Reversing The Krasinski Curse

As I write this piece, I’m watching The Office. This is a very common occurrence around here as I have watched the series from start to finish at least a dozen times and that estimate is probably on the conservative side. I love The Office; it is my second favorite show of all-time (Parks and Rec) and it is undefeated TV Comfort Food that I can watch in any season, any mood, any situation. Over the course of its nine seasons, there came to be any number of reasons why I loved The Office and why so many people gravitate toward it into seeming perpetuity. But when I started, when I sort-of fought through the first dozen episodes or so in hopes of ultimately being rewarded with something great, I watched because of Jim (Jimothy?) Halpert and I don’t think I’m alone in that sentiment. In the moment, Jim Halpert’s Q-Rating was off the chart. (Since the end of The Office, a segment of the population has decided Jim Halpert is the villain of the show, I’m assuming because they have no souls and have never worked in any sort of office or retail environment. Last year, one of my former students tweeted, “Happy Thanksgiving to everyone except for those who think Jim Halpert is somehow a bad guy” and honestly, I’ve never been prouder of any of my former students.)

There are a lot of reasons why Jim Halpert is so compelling in those early days (he’s outrageously handsome, charming, and charismatic but in an accessible, All-American Boy way) but a big part of it is the feeling of authenticity. You feel like John Krasinski actually is Jim Halpert and thus, your love for Halpert is transferred over to Krasinski himself. I’ve often said that you should always expect the absolute worst from any famous person/performer and never be surprised when they turn out to be terrible people. I apply this rule to everyone in Hollywood with the exception of Tom Hanks and John Krasinski. I would be devastated if Krasinski was implicated in any kind of scandal; it would feel like a real betrayal, like how could Jim Halpert, a fictional person who definitely does not exist, do this to me?! It is safe to say, then, that I root hard for John Krasinski and wish him nothing but success in all of his professional endeavors. Thus, it has been painful to watch the less-than-stellar returns on both Krasinski’s hard work and my forceful thoughts and prayers directed his way.

It's a running bit on our show to reference the “The Krasinski Curse”, based on the sheer number of career decisions Krasinski has made that look good on paper but ultimately fail in execution. Let’s take a brief look at those decisions, beginning in 2007 when he began to cash in on the currency allotted by The Office.

First, Krasinski provided supporting voice work for Shrek The Third, a movie that grossed nearly $200 million less than its predecessor and sported a Rotten Tomatoes score of 41% (as compared to the 88% of Shrek 2). Later that same summer, he teamed with both Mandy Moore at the height of her pre-This is Us power AND Robin Williams for the romantic comedy License to Wed. The end result: 7% on Rotten Tomatoes and complete failure at the box office. Krasinski would try the romantic comedy route again in 2011 with Something to Borrowed which was almost just as bad (15%) and almost just as unsuccessful with audiences.

These are normal misfires, the type of failures that happen to just about everyone in the industry. It’s still a little weird to me that we, as a society, wouldn’t accept Krasinski as the new male face of the romantic comedy but perhaps we can chalk that up to the disappearance of the genre as a whole. With this next group of films, though, you start to really see the Krasinski Curse rear its ugly head.

In 2008, he co-starred with George freakin’ Clooney, fresh off the success of Good Night and Good Luck, in Leatherheads, one of the most confusingly bad movies of the decade which, in hindsight, serves as a harbinger of things to come from Clooney. But in the moment? That’s a no-brainer for Krasinski; you absolutely take that gig 100 out of 100 times. The following year, he played the fourth lead in Nancy Meyer’s It’s Complicated, which was fine by Krasinski Curse standards but is, after all, a movie starring Meryl Streep, Steve Martin, and Alec Baldwin (all three American Treasures, by the way) that literally no one remembers or talks about, probably including Meryl Streep, Steve Martin, and Alec Baldwin. After this, Krasinski bided his time a bit, focused on The Office, then teamed up with Gus Van Sant and Matt Damon to produce, co-write, AND co-star in…Promised Land. Oof. That one still stings. Promised Land should’ve been a guaranteed win for our boy Krasinski and instead it’s a total failure on every level. From there, we move on to a small voice role in Monsters University, a fine movie that doesn’t hold a candle to the vast majority of the Pixar universe in any metric. In 2016, he finally goes over to the Dark Side, joining forces with Michael Bay to, at the very least you would assume, make a whole lot of money, the only thing Michael Bay knows how to do. Of course, this movie turned out to be 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, a TOTALLY RESPECTABLE movie by Michael Bay standards…that ultimately made less than $70 million, the worst returns of Bay’s career. Even last year, he had a small role in Detroit, Kathryn Bigelow’s follow-up to Zero Dark Thirty, which was hamstrung by a strange release date (August), and ultimately made no impression with either audiences or award academies.

