I Have a Bad Feeling About This: On Solo and Rotten Tomatoes Culture

A few weeks ago, I got a surprising text from a friend of mine who is definitely not “up to date” on the Star Wars™ Expanded Universe. “What are people saying about Donald Glover’s Star Wars movie? Bad right?”

A complicated question to get from someone who I would never expect to be interested in pre-Cannes buzz. But I knew where she was coming from. For whatever reasons, the media storm leading up to the premiere of Solo: A Star Wars Story has been mixed at best. Early coverage was marred by director shake ups, reports of Alden Ehrenreich getting an acting coach (which I feel like shouldn’t be stigmatized? But I digress), and general palpable stress from the Kathleen Kennedy lead production team, surely not helped by the unexpected polarizing reception of The Last Jedi.

I responded to my friend some variation of, “There was some drama behind the scenes, but since no one has seen the movie yet, I wouldn’t jump to conclusions. Plus, sometimes you’ll like a movie that some critics don’t, try not to let any of it cloud your opinions.” A level-headed response that practically screams, “Do as I say, not as I do”. Let’s face it, we’ve all been burned before. “Everyone is saying Batman v. Superman is bad, but I am going in with an open mind and giving it a shot!” Maybe it would have been better to save 3 hours of my life and ten pre-MoviePass dollars.

With time, it seems the Rotten Tomatoes-style conclusions of a movie’s quality are coming earlier and earlier. We all just want to know- Fresh or Rotten? Good or bad? Worth my time or not? Like I said, the movie hadn’t even been seen yet, and everyone online had decided the only good aspect of this would be Donald Glover’s Lando. They may be right. Donald Glover is fire right now. But why are we letting so much of this wild speculation seep into our individual perception? I am sure it can all be tied back to overexposure. I check Twitter hourly, I’m not exactly trying to close myself off from the firehose of opinions leading up to seminal pop culture moments. I mean, this week I ended up listening to five podcast episodes on Westworld alone. It seems that nowadays if you want to be “in touch” with whatever is in the entertainment zeitgeist, this barrage of content is virtually inescapable.

Let’s take a moment away from blaming everything on the internet. Of course, the pre-movie analysis is strong in this franchise. I am not so naïve to think that we could all just step back and calmly let the chips fall where they may. At this point, every movie to come out of this property is essentially 40 years in the making. People LOVE these characters; they’re precious, they feel like they belong to us. We as fans have emotional stock in how they are used and what happens to them. We want to protect them and ourselves. Especially after the famously disappointing prequels. We are quick to put our guards up if we need to, hoping to avoid that heartbreak again.

And yet, at least in this franchise, there doesn’t seem to be proof that any of this hysteria ends up being indicative of the finished product. Before TLJ, we kept hearing about how the studio was loving Trevorrow’s vision. Hype builds. It’s announced that he is shooting some things for the 9th installment, solidifying Lucasfilm’s belief in him. More hype. After initial screenings of The Last Jedi, critics were saying it could be the best Star Wars ever. However, upon release, social media was overrun with immediate criticism. Articles started popping up everywhere about the dichotomy between critics and “fans”.

So, is the endless commotion leading up to these movies just a symptom of an increasingly overactive film media? Of a cautiously cynical fan base? Something else entirely? Am I only adding to the issue by continuing to talk about it? Probably. Now that the film is getting positive reviews after a few showings, personally, I am breathing a little easier. But I still can’t completely silence that voice in the back of my head, whispering skeptical Reddit comments and questioning the quality of past Ron Howard movies. I should probably, “try not to let any of it cloud my opinions,” but why start now?

Megan is a friend-of-the-show and now frequent contributor. You can find more of her work at meganspell.com and follow her on Twitter @spellmegan. 

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.