence. It may be my favourite of his.

 

I caught some of ROTLA on the TV over Christmas. It is undoubtedly a brilliant movie, though looking at it from today's point of view, the cartoonish-ness of the action can seem a bit much at times. Still very entertaining to watch. I practically grew up on Temple of Doom, and that's basically ROTLA but even more silly.

 

At the end of the day, Spielberg's influence on the film industry cannot be overstated. You can love him or you can hate him, but it's hard to ignore him. 

[Edmilson 11,597]

28 minutes ago, Xander Harris said:

You've never seen Jaws?

With Jaws, I recognize its importance and historical significance, and of course, John Williams' score is brilliant. But I don't really like it for a reason that, if I spelled it here in all places, it would fall on deaf ears and actually be counterproductive. So I'd rather not talk about the movie.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 11,808]

You're an ecologist?

[Xander Harris 9,055]

I know you. You're that Earth First bastard, aren't you.

[Mr. Hooper 7,943]

EDITED FOR POOR TASTE

[A24 5,022]

1 hour ago, filmmusic said:

Yeah, I think these 2 are the best from the bunch you mentioned.

A good film, but I'm always amazed that people pick this over Schindler's List which I think is a masterpiece.

 

That's because Schindler's List, good as it is, is a literal movie (the content is literal) while Empire Of The Sun isn't. 

[Naïve Old Fart 12,650]

1 hour ago, #SnowyVernalSpringsEternal said:

You're an ecologist?

He's the Imperial Ecologist, and the Judge of the Change.