I have, of course, bypassed one very significant moment in the history of The Krasinski Curse: 2015’s Aloha. This one still haunts me. Sometimes I wake up screaming in a cold sweat over the memory of just how bad Aloha is and the deep, unhealable hurt its rottenness inflicted upon me. If there is a poster child for The Krasinski Curse, for, “THIS LOOKS GREAT ON PAPER HOW DID IT FAIL?!”, it is Aloha. You could not have made a movie more specifically for me than Aloha. Written and directed by Cameron Crowe (one of my three favorite directors) and starring the likes of Bradley Cooper (yes), Emma Stone (YES), Rachel McAdams (YES!!!), and Bill Murray (*passes out*) plus Krasinski. There is no world in which that movie should be bad…except this one. In this world that we currently live in, this movie is, in fact, extremely, historically bad.

In the interest of fairness, I’m skipping over a few highs in a long run of mostly lows. He did a little voice work in the surprisingly-successful-if-forgettable Monsters Vs. Aliens, he teamed with Maya Rudolph and Sam Mendes for the touching (and overlooked) indie drama Away We Go, and he executive produced Manchester By the Sea. But I would posit, and I think you’d agree, that the peaks here don’t do nearly enough to fill the valleys.

I have no explanation for this run of bad luck and the development of The Krasinski Curse. My best guess is he made a deal with the devil and traded in all of his professional good luck in order to woo and marry Emily Blunt. If this is the case, I don’t blame him and actually I very much applaud his decision. Well worth it, John. But regardless of any Faustian dealings, I’d like to see the curse broken and to be able to once again look forward to Krasinski’s projects without trepidation. And, while I’ve said this before and risk looking very foolish in a few months given the very nature of The Krasinski Curse, I think 2018 is going to do the trick.

Our man Krasinski has three big projects on the docket this year. This past weekend, A Quiet Place, written, directed, and starring Krasinski debuted in theaters nationwide. The buzz surrounding the movie was outstanding and despite my best efforts to keep the curse in mind, I went in expecting great things and was richly rewarded (review to come). This summer, Krasinski ventures back into TV with Amazon’s much-anticipated, highly budgeted Jack Ryan series. This is, (again, on paper) a perfect project for Krasinski, one that highlights both his new-found physicality (the trip to Bay Land wasn’t all for naught) and his subtle charisma and works from a source material that is dying to be relevant once more. Finally, in December, he’ll provide the voice of an older Peter Parker for Sony’s Enter the Spider-Verse animated film that looks, in the limited footage we’ve seen so far, fantastic.

With all of this headed our way in the next few months, I think 2018 is the turning point, the year we’ll look back on in the future as The Krasinski Curse breaker. Of course, I also assume my optimism will only strengthen the curse and I will look very foolish in about three days. Good luck, Jimothy.

Note: I originally wrote this for the April newsletter which we ultimately killed due to schedules, work, etc. No newsletter this month, with apologies. Since it was already written, however, I edited a little and retrofit it as a post-mortem for A Quiet Place instead of a preview. Any tensing issues should be attributed to this change. 

Mad About Spielberg Blog Series Part IV

With Ready Player One headed our way today, I went back and watched all of Steven Spielberg’s 31 films and painstakingly ranked them top to bottom (or from bottom to top as the case may be). Each week, I’ll be dropping a section of the list as we inch closer to the big RPO debut. You can find week one here, week two here, and week three here.

