A review of Rye Lane (2023). Warning: Contains spoilers for Rye Lane . In the mother of all nods to the rom-com genre, Rye Lane ’s main characters stop to eat at a burrito stand called, “Love Guac’tually.” I won’t say any more or it would spoil the surprise of what happens next. This is director Raine Allen-Miller’s feature-length debut, and it’s a love letter to South London (in particular, the districts of Peckham and Brixton), while also paying homage to films like Before Sunrise without copying them . Its protagonists, Dom and Yaz (played by actors David Jonsson and Vivian Oparah) get to know each other over the course of one day, while wandering through art galleries, markets, playgrounds, and karaoke bars, with a little breaking-and-entering thrown in for good measure. Allen-Miller’s South London is saturated in bright colors. She (and ​​cinematographer Olan Collardy) use wide and fisheye lenses and point-of-view shots to draw the audience in while conveying how the film’s main characters are feeling. Even though both Dom and Yaz are nursing broken hearts after recent breakups, the film’s writers, Nathan Bryon and Tom Melia, along with Allen-Miller, create a really funny and joy-filled story. The movie’s main characters have great chemistry but they happen to meet at the wrong time (or the best time, depending on how you look at it). Both of their breakups are reenacted in the film with present-day Dom and Yaz watching from the sides like a stage play happening before their eyes. The lighting is beautiful and full of color and the special effects are honestly amazing. The movie can be fast-paced and a bit jarring at times, but once you acclimate to Allen-Miller’s style it becomes all the more charming, as do the film’s leads. I recently read ScreenCraft’s “ THE 9 ELEMENTS OF ALL GREAT ROM-COMS ” and here’s why I think Rye Lane is indeed a wonderful addition to the genre and well worth the watch. Two Loveable Leads Dom (David Jonsson) and Yaz (Vivian Oparah) are definitely yin and yang. While Dom is an introvert wallowing in self-pity, he is also kind, thoughtful, and willing to go above and beyond for the people he cares about. Yaz is a wild card who is prone to a bit of “fake-it-til-you-make-it” bravado that can be disarming, but she’s just as empathetic as Dom. She’s not afraid to act on impulse and see where her choices lead her. They agree that everyone has their own mess. This understanding and the ability of each character to see potential in the other that they do not yet see in themselves is what makes them so great. A Meet Cute (Or… Not So Cute) Yaz initially overhears Dom sobbing loudly in the bathroom stall next to her at a mutual friend’s art gallery show. After seeing Dom’s hot pink sneakers under the stall door, she recognizes him outside the restroom and decides to make sure he is okay. Turns out, he’s not. After six years, Dom’s girlfriend cheated on him with his best friend and he never saw it coming. A Unique Troublesome Situation Not only was Dom cheated on by his girlfriend with his best friend, but three months later they have invited him to dinner to “clear the air” at the very restaurant he used to frequent with his ex-girlfriend. Yaz suggests she tag along but Dom is trepidatious. They’ve only just met. On the other hand, Yaz shares her own breakup story with Dom and recounts how one of her favorite records, which her ex does not like, is still in his apartment … you know what’s coming. At Least One Great Sidekick Rye Lane focuses on its two leads with little time spent on friends or sidekicks but we do get some brief scenes with a few memorable characters, in particular, their artist friend Nathan, his kind and supportive girlfriend, Cass, and some very judgemental “Aunties” who long for Yaz and her ex to get back together but let her and Dom stop by their backyard BBQ while Yaz (secretly) looks for a key to her ex’s apartment. Super Fun Montage In Allen-Miller’s film, Dom and Yaz traverse the South London districts of Brixton and Peckham. They wander in and out of markets, ride the see-saw in a park, and even perform a little Salt n’ Pepa karaoke together. They bring each other out of their shells and get each other out of their ruts. When they finally borrow a scooter from the aforementioned Aunties, Yaz drives with Dom clinging on for dear life before deciding to relax and go along for the ride. Relationship in Jeopardy Up until this point in the story, Dom has had no idea that Yaz was the voice in the bathroom stall next to him when he was crying. He also believes Yaz’s version of the story where she was the one who dumped her ex (not the other way around). Once these truths come to light, Dom feels betrayed and Yaz is embarrassed and defensive. All of the fun and joy they experienced together that day sours as they part ways and each goes home alone. The Lightbulb Moment Yaz starts texting Dom but keeps deleting her messages before sending any to him. Dom, back at his parent’s house, initially falls into old patterns, playing video games, until he begins to take small risks outside of his comfort zone. He decides to finally “try the spicy burrito” (and I mean that both literally and figuratively) as he realizes that being too cautious and closed off is not what he wants out of life or love. Yaz tries to stay strong solo, but when she thinks she sees Dom outside the movie theater she follows a stranger for a while before realizing it’s not him. After passing on an interview for her dream job earlier in the film due to self-doubts, Yaz finally gets a job doing what she loves. She starts to realize that Dom believed in her the whole time, even when she did not yet believe in herself. When their friend Nathan has a new art show opening, both Dom and Yaz are reminded of how they met each other. A Grand Gesture or Epic Line “This needs to be iconic, it’s the end of the movie, he deserves…some kind of grand gesture.” In the film’s climax, Yaz decides that Dom is the one who deserves a grand gesture. Her efforts call back to a story she told earlier in the film about her relationship with her ex and prove that Dom is the type of person she really wants to be with. A Happy Ending Yaz apologizes to Dom and says she’s sorry for lying about getting dumped but she liked the way Dom saw her that day (calling her “iconic”) so she lied to keep up the persona of confidence. Dom says it wouldn’t have mattered and that he would have thought she was cool either way, to which Yaz replies, “Yeah, I know that now.” They find each other and finally get to kiss in that epic 360-degree spinning footage you have grown to expect at the climax of any romance before we get the film’s title card. Well done. Rye Lane is now streaming on Hulu. Diana DiMuro Associate Editor Besides watching TV and movies, Diana likes plants, the great outdoors, drawing and reading comics, and just generally rocking out. She has a BA in English Literature and is an art school dropout. You can follow her on Instagram @dldimuro and Twitter @DianaDiMuro

