Favorite Spielberg movie?

[best12bars]

Posted: 4/20/11 at 6:12pm

I've been watching a lot of them lately, and my vote goes to "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." Not the Special Edition or the Directors Cut ... the original theatrical version. I think it's just about perfect in every respect. Such masterful storytelling!

Your choice?

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 4/20/11 at 6:16pm

The Color Purple

A perfect film and one of the best ever made.

[strummergirl]

Posted: 4/20/11 at 6:17pm

Close Encounters was my choice but this was a close second.....



As far as guilty pleasures, 1941. I have no idea why I enjoy this movie but I do.
Updated On: 4/20/11 at 06:17 PM

[Marianne2]

Posted: 4/20/11 at 6:25pm

So odd, I was just thinking about his movies today at work. I guess it would be a tie between "E.T." and "Catch Me If You Can", for me. I honestly wish they would still make movies like "E.T." today. I just feel like the magic is gone from those kinds of films.

[best12bars]

Posted: 4/20/11 at 6:33pm

Love your choices. No complaints here. I remember how sad I was when The Color Purple got such flack for having a white director. Then all those Oscar nominations (but none for Spielberg) and not a single win.

It's held up remarkably well. Better than most films of the mid-'80s. It still feels fresh, and again ... masterful storytelling!

As for E.T. --- I remember seeing this film in Kansas three months before it was released to the public. They had a special advance screening, complete with filling out cards for the studio, etc. In Kansas! They didn't even have a poster for the film. Just a white piece of cardboard with the title written in magic marker.

They showed it on a double bill with "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid." See that movie and stay for a special "sneak peek" of Stephen Spielberg's latest film. We all thought it was a sequel to Close Encounters. There was no advance word on it, at least that we knew of.

I remember sitting in the theatre, completely overwhelmed. I could barely move! When my friends and I left the movie theatre, we all knew we had seen something incredibly special, and, very likely, a monster hit. I also remember telling everyone who would listen that this film was going to be BIG ... as in all-time-ever big. We all knew it, too.

For me, E.T. hasn't held up as well. It's still a wonderful film, and I remember how I felt the first time I saw it. I subsequently saw it three more times once the movie was finally released. But I don't think it's aged as well as other films. It's still a classic, and a wonderful movie. But, for me, it's lost some of its impact over the years.

Whereas Close Encounters and Color Purple have not.

[romantico]

Posted: 4/20/11 at 6:33pm

My two all time favorite films of his are MUNICH and EMPIRE OF THE SUN. Reason I liked them was they did not feel like a typical Spielberg film.He took risks on both of these films and I think they payed off.

Updated On: 4/20/11 at 06:33 PM

[best12bars]

Posted: 4/20/11 at 6:44pm

romantico---I'm embarrassed to say I've never seen Munich. It's for personal reasons. I remember very clearly when the initial tragedy happened. It haunted me for weeks, and I was a kid. The reason? Aside from trying as a child to grasp what had happened, it was the first time I had ever seen my father cry. And I don't just mean tears. I mean he bawled like a baby. He was not normally like that. Very passionate about things, but he didn't break down like that.

... until the events unfolded in Munich. He completely fell apart when it was announced that the team had all been killed.

Because of that, I didn't have it high on my list of movies to see ... and let it go when it was released. I still haven't managed to see it. Perhaps some day.

As for Empire of the Sun ... the first part of the film ranks among the best I've ever seen. Period. But once they get to the prison camp, for some reason, the whole film just stalled for me. Fatally so. It lost all its momentum and quickly fell apart. I was so disappointed at the time! I thought it had started out so brilliantly and then got stuck in the mire. Ah, well ... for me, it's HALF a brilliant movie. (I feel the same about Saving Private Ryan. Masterful beginning for that movie that slips into paint-by-numbers conventional cliches. Not that Empire does that. Still, these are two movies that are half-classics, IMO.)

[romantico]

Posted: 4/20/11 at 7:05pm

Yeah, MUNICH is a hard film to watch.

Another forgotten Spielberg film is SUGARLAND EXPRESS. One of Goldie Hawn's first films.Been years since I've seen it but remember really getting into it at the time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bi1yRgFGC_s

Updated On: 4/20/11 at 07:05 PM

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 4/20/11 at 7:14pm

JAWS.

Spielberg has always been an infuriating director for me. So brilliant but every time you think he's achieving perfection, he goes and overdoes it and digs in with the cloying with an addict's mania:

MUST John Williams' score be poured on with a dumptruck in the otherwise perfect E.T.?

EDIT: I forgot about the little girl in MUNICH.