Well, this is it. Tonight I’m headed to see Ready Player One with my friends and after much painstaking consideration and consternation, I’m ready to present my top ten Spielberg movies. This was much more of a process than I anticipated as choosing between these films became more and more difficult. To me, there are two tiers here: eight through ten could’ve been slotted in any order and one through seven could’ve come out in any order. Just know I thought long and hard about all of my choices and that I will probably regret them all within a week or so. Regardless, through the course of this project, the object of picking the best or my favorite or the top Spielberg movie became less important than just basking in the greatness of the man’s entire resume. By any metric you want to look at (131 total Oscar nominations, 34 Oscar wins, 80% average on Rotten Tomatoes, $9.8 billion at the global box office, countless hours of entertainment), Spielberg has accomplished as much if not more than any of his contemporaries and cemented himself as a film voice of multiple generations. Thanks, Mr. Spielberg, for all your hard work. Enjoy. 

10. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Rotten Tomatoes: 96%
Domestic Box Office (Total Box Office): $135M ($306M)
Oscar Nominations (Wins): 9 (2)
Last summer, when we did a throwback review of Close Encounters, I was able to see it on the big screen for the first time. In truth, it may have been the very first time I had seen it all the way through, from start to finish, instead of in bits and pieces. I was in awe of the scope of the story, the magic of the effects, and the breathtaking third act when all the parts come together, and you suddenly feel like you yourself are a part of this meeting of races. I’m an easy movie-crier so it should come as no surprise that the experience of watching this movie in that setting for the first time left me a little weepy. And that score! Oh, that score. Close Encounters is a wondrous movie and in hindsight, it gives a hint of what will become Spielberg tropes and themes for the next forty-plus years of filmmaking. If I had a criticism, it would the final few moments when we actually get a reveal on the aliens. Were it up to me (and not the two-time Best Directing Oscar recipient because what does that guy know?), I would’ve left the aliens themselves as a mystery. Even still, that’s a half point deduction off the score of an otherwise perfect film.

9. Minority Report (2002)
Rotten Tomatoes: 91%
Domestic Box Office (Total Box Office): $132M ($358M)
Oscar Nominations (Wins): 1
Minority Report has aged much better than its reputation. It’s become extremely underrated both in terms of overall quality and its impact on the sci-fi genre. Even I, when I went to work on this list, had it slotted a few notches lower than it ultimately landed. But on the rewatch, I was wholly reminded of what an outstanding bit of filmmaking this is and how great Spielberg is at world building. Near-future sci-fi is very difficult to pull off but within five, maybe ten minutes you have a complete sense of the world in which Chief John Anderton operates in and it feels completely authentic. There are a few spots in which the effects and lighting look their age, but I write that off as the tax paid for making a high-concept, visually compelling film during the worst era for computer generated effects. (Compare the worst spots of Minority Report to the worst spots of almost any other sci-fi movie made between 1999 and 2004 and you’ll see what I mean.) Minority Report combines fun with depth exquisitely and Spielberg gets the absolute most of out of Tom Cruise. Also of great interest to me, this is the best instance of Spielberg flipping his patented move, a child dealing with an absent or emotionally distant father, to put the focus on a father attempting to piece his life together in the wake of the loss of a child. That’s significant and the emotional core of Minority Report strikes even harder coming from Spielberg than it might have otherwise.

8. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
Rotten Tomatoes: 88%
Domestic Box Office (Total Box Office): $197M ($474M)
Oscar Nominations (Wins): 3 (1)
This is the first non-kids movie I can remember seeing in theaters adding to my fondness for an already outstanding, obscenely fun movie. (A few weeks later my dad took me to see Batman in theaters so the Summer of 1989 was pretty bangin’.) Raiders of the Lost Ark (see below) is one of the greatest movies ever made but Last Crusade is, objectively, more fun, perhaps the purest embodiment of what an adventure movie should be. Harrison Ford, in the final days of his first franchise phase, radiates so much charisma and gravitas that even as a six-year-old, I was just instantaneously all in on anything and everything he was doing. Now, having seen these movies dozens of times each, I greatly appreciate the small ways in which Crusade is tied into Raiders but appreciate even more the ways in which it works on its own. You could take show this movie to someone who has never seen an Indiana Jones movie and, in fact, has no concept of who the character is at all, and he/she could enjoy it just as much as a hardcore Indy fan could have in 1989. That’s an awesome quality that a lot of franchise films miss out on these days. Crusade is paced perfectly, Sean Connery is remarkable, and I’m not sure you ask more from a third act than what is delivered here.

