In Contention

Tag: War of the Worlds

  • Cahiers, Sight & Sound offer decade lists

    Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning in The War of the WorldsThe recent barrage of end-of-decade collectives has probably been enough to sate the appetite of even the keenest listoholic — but having consciously avoided most such lists while I worked on my own, I’m still wallowing in them.

    So I can’t resist mentioning out the lists of two of the world’s leading film magazines — the eccentric, über-cinephilic Cahiers du Cinéma, and my own favorite, Sight & Sound. The Cahiers list is exactly what you’d expect from them, with a cineaste’s twisted valentine to Hollywood atop the pile, while its one concession to populist commercial cinema is a typically perverse choice:

    1. “Mulholland Drive” (David Lynch)
    2. “Elephant” (Gus van Sant)
    3. “Tropical Malady” (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
    4. “The Host” (Bong Joon-ho)
    5. “A History of Violence” (David Cronenberg)
    6. “The Secret of the Grain” (Abdelatif Kechiche)
    7. “West of the Tracks” (Wang Bing)
    8. “War of the Worlds” (Steven Spielberg)
    9. “The New World” (Terrence Malick)
    10. “Ten” (Abbas Kiarostami)

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  • Spielberg and blockbusters

    Can he do it? After becoming (in his own eyes) a serious filmmaker with “Schindler’s List,” “Amistad,” “Saving Private Ryan,” “A.I.” and “Munich,” is Steven Spielberg able to re-create the magic he almost always brought to his pure entertainment blockbusters?

    It takes a look at his journey as an artist to even attempt a reasoned understanding of such a question.

    On one hand, I argue that he was always a brilliant director, “Jaws,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” and “E.T.” all great examples of his artistry, yet he himself was never satisfied by the reaction to those films by the Academy. It is well documented that Spielberg coveted acceptance in the film community, seeing the Oscar for Best Director as the ultimate acceptance from Hollywood. Snubbed for “Jaws” in 1975, he behaved like a petulant child as live cameras caught it all on film, invited in to see his reaction when he was nominated…but — he wasn’t.

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