MUST we have the affirmation-of-the-goodness-of-family at the end of MINORITY REPORT and WAR OF THE WORLDS? Must all the children in his movies be so damned adorable?

MUST we have the sex scene, the radio scene, and the last shot of the twin towers in the otherwise interesting MUNICH?

MUST we have the out-of-place humor and Liam Neeson's this'll-get-him-an-Oscar crying scene in the near-great SCHINDLER'S LIST?

MUST THE COLOR PURPLE look like it takes place in an American South that seems to have been inspired by Uncle Remus?

Then there's JAWS. Which is as perfect a movie as there's ever been. There's even a rather graphic killing of a child in that one...something I don't think Spielberg would indulge in today.

Oh, I'll still keep going to see the Spielberg films (Unless they look boring like THE TERMINAL...hell, I actually rather liked A.I. in spite of hardly any of it working). I'm actually quite disappointed the LINCOLN biopic seems to have been scrapped. But he has that infuriating lack of subtlety that seems to plague so many of the Boomer filmmakers like Ron Howard and the like. Ambivalence just isn't his thing...and he could frankly use a bit of it.

Updated On: 4/20/11 at 07:14 PM

[AC126748]

Posted: 4/20/11 at 7:16pm

1. The Color Purple
2. Minority Report
3. Munich

[strummergirl]

Posted: 4/20/11 at 7:31pm

Besty, I saw the E.T. 20th annversary release with the recuts of certain special effects scenes that looked pretty clumsy. I think Elliot's whole family life still has a sort of universal quality relating to being alone and in a broken home despite some of the portrayal of scientists to be a bit ridiculous. Still love it.

Borstal stated my complaints toward Munich.

I recently saw Minority Report and had to laugh a little about what was 'futurized' and what was not. Kubrick in 2001 was more accurate in comparison.

Tom Cruise's baseball throws were among my many cringe-worthy moments with War of the Worlds. But once you get over that and that whole summer leading up to the release where he lost it on Oprah, he gave a begrudgingly good dramatic performance despite the miracle that everybody was safe and parts of major cities were virtually unharmed by the invasion. The kids were annoying too.
Updated On: 4/20/11 at 07:31 PM

[AEA AGMA SM]

Posted: 4/20/11 at 8:17pm

"MUST we have the affirmation-of-the-goodness-of-family at the end of MINORITY REPORT and WAR OF THE WORLDS? Must all the children in his movies be so damned adorable?"

I don't know about everyone else, but I certainly wouldn't apply the word "adorable" to Dakota Fanning in War of the Worlds. If that was my child I would have left her to the aliens about ten minutes into the movie.

In terms of my personal favorites E.T. is probably still up there, though I'm thankful that I was able to get one of the DVDs that had both the original release along with his director's cut (I wish he and Lucas would both stop tinkering and just allow their movies to be finished once they are released). I think The Last Crusade and Jurassic Park hold the next two spots in my list.

I'll also say that many of my other favorite movies also have him attached as a producer, with his hand evident to some degree or another in all of them; Poltergeist, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, The Goonies, and the first Back to the Future.

[pushdabutton]

Posted: 4/20/11 at 8:51pm

It's a tie between Schindler's List and The Color Purple. Both are perfection.

[SNAFU]

Posted: 4/20/11 at 9:32pm

Perhaps I am the only one who despised ET. Pure manipulative smaltz from beginning to end. Loved the concept, despised the end result. Walked out of the theatre opening night in need of an insulin shot!

The only Speilberg movie I think is perfection that doesn't fall back on his manipulative tug at the heart strings crappolla is Jaws.

[sabrelady]

Posted: 4/20/11 at 11:03pm

Empire of the Sun def inately one of my favs.

Schindler's List but I will NEVER forgive him for colourizing the little girl's coat OR the handkerchief & it's contents at the railway station. Totally unneccesary.

The thing about JAWS, to me anyway, is it was an accidental success- the studio spent a FORtune on Bruce and then he wouldn't function so they had to figure it out as they went ( ie the old Hitchcock premise of the horror in your head is worse than what he could put up on the screen)

[strummergirl]

Posted: 4/20/11 at 11:20pm

The kid getting killed by the shark in Jaws and little Barry getting kidnapped in Close Encounters were definitely one of those moments, especially somebody introduced to fluff like Hook as my first Spielberg experience, that really shook me at a young age and it being done in an unapologetic way unlike his many other moments of a child in danger later on.

Did not hear the Lincoln movie was yet again stalled. I could have sworn there were announcements of Sally Field as Mary Todd Lincoln and Daniel Day Lewis as Lincoln (I know that for years Liam Neeson was attached to the project).