7. Catch Me If You Can (2002)
Rotten Tomatoes: 96%
Domestic Box Office (Total Box Office): $164M ($352M)
Oscar Nominations (Wins): 2
I have said before and I’m sure I will say again: the older I get, the more I love Catch Me If You Can. Literally, with every single viewing (an annual event in my household, as commanded in the ancient scrolls), its greatness increases in my mind. By the time I’m 50, I’m sure I’ll be trumpeting this as the best movie ever made. Every detail of this movie is impeccable and the DiCaprio-Hanks pairing is probably my favorite relationship displayed within any of Spielberg’s films. That’s just perfect casting, friends; PERFECT. And let’s not forget about the great supporting cast, a beautiful score that matches the protagonist’s mischievous deeds and deep-seeded loneliness, and the way Spielberg fleshed out phenomenal source material. This is the “smallest” of the films left on this list but before we head into “bigger” territory, the stuff that Spielberg made his name on in many cases, let me say just how it is REMARKABLE that the same guy who is capable of making five or six of the biggest blockbusters ever in the history of film could also stop down and make a Catch Me If You Can. That range is Steph Curry on a court with no defenders-esque (sports!).

6. Jaws (1975)
Rotten Tomatoes: 97%
Domestic Box Office (Total Box Office): $260M ($470M)
Oscar Nominations (Wins): 4 (3)
The movie that started it all and remains to this day one of the four or five most influential films of the last half-century or so. Jaws is a miracle, a lightning in a bottle experience wherein even the mistakes and mishaps actually made the movie better. Imagine that movie with the mechanical shark showing up right off the bat instead of two-thirds of the way through. That was the plan until the shark wouldn’t work in salt water and Spielberg had to restructure the shots on the fly. You could call it lucky, and you’d be right, but a young, brash Steven Spielberg was also wise enough to recognize that without the shark, the only to build tension was to keep the shark hidden, to make it a 20-foot boogeyman with horribly-large teeth, as it were. Jaws spawned the rise of the summer blockbuster as well as Shark Week, which is quite the achievement in and of itself. I’ve seen Jaws dozens and dozens of times and still, to this day, I find it utterly terrifying and it’s even worse on a big screen. And yet, it’s a magnificent thrill ride that still looks amazing almost 45 years later. Other directors could’ve done the scary bits of Jaws but I don’t think many people could pace it out nearly as well as Spielberg did nor added in the human parts (Quint and Hooper trading drunken stories in the galley, Brody’s son in the pond, etc.) as effectively as Spielberg did, on what was his first big-budget feature. I must blame him, however, for my abject fear of the water, because one of the taglines for Jaws was, “You’ll Never Go in the Water Again!” and it turns out that is very true for one Brian Gill. THE OCEAN IS NOT OUR HOME.

*NOTE: I have now developed an ulcer over choosing how to rank the final films on this list. I love four of the five dearly and the other is unquestionably GREAT and it seems unfair to have to choose any of them over the others. Whoever made me do this should be ashamed of themselves. Oh right, it was me, I chose to undertake this project and now I hate myself for it. Carry on.*

5. E.T. (1982)
Rotten Tomatoes: 98%
Domestic Box Office (Total Box Office): $435M ($792M)
Oscar Nominations (Wins): 9 (4)
Both the first Spielberg movie I ever saw and the first I ever loved, having no idea how much of an impact this man would have on my pop-culture consciousness over the next 30 years. There are some people who can’t understand the brilliance, the magic, the beauty of E.T. (perhaps you’re in that boat) and I genuinely feel bad for those people. Like, I’m not even mad, I just feel like there’s a hole in your life that E.T. wants so badly to fix with his illuminated, Julius Erving-like finger, and you just won’t let him. To me, it’s kind of like saying, “I’m not a big fan of golden retrievers.” WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU’RE NOT A FAN OF GOLDEN RETRIEVERS?! What is it you don’t like?! Their loveable-ness? Their unstoppable devotion to human kind?! I know, I digress, but I don’t understand your disdain for golden retrievers, man. Anyway, E.T. is the quintessential Spielberg movie; everything I love about him, his style, his sensibilities, can be found within the runtime of this movie and even if he’s made better movies (he has and perhaps he will again, who knows), I think this will forever remain the most Spielberg movie. Every viewing makes me feel like a kid and fills me with a sense of wonder. That’s a very cliché thing to say about a movie you loved as a child but sometimes clichés are true. E.T. is perfect, Spielberg is perfect, golden retrievers are perfect.

