Steven Spielberg
Bridge of SpiesFriday, 27 November 2015Nostalgia for the good old days of mutually assured destruction? You’d have got long odds on such a thing on 9 November 1989, the day the Berlin Wall was breached. A quarter of a century on, the Americans and the Russians are entangled in a whole... Read more... |
Oscars 2013: The Spielberg StoryWednesday, 20 February 2013Whether Lincoln can pip frontrunner Argo to this year's Best Picture gong is in the hands of the Academy, but its 12 nominations are a notable achievement in director Steven Spielberg's extraordinary career. It's sometimes been easy to dismiss... Read more... |
LincolnFriday, 25 January 2013A rum aspect of the Oscar nominations has been the inclusion of two films that concern American slavery, and which could not be more different: in Django Unchained, Quentin Tarantino gives the American slave exactly the sort of empowerment he... Read more... |
12 Films of Christmas: GremlinsMonday, 10 December 2012Joe Dante feeds the idealised small-town America of his producer Spielberg into the mincer of an anarchic Warner Bros. cartoon in this riotous 1984 hit. Chris Walas’s creature designs are crucial to it, as mysterious, lovably big-eyed pet Gizmo... Read more... |
War HorseWednesday, 11 January 2012The thrilling does battle with the banal and just about calls it a draw, which is a synoptic way of describing the effect of Steven Spielberg's film of War Horse, based on the Michael Morpurgo novel that spawned the now unstoppably successful play.... Read more... |
DVD: Super 8Friday, 16 December 2011In JJ Abrams’s retro sci-fi Super 8, a group of budding film-makers are terrorised by a mysterious creature. With credible camaraderie and poignant performances from its young leads, it’s as much about growing up and the thrill of first-time film-... Read more... |
The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the UnicornTuesday, 25 October 2011It’s been a long time coming, and an extremely nervous wait for millions of fans who grew up on the boy reporter and his alliterating whisky-soaked maritime sidekick. Steven Spielberg first acquired the cinematic rights to The Adventures of Tintin... Read more... |
Interview: Tintin, The Reluctant Movie StarSaturday, 22 October 2011A reporter can be certain of two things: death, and the ephemerality of journalism. Written yesterday, published today, an article will usually be forgotten by tomorrow. The one exception who proves the rule hasn't been heard of in years, but his... Read more... |
Terra Nova, Sky1Tuesday, 04 October 2011Is it back from the future or forward to the past? We start in the year 2149, and Earth is overcrowded, polluted and staggering towards extinction. Nobody can breathe outdoors without using a rebreather mask, and most plant and animal life has... Read more... |
Cowboys & AliensMonday, 15 August 2011The title is the film. In a new low point for high concepts, producers Ron Howard and Steven Spielberg only needed to see the cover of the titular, unfinished comic book to give Cowboys & Aliens the green light. Iron Man’s director Jon Favreau,... Read more... |
Falling Skies, FXTuesday, 05 July 2011It’s ironic that we TV critics were only allowed one viewing of this new sci-fi series before having to pass judgment, because even those only casually acquainted with the genre will feel they’ve seen the like of this part-Spielberg-conceived space... Read more... |
The Pacific, Sky Movies PremiereMonday, 05 April 2010For The Pacific, the 10-part saga of a group of US Marines involved in the campaign to drive back the rampant Japanese army in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, Spielberg has resumed the executive producer role he adopted to make Band of Brothers... Read more... |