Simon's Movie Reviews

Noble heroes are easy to root for and vile villains are fun to hate, but characters who are somewhere in the middle can be a lot more interesting. Oskar Schindler, the subject of Steven Spielberg's award-winning film Schindler's List (1993), is a man who could easily deserve the title of hero since he helped save more than a thousand people from the Nazi death camps during the Second World War. Yet by his own admission he was a member of the Nazi party, a war profiteer and a criminal. I would say these flaws, and others, humanize him and highlight the possibility that in times of great evil any person can choose to do something for the good of others. This is certainly a tough movie to watch, but it is essential viewing. I have seen it a couple of times, once with a family member as well as during a history class. Most recently I did a re-watch with my fiancée who is very interested in that period of history, so I got her an anniversary edition of the DVD for Christm...

If Steven Spielberg were a drug, then E.T the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) is a vintage and pure version of that drug. This is a movie that can be appreciated by people of all ages but the way it is shot really puts you in the shoes of a young boy who befriends a creature from another planet. There are no villains in this movie, not even the shadowy government people who are hunting the alien. The only look scary because Spielberg initially shoots them from a kid’s point of view. In today’s cynical world this movie may seem overly optimistic but maybe childish optimism is what we need. I hadn’t seen E.T in at least over a decade and this week seemed like the perfect time to revisit it since I also just finished the third season of Stranger Things , the Netflix phenomenon that proudly wears its Spielberg influence on its sleeve. After all, one could easily argue that the show’s character Eleven has similar powers as E.T even though she was born on our planet. Of course, Spielber...

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) is a very interesting entry in Steven Spielberg’s grandiose filmography. It was made a few years before E.T the Extra-Terrestrial , in which only one alien is stranded on Earth, and decades before War of the Worlds , in which the aliens come to our homes for conquering. It was also made at a time when he was single, which might explain why a character would decide to abandon his family in order to chase after visitors from another world. A married Spielberg with kids might have made a different movie. In any case the final product is one of his most regarded films due to the iconic music by long-time collaborator John Williams and the stunning images courtesy of the late cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond. I can’t remember exactly when I first saw Close Encounters from beginning to end (I have my limits) but I do know there is a ceiling lamp in my mom’s dinning room that awfully looks like the alien mothership. I also have John Williams’ s...