4. Schindler’s List (1993)
Rotten Tomatoes: 97%
Domestic Box Office (Total Box Office): $96M ($321M)
Oscar Nominations (Wins): 12 (7)
Without question, this was the hardest movie to slot on this entire list and I wrestled over its placement right up until the last minute.

Here are some things that work in this movie’s favor:
1. It tells an INCREDIBLE story that truly, TRULY matters;
2. It tells that incredible story that truly matters in a stunning, powerful, gut-wrenching manner (Spielberg, I think, understands that it’s not enough to tell a great story, you also have to tell it in a great way or else the meaning gets muddled);
3. It legitimately might be the actual BEST movie of the last 25 years. I’m not necessarily making that argument but as my friend Richard says, if you bring this movie to the table as the best, you’re not getting laughed out of the conversation.

Here are some things that work against this movie:
1. I do not ever want to watch it. This is the only movie in the Spielberg filmography that I didn’t watch or rewatch before writing because I feel like I might have one more viewing left in me in my lifetime and I should probably save it for when my son is old enough to see it so he doesn’t have to watch it alone;
2. It does not feel like a Spielberg movie, really. That’s not a complaint or a criticism, by the way; Schindler’s List very much needs to be set apart, not just from Spielberg’s other movies but from all movies in order to give the viewer a real sense of what took place.
3. Again, I do not ever want to watch it again.

Schindler’s List is an actual masterpiece. It is, I think quite clearly, the best movie Spielberg has ever made and its significance cannot be overstated. When I watched the Spielberg documentary on HBO last fall, the closing sequence of Schindler’s, with the survivors and their family all walking by Schindler’s grave, absolutely wrecked me and reminded me of the sheer power of that film. But feel, rewatchability, and genuine love all have a place in the internal discussion that went into creating this list and for those reasons, I have to keep the next three films ahead of it on my own personal ranking.

*NOTE: I was feeling pretty bad about not putting Schindler’s at the top of this list just based on its objective greatness and meaning. So, on our Patreon page, I asked our VIP’s to list their top three Spielberg movies and literally none of them mentioned Schindler. For some reason, this helped me feel justified in its placement here. I am a sheep. Baaa.*

3. Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Rotten Tomatoes: 92%
Domestic Box Office (Total Box Office): $216M ($481M)
Oscar Nominations (Wins): 11 (5)
This gets my vote for the greatest war movie ever made and I cannot be dissuaded from my position. Private Ryan is, like the next movie on this list, one of the five most significant, memorable in-theater experiences of my life. I will never forget that opening sequence nor the sense of actually being in a war that came along with it. The entire sequence (something like 17 minutes long) is simultaneously haunting and mesmerizing; I couldn’t look away though I left somewhat scarred by it. Even still, I find this movie to be very rewatchable and I do so every year on or around Memorial Day. I think it works on that level because of the time and craft put into developing the soldiers of 2nd Ranger Battalion as actual characters and not just instruments of war. Private Ryan is an ensemble piece, really, that transpires on the battlefield, and you’re not just invested in the characters because of who or what they represent. Barry Pepper’s Private Jackson is one of my five favorite supporting characters in any movie ever; I’m not sure you get genuine care and concern like that six soldiers down the list in most war movies. So you’ve got these great characters and then you put them in situations that are perfectly staged and shot, but, of course, extremely hazardous to the characters you care so much about…and then you watch them die. And suddenly, you’re in the fight and you’re getting a tiny taste of the horrors of war. Private Ryan is a hard movie to watch and it tears at my heart every time I do so but Spielberg’s understanding of character and human interaction keeps me coming back every year.

