When Sight and Sound released their 2022 poll in December, the rush wore off within a couple days for me. I was impatient. I’m still impatient, because I want the vote counts for all of these movies to be released, and when that happens I’m sure I’ll write about that too. But a lot of… Read More Ten Thoughts on the Other 164 Movies in the 2022 Sight and Sound Poll
You can find the full list of the top 100 blockbusters since 1972 here, as well as an index for other posts in this series. The Godfather was the first modern blockbuster, but once can be forgiven for believing Jaws actually holds that title. For one thing, Jaws obliterated the records of historically huge performers… Read More Top 100 Blockbusters of the Multiplex Era: Unchained Metaphor
As many of you were, I was inspired by the list released by Empire on Thanksgiving this year. It is, a little cheekily, titled “The 100 Greatest Movies,” and I say cheekily because there’s no way that the people publishing this can possibly imagine that these are, by any standard, the one hundred greatest movies.… Read More Top 100 Blockbusters of the Multiplex Era: Introduction
Several years ago I made a list in tiers of American directors. I will not share that list, because it is quite dumb, but I think my first three tiers still make sense as concepts. In the first tier went directors who could combine peak with longevity, who made brilliant movies consistently throughout a career… Read More Steven Spielberg Meta-Analysis
Dir. Steven Spielberg. Starring Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, Robert Shaw Watching Jaws now is like speaking to an oracle. One sees Spielberg the marvelous technical filmmaker with a strong sense of how the Weird sidles up to the Everyman: the shark is the vision of Devil’s Tower, the coming of E.T., the opening of the Ark of… Read More Jaws (1975)
Seeing Things Secondhand 