Well, my moviegasm faithful, as if you haven't gotten used to indulging my movie obsessions already, today you're going to have to indulge me in some hero worship as well. You see, as those of you who have kept up since day one might already know, I am not just an ardent fan of horror movies, but also of Mr. Steven Spielberg.
This no doubt leaves a taste of commercialism in the mouths of those already used to my usually pointed criticism of mainstream Hollywood. But Spielberg, to me, embodies the Hollywood ideal, which is the balance of commercial filmmaking with artistic resonance. There is certainly an argument to be made that Spielberg skews much more toward the former, but you won't read such an argument here.
This is all spurred by the premiere of the Spielberg on Spielberg documentary on Turner Classic Movies last night. Maybe you caught it, but if you didn't, don't hope for repeats as I did with their excellent Marlon Brando documentary a few months ago. The Brando doc is available on Netflix, and I definitely recommend it (it's hard for moviegoers of my generation to appreciate what Brando meant to our parents, but having seen that one put some of my discussions with my own father into some new perspective). I'm sure Spielberg will be, too, before too long.
But he's an old man now, but with Indy IV on the horizon, and film elitists sure to be sharpening their swords to attack his commercialism, maybe this isn't such a bad time for a little reflection on a remarkable career.
Still, just to satisfy the naysayers, I'll start with a little criticism.
And there's no place better to start than with the commercialism. I cannot argue with the position that Tom Cruise's son's miraculous survival at the end of War of the Worlds is a blatant attempt to court the summer audience, and tarnishes an otherwise impressive summer action blockbuster. It certainly doesn't rise to the level of Jurassic Park, though I credit the film for steering away from Spielberg's otherwise saintly worship at the idea of alien intelligence, it's reliance on a relatively unlikable protagonist, his killing, like, a billion people, and the particular brutality of the scene in which Cruise has Dakota Fanning cover her ears while he murders Tim Robbins in the next room. But the ending is hokey at best and a betrayal of the audience's suspension of disbelief at the worst, and frankly I expected more from him (though not from over-praised screenwriter David Koepp, who produced a similarly soulless script for Jurassic Park and it's painfully unnecessary sequel).
Catch Me If You Can and The Terminal are frivolous films, light, airy, and easily forgotten, if competently made. Catch Me could easily lose twenty minutes (as could the otherwise exceptional Minority Report), and while Terminal features a welcome return to slapstick comedy from Tom Hanks and is that rarest of romantic comedies in which the two leads do not end up together, it unquestionably has little else to recommend it. And there's no way around it: 1941, Always, Hook, and The Lost World: Jurassic Park are simply bad movies. Spielberg addresses the lessons learned from 1941- his most notorious failure- in the doc, but never even addresses, much less attempts to defend, the other three.
But the frequent jabs at his films for being schmaltzy and saccharine are too easily undermined simply by pointing to films like Jaws, Empire of the Sun, Schindler's List, and Saving Private Ryan. And those same critics seem to forget the ease with which he made that same quality work in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., and the Indiana Jones films.
There are a couple of things for which I am critical of the documentary, but don't know how much blame to lie at Spielberg's feet (he surely had a say in the final cut, after all). He mentions the contributions of Joan Crawford and Goldie Hawn to his early work, but fails to mention any other actors, especially the astonishing work of Whoopi Goldberg in The Color Purple (possibly the most redeeming quality of a film generously described as above average) or Christian Bale in Empire of the Sun. I swear it was just yesterday that I forced my copy of the latter into the hands of a friend, declaring Bale's performance the best I have ever seen by a child actor (challengers, feel free to make your counterpoints in the comments).