Steven Spielberg

West Side Story (2021)

West Side Story (2021) | Transcript

An adaptation of the 1957 musical, West Side Story explores forbidden love and the rivalry between the Jets and the Sharks, two teenage street gangs of different ethnic backgrounds.

Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983)

Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) – Review by Pauline Kael

I didn’t expect (or want) Twilight Zone—The Movie to be Borgesian, but I did rather hope that John Landis, Steven Spielberg, Joe Dante, and George Miller—the four young directors who are paying homage to the TV series—would tease us with more artful macabre games than the ones of the old shows.

Empire of the Sun (1987)

EMPIRE OF THE SUN – REVIEW BY PAULINE KAEL

Empire of the Sun begins majestically and stays strong for perhaps forty-five minutes. It’s so gorgeously big you want to laugh in pleasure. Steven Spielberg takes over Shanghai and makes it his city. And then, first in brief patches and then in longer ones, his directing goes terribly wrong.

A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001): The Mommy Returns – Review by J. Hoberman

Fairy tales can come true. Spielberg the historian is in remission; Steven the regressive has returned, with a vengeance. An occasionally spectacular, fascinatingly schizoid, frequently ridiculous, and never less than heartfelt mishmash of Pinocchio and Oedipus, Stanley Kubrick and Creation of the Humanoids, Spielberg’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence is less a movie than a seething psychological bonanza.

Movie Trial: A.I.: Artificial Intelligence

The movies that split people down the middle, put in the Empire dock… Simon Ingram (Prosecution) and Kat Brown (Defence) on Steven Speilberg’s “A. I.: Artificial Intelligence”

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND: THE GREENING OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM – Review by Pauline Kael

Close Encounters of the Third Kind is the most innocent of all technological-marvel movies, and one of the most satisfying. This film has retained some of the wonder and bafflement we feel when we first go into a plan­etarium: we ooh and aah at the vastness, and at the beauty of the mystery. The film doesn’t overawe us, though, because it has a child’s playfulness and love of surprises.

THE COLOR PURPLE (1985) – Review by Pauline Kael

If you’re among the millions of people who have read the book, you probably expect the actors to be more important than they turn out to be. The movie is amorphous; it’s a pastoral about the triumph of the human spirit, and it blurs on you.