Mike Burdge and Diana DiMuro are back in the saddle with everyones favorite world renowned widow: John Wick AKA Cap'n Dome-Shot. In this episode, they go over the history and story of the series so far, what the future might hold, ranking their favorite fight scenes and talking about cute doggos. Listen on....

Mike Burdge sits down with his arch-nemesis, the enigmatic Scotty Arnold, to celebrate the 35th anniversary of Heathers , the movie that changed a lot of us by accident one innocent afternoon on TNT. While chatting about the film itself, they also cover the many adaptations and inspirations the film produced, as well as some.... *checks notes*.... "slippery" content that maybe wasn't great for 1988 either. But don't worry, they LOVE the movie! Listen on.... Overdrinkers Cocktail: Ram+Kurt 1 1/2 oz Bourbon 1 oz Aperol 1/2 oz Simple Syrup Top with Topo Chico Mineral Water (or any mineral water) Orange Wedge and Peel (preferably blood orange) Combine all ingredients except for orange. Stir over rocks and serve in rocks glass. Squeeze orange wedge into drink, essence and garnish with orange peel.

For almost two months in the spring of 2003, during my senior year of high school, you could hear an echo in the school halls every few minutes from one of us kids yelling, "WHA' HAPPENED?!" - a catchphrase from Fred Willard's character Mike LaFontaine in Christopher Guest's mockumentary film A Mighty Wind . Something about this movie really affected us, and at the time, though I absolutely loved A Mighty Wind , I wasn't sure why this quirky story about a reunion concert featuring three washed-up folk music groups from the 1960s had caught on like wildfire amongst a bunch of jaded teenage Millennials in the early aughts. I have revisited the film many, many times in the 20 years since its release and I think I know the answer now. A Mighty Wind is Christopher Guest's third comedy film featuring his company of actors after Waiting for Guffman in 1996 and Best in Show in 2000. (1984’s This is Spinal Tap also features most of the company and was co-written by Guest, but it was directed by Rob Reiner, so I don’t consider it to be an official part of the Guest film cycle). While it's always fun to see legendary performers like Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, Fred Willard, Bob Balaban, Paul Dooley, Larry Miller, Ed Begley Jr., Jennifer Coolidge, John Michael Higgins, Jane Lynch, Parker Posey, and Guest himself in action playing off of each other (Guest famously creates his films by allowing his actors to improvise their scenes, hewing to a basic plot outline and structure that he co-writes with Levy), what makes A Mighty Wind really sing (so to speak) compared to his other work is by placing the smart, witty comedic stylings of these strong improvisational actors around a pivotal storyline that is quite sad, which is a significant departure from the zany antics seen in Waiting for Guffman , Best in Show (and of course, This is Spinal Tap ). The film centers around a memorial concert at The Town Hall in New York City, organized by Jonathan Steinbloom (Balaban) and his siblings in honor of their father, Irving Steinbloom, a folk music producer who recently passed away. Jonathan, a fastidious and somewhat humorless man (who nonetheless dearly loved Irving) hopes to feature his father's three most famous acts at the concert: The Folksmen, The New Main Street Singers, and Mitch & Mickey. We see the three acts in rehearsals preparing for the show and experiencing various ups and downs during the process, and the film ultimately culminates with a depiction of the concert itself, televised live on the Public Broadcasting Network with the assistance of producer Lars Olfen (Begley Jr.), the child of Swedish immigrants who for some reason peppers his speech with Yiddish slang, and PR Consultants Amber Cole (Coolidge, giving us a taste of her amazing comedic screen presence that two decades later has finally made her a household name after her portrayal of Tanya McQuoid in HBO's The White Lotus ) and Wally Fenton (Miller). The Folksmen are a trio comprised of Mark Shubb, Jerry Palter, and Allan Barrows (Shearer, McKean, and Guest, respectively, - yes, a folk-flavored Spinal Tap reunion!). They were once one of Steinbloom's most popular acts but they haven't played together in years. They are excited to reunite, buoyed by many happy memories of their time together in the 60s, and although there is some tension concerning which of their songs should be included in their setlist, overall, it is clear that they genuinely enjoy working together again. The New Main Street Singers are a second-generation spin-off of the original Main Street Singers, formed by George