It’s not a secret to many who visit Cinema Crazed, or to many who know us that Steven Spielberg is our favorite film director of all time. The man has managed to re-think the way we look at film and filmmaking, and is one of the few film directors living today who can deliver a good old fashioned story that can inspire and amaze without rotting our teeth with over simplistic and sugary storytelling. Sure, he’s faltered a few times, but even his weakest films are much better than anything most young directors can deliver in cinemas today. Steven Spielberg has managed to stay relevant in an ever growing populace of movie goers with incredibly short attention spans who want flash and explosions over genuine storytelling, and for any director that’s a feat and a half.
He helped invent the blockbuster, helped define franchising, helped engineer the special edition (for better or worse), and he’s carved an amazing career from films that have touched, awed, and invoked conversation about movie goers and film buffs alike. Fanatics, supporters, and often apologists, we’ve followed Spielberg for years as he’s been one of our earliest memories of film going ever. There aren’t many guarantees in life. But the one thing we think life can guarantee is that there will always be a movie to grant me the same awe and wonderment every single time we pop in a film from Steven Spielberg.
Whether it’s a tale about a lone tourist in an airport, or the plight of the Jews in World War II, Spielberg can and always has guaranteed that awe and sheer enthusiasm for film will come with a film from his. And they guarantee to outlive Steven Spielberg even at the age of 66. Spielberg may just be a man biding his time in delivering masterpiece after masterpiece, but his films will have a shelf life of many many decades and introduce young audiences to the awe and charm of filmmaking as Spielberg did for us. We celebrate Steven Spielberg’s 66th birthday with our top ten Spielberg Films of All Time. So far.
It’s almost as if mid-way the writers and producers decided that a horrible virus eliminating an entire small town in a disturbing fever wasn’t good enough. So they inject a crusty scowling military man who has been given orders to destroy the whole town. It’s so rote and typical of Hollywood that it’s jarring to the tone of “Outbreak.” Wolfgang Peterson’s ensemble thriller can never really decide if it wants to be an action adventure thriller or a dramatic thriller. It wants to feature explosions and epic helicopter chases, but it also tries to inject explorations in to military policy, government corruption, and discussion about past events in history that were rationalized as a means to an end.