2. Jurassic Park (1993)
Rotten Tomatoes: 92%
Domestic Box Office (Total Box Office): $402M ($1.02B)
Oscar Nominations (Wins): (3)
Jurassic Park is THE single most memorable theater experience of my life and I doubt that will ever change. I was 10, I had read Michael Cricton’s book, and I was pumped up beyond any reasonable measure to the point that there was no way the movie could possibly live up to my expectations…and somehow, it blew them away. This movie is monument to blockbuster filmmaking, a master class in how to craft a smart-but-not-self-serious crowd pleaser. Truly, 25 years later, Jurassic Park remains the gold standard for blockbusters. You can watch this movie and say, “This is how you do exposition”; “This is how you explain scientific jargon effectively”; “This is how you merge practical effects and CGI.” Every time I rewatch Jurassic Park, I am utterly blown away by how INCREDIBLE the movie still looks. It’s unreal, honestly, given where we were at with computer technology in 1993, not to mention the fact that Spielberg was working on the post-production for this movie while filming Schindler’s List. (Who else could do that, seriously?) It’s the weight and the scale of the dinosaurs that pours through the screen (and the speakers) which sets the movie apart. But it’s also really well-cast, a very underrated feature of the movie in my opinion, Spielberg’s scene-setting is uncanny, and the pace is masterful. This is a movie I cannot wait to watch with my son and I love knowing that it’s going to hold up even when he has a kid of his own.

1. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Rotten Tomatoes: 94%
Domestic Box Office (Total Box Office): $248M ($389M)
Oscar Nominations (Wins): 9 (5)
When I outlined this piece at the outset of my viewings and rewatches, I had Raiders lower on the list. Top ten for sure but definitely not number one. Then I rewatched it again for the first time in a few years and thought, “Oh, right, this movie is all kinds of great.” It wasn’t like a lightbulb moment, just a gentle prompt in the back of my mind reminding me that this was, indeed, the rightful number one. Indiana Jones is, of course, one of the all-time iconic characters in film and while George Lucas deserves some credit for creating him and Harrison Ford deserves even more credit for portraying him, we can’t forget to give Spielberg his due credit for presenting him. In 15 minutes, you feel like you know more about who Indiana Jones is than you know about most of your closest friends and you also know he is the coolest person on the planet. He’s not without his flaws, he’s not a superhero, but that makes him cooler somehow. Raiders is (again) a masterclass in pacing and Spielberg mans the Adventure Movie wheel with remarkable ease, taking you from place to place, situation to situation, with deftness and style, always accompanied by the exquisite score. Karen Allen is absolutely fantastic and proves the perfect counterpart for Ford. Raiders is the greatest adventure movie of all-time (indisputable, I’m sorry), it is iconic in every sense of the word, and, most importantly, it embodies the spirit of what a Spielberg movie is supposed to be, carried through from the very first frame to the very last.

Mad About Spielberg Series Part III

With Ready Player One headed our way at the end of the month, I went back and watched all of Steven Spielberg’s 31 films and painstakingly ranked them top to bottom (or from bottom to top as the case may be). Each week, I’ll be dropping a section of the list as we inch closer to the big RPO debut on March 29. You can find week one here and week two here.

This week, we’re looking at the Spielberg films that fall just outside of consideration for his best, numbers 11 through 17. Sorting this set of movies out and ranking them was quite difficult, much more so than the previous two sets. We ran out of straight-up bad movies some time ago and have now gotten through the, “average to above average” group as well. These are all good to very good movies (again, by my estimation only) and it’s beginning to come down to personal attachment and the splitting of hairs on tiny flaws. As I wrote this section of my rankings, the bottom of the list and the top stayed the same but I shuffled the five films in between a half-dozen times and I’m still not completely happy with where I ended up. Nevertheless, it’s printing day and I must deliver my battle cry (BANGARANG!) and tarry on.

17. War of the Worlds (2003)
Rotten Tomatoes: 74%
Domestic Box Office (Total Box Office): $234M ($591M)
Oscar Nominations (Wins): 3
If, like me, you exercise selective memory regarding Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, you could consider War of the Worlds to be Spielberg’s last big blockbuster movie. 15 years between true live-action popcorn movies is quite a feat for a man who made his name on blockbusters, so much so that his “serious” films had trouble gaining credibility with critics in the mid-80’s and early 90’s. Much like Empire of the Sun (and this will be the last time I use this defense, I promise), I feel like War of the Worlds’ relatively low placement on this list is an indicator of how great Spielberg’s filmography really is. All around, this is nothing but an extremely solid, reliable, consistent action flick starring the greatest action star the world has ever seen. (Tom Cruise haters form an orderly queue to the left and I’ll deal with each of you individually right after I finish running shirtless and climbing up a skyscraper for no real reason whatsoever.) I hadn’t seen War of the Worlds in 10 years before beginning this project and on the rewatch, I found it to be EXACTLY as I had remembered it, having neither appreciated or depreciated in value during the gap in viewings. There are some great sequences and maybe the thing that works best of all is the Jaws­-like treatment of the aliens. Spielberg keeps them at a distance, I think, because the CGI wasn’t great and in doing so, he lets the tension boil a bit so that the reveal of a more practical effect (the snake thing in the basement) is an edge-of-your-seat moment.

