therewillbeblus wrote: Mon Jun 15, 2026 5:13 pm
I think it's his best movie since 2005. It's imperfect, but I was able to forgive those issues in favor of its intriguing narrative design
Bridge of Spies is kind of unfuckwithable, but I'll take the endorsement.
EDIT: I'm also a fan of Lincoln and The Post, though imperfect.
Last edited by aox on Mon Jun 15, 2026 8:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I should clarify that I like most Spielberg a fair amount (I can probably count on one hand the movies of his that I actively dislike), but also think this is his best work in decades
Like other live-action directors, Spielberg resented the slowness and lack of control over the animation process when making Tintin. As a result design and motion sat uneasily between live action and animation, and it was a mistake to go down the motion capture route. It's as bad as when Zemeckis wasted the best part of a decade on his dead-eyed motion capture projects.
Spielberg's output always went through ebbs and flows and A.I. revitalised his career; Minority Report, Catch Me If You Can, War of the Worlds and Munich are all great films. More recently, West Side Story and The Fabelmans were excellent. Lincoln, Bridge of Spies and The Post are respectable films I don't feel particularly enthusiastic about. There are a few films of his I skipped (Amistad, War Horse, Hook, The Terminal, The BFG) and the only one where I didn't make it to the end as I hated it so much is Always.
There are lots of updated rankings of his films online now, and I seem to like The Sugarland Express much more than most people do. Close Encounters of the Third Kind is still my favourite of his films. It had the same effect on me as Star Wars had on other kids my age. I was obsessed with it at the time and went to see it at the cinema about ten times (this was when successful films were still in cinemas for months, sometimes years). Unlike Star Wars, Close Encounters puts its special effects magic in a human context: take out the UFOs and it's a New Hollywood film about a working-class man having a mental breakdown and losing his family as a result, a sort of male equivalent of Woman Under the Influence.