[madbrian]

Posted: 4/21/11 at 8:16am

Since the criteria is 'favorite', I'll have to go with Raiders Of The Lost Ark. Seeing that movie 30 years ago is still a vivid memory

[SonofMammaMiaSam]

Posted: 4/21/11 at 8:35am

Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Followed closely by Jaws.

[Eris0303]

Posted: 4/21/11 at 9:34am

When I was little I could not watch Close Encounters. I just couldn't sit through it because it scared me. I actually avoided it for years because of that. A few years ago I managed to catch it on cable late one night and was finally able really see what a great movie. It's definitely in my top Spielberg films. But my number one has to be E.T. It was the first movie I ever saw in a theatre and no matter how many times I see it I still cry.

[StageManager2]

Posted: 4/21/11 at 9:43am

SNAFU, you're not the only one. I too hated E.T., but i found it boring. I was forced to watch it several times as a kid (e.g. sleepovers) and it never grew on me. I haven't watched it as an adult. I did consider going when it was re-released in theaters on its 20th anniversary, but then I read that Spielberg made ridiculous changes (i.e. turning the feds guns into walkie-talkies) and it turned me off.

However, I did enjoy THE COLOR PURPLE and watched that many times as a kid. But I wouldn't call it my favorite SPielberg movie. That would have to be JURASSIC PARK. The stilted acting notwithstanding, the special effects still hold up nearly 20 years later. Some of today's effects can't compare (looking at you, TWILIGHT werewolves) and I think it's because filmmakers today rely too heavily on computers to do all the work, whereas the dinos in JP were a combination of real-life models and CGI; attention to detail was kept. Watching JP as an adult brings back the wonder I experienced upon first seeing the movie... as a kid... in a packed theater... on opening weekend.

[romantico]

Posted: 4/21/11 at 11:40am

As a kid I LOVED E.T. but as I got older and having seen it recently I tend to agree that it does not hold up as well for adults. Of course, for those who hated E.T. perhaps you might like the sequel. IMO, this is just brilliant!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMW3W-G43gI

[StageManager2]

Posted: 4/21/11 at 12:10pm

Incidentally, I preferred the E.T. knock-off MAC AND ME. Sacrilege, I know! But I found it far more enjoyable as a kid. [MAC is an acronym, too, for Mysterious Alien Creature.]

[Broadwayboobs]

Posted: 4/21/11 at 12:48pm

Too many, but if I was forced to choose...it would be....JAWS.

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 4/21/11 at 1:00pm

The Color Purple

MUST THE COLOR PURPLE look like it takes place in an American South that seems to have been inspired by Uncle Remus?

Nothing personal, but I never really understood this backlash to the film. Having read the novel first, the film seemed directly inspired by Alice Walker's depiction of the American South in the early 20th century. Walker wrote the entire novel in 1st person vernacular and her vivid descriptions of the characters were pretty much transposed into the screenplay. I'm not sure what people were expecting from those characters in that setting. Perhaps there is an African American who grew up in the South in the first three decades of the 20th century who can point out the inconsistencies in the speech and behavior of the characters in the film? And maybe they can tell us how Alice Walker was dead wrong in her depiction of them? And I didn't really see much of the happy-go-lucky slavery that has been the contention of the Uncle Remus stories or Song of the South. That was sort of the point of The Color Purple. I completely understand with the problem others may have about glossing over some of the more controversial topics in the novel (the lesbianism was barely explored), but I didn't see anything misleading or offensive in the characterizations.

After The Color Purple, the other films I can watch countless times would be Empire of the Sun, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T. and Jurassic Park. If I'm channel surfing and run across one of those, I can't pull myself away from them. I still believe Empire of the Sun to be his most underrated masterpiece and I was sick that it wasn't even nominated for Best Picture or for the performances of John Malkovich and Christian Bale. I will never forget the profound emotional impact that film had on me and the final scene still reduces me to a blubbering mess. Hearing Suo Gan from the score still gives me chills.

[doodlenyc]

Posted: 4/21/11 at 1:31pm

I agree with Matt about The Color Purple, which is my favorite if there's a gun to my head. I think it's a very faithful adaptation of Walker's novel.
I recall a big gay backlash because Shug and Celie's sex life wasnt a bigger part of the film, that it was too subtle. I never thought of it as subtle, but did stop short of them humping. One of my favorite parts of the film is that kissing scene.
The novel is no more graphic.
I also agree that Empire of the Sun is his most underrated. LOVED that film.
Schindler's List and Jaws are also up at the top of my list.