16. Lincoln (2012)
Rotten Tomatoes: 90%
Domestic Box Office (Total Box Office): $182M ($275M)
Oscar Nominations (Wins): 12 (2)
Lincoln occupies a strange, perhaps unique, space in the Spielberg Universe in that it is very good, very Spielbergian, and yet I don’t love it. I don’t ever rewatch Lincoln and honestly, I rarely even think about Lincoln. That’s not an indictment of its quality. Lincoln deserves all of the accolades and award nominations it received, and it is a worthy representation of this country’s greatest president. The acting is exquisite, Spielberg structured the movie perfectly, and the back story of his pursuit of Daniel Day Lewis, for me, enriches the dynamic between director and actor that you see on screen. So why don’t I love it? I think it comes down to the fact that Lincoln is, after all, a biopic. A great biopic, perhaps the greatest biopic (no research done here) of the biopic era, but a biopic nonetheless. And biopics bore me, quite frankly. I can accept that my connection to this movie (or lack thereof) is indicative not of the film’s quality but of my own personal taste and preference. As such, Lincoln is one of the few films on this list where the difference between “favorite” and “best” plays a significant role. I’d push it further up the “best” list and further down the “favorite” list and thus, here it sits, somewhere in the happy middle.

15. Hook (1991)
Rotten Tomatoes: 29%
Domestic Box Office (Total Box Office): $119M ($300M)
Oscar Nominations (Wins): 5
There is no greater disparity between critical consensus and viewer appreciation in the Spielberg Universe than Hook and I am not happy about it. I was nine when Hook debuted, and I loved it for a million reasons. Peter Pan’s super cool sword, Rufio’s general Rufio-ness, Hoffman’s terrifying-yet-charmingly-flamboyant portrayal, my crush on Tinkerbell/Julia Roberts… I loved it then and I love it now. It was many years before I discovered that Old People (who, according to Hook and I agree, are fart factories) banded together and decided Hook was not great and in fact was very bad, I can only assume because they all forgot how to fly. Even now, at 35, when I watched Hook with my son for the first time, I found myself falling in love all over again, this time as an adult who longed to be young again, if only so that my knees would operate correctly. It is, perhaps, impossible for me to look at this movie objectively and without the sense of nostalgic wonder attached to it but I stand by Nine-Year-Old Brian’s assessment: Hook is awesome and I wish the Boo Box upon anyone who disagrees.

 14. Bridge of Spies (2015)
Rotten Tomatoes: 91%
Domestic Box Office (Total Box Office): $72M ($165M)
Oscar Nominations (Wins): 6 (1)
I wasn’t overly impressed by Bride of Spies the first time around. It’s very good, very well-made, but it felt slightly less-inspired than most of Spielberg’s previous ventures into historical drama. Originally, I thought it was impeccable on the performance side but lacking in the story department and as such, I walked away a little disappointed. I think that has something to do with my fascination with The Cold War, and spy craft in general, which led to an unreasonable expectation that wasn’t met. Spielberg! Hanks! The Cold War! Spies! *I turn into a Tommy Boy-esque ball of energy* On the rewatch, however, I was much more in tune with the actual story than I was the first time around and even more impressed with the way Hanks and Rylance brought that story home. This isn’t a le Carre and I was foolish to expect Spielberg to give me a le Carre. Instead, he gave me a touching, honest, heartfelt look at a relationship between two ill-fitting friends that just happens to play out over the course of the Cold War. This is a very good movie that deserved more of my affection than I previously gave it and for that, I apologize. As a side note, the poster for Bridge of Spies is very bad and I don’t think that helped my initial impression as I will DEFINITELY judge a book by its cover without any hesitation.

13. The Post (2017)
Rotten Tomatoes: 88%
Domestic Box Office (Total Box Office): $81M ($162M)
Oscar Nominations (Wins): 2
There are some quibbles to be had with The Post and its placement this high on the list is bound to draw some heat (assuming that literally anyone reads and cares about my rankings which I highly doubt). For me, however, having considered the film’s flaws at length, I’ve determined that they ultimately take away next to nothing from the overall strength of the film. I think this is a movie we’ll look back on with much more fondness than the cursory glance we gave it in the moment. The Post has a great sense of importance about it (perhaps that’s a flaw in your eyes, which I understand) but, and this is a very significant point in its favor for me, it’s also a great deal of fun to watch. Historical dramas aren’t often “fun” but the way Streep, Hanks, and the superb supporting cast all operate within the film’s general air of significance gives the movie much more life than I expected. On top of that, I genuinely think this is one of Spielberg’s best directorial efforts, maybe top five. It’s a masterclass in camera manipulation, in scene setting, in framing your characters, etc. I almost cried just watching the camera move through the newsroom and the impeccably edited extended sequence in Ben Bradlee’s house is immaculate. For me, The Post is some punched-up dialogue and one or two edits away from a perfect movie and puts all of Spielberg’s virtues on full display.  

12. The Color Purple (1985)
Rotten Tomatoes: 85%
Domestic Box Office (Total Box Office): $98M
Oscar Nominations (Wins): 11
I’ve seen The Color Purple only twice: Once in college when I truly started to digest film instead of just watching movies (the most pretentious sentence ever uttered, I apologize) and wanted to catch up on all the films of my favorite directors, and then a second time while working on this project. It’s a powerful film, based on an even more powerful source material, brought to life by an incredible cast and Spielberg’s impeccable understanding of his audience. That’s the key with Spielberg, isn’t it? No one keeps a finger on the pulse of his viewers like Spielberg does and I feel like that’s on full display with The Color Purple. In the hands of another director, this movie becomes unbearably bleak. Like, Precious-levels of bleak; like, Monster’s Ball-levels of bleak; like, “Lock yourself in a closet and sob for days”-levels of bleak. I think Spielberg knows that, in order for the movie to succeed, he has to keep his audience from dipping below the Lars Von Trier Bleakness Point of No Return. What strikes me most about The Color Purple is not the happy ending offered to Celie in the final act but rather this inkling of hope that pervades the entirety of the film. You have no reason to believe that literally anything good is ever going to happen to this poor woman but there’s a hint of it in almost every scene. Without this tiny speck of hope, the happy ending doesn’t really matter because the audience has already given up and locked themselves in their respective closets before it ever plays out on screen.

11. Munich (2005)
Rotten Tomatoes: 77%
Domestic Box Office (Total Box Office): $47M ($130M)
Oscar Nominations (Wins): 5
Munich is an extremely complicated movie and as a result, it’s difficult to write about. It is supposed to be, in Spielberg’s own words, a “prayer for peace” and yet, for most of its runtime, it plays out like anything but. Vengeance is not a virtue in the Spielberg Universe and in fact, it’s not even present in most of his movies. It’s touched on here and there, most notably Corporal Upham’s redemption of sorts in Saving Private Ryan, but never as a central theme and never glorified. Munich goes off the track in this regard. I don’t think there’s any way around calling Munich an angry film, another emotion that doesn’t typically feature prominently in Spielberg’s filmography. Eric Bana’s character is reluctant in his anger, in his quest for vengeance, but he acts on it nonetheless, often in brutal, unforgiveable ways. One of the things that I love about Spielberg movies is seeing myself, or my emotions, in the characters on screen; he’s a master at putting you in the shoes of the characters. At the risk of speaking for someone whom I will never meet, I think Munich is Spielberg turning this patented dynamic in on himself. It’s a fantastic film that tries, sometimes unsuccessfully, to wade into increasingly choppy waters and its virtues are plentiful. But to me, what makes Munich great, almost transcendent, is the feeling that the film is a personification of Spielberg wrestling with himself, of his attempts to reconcile his anger with his desire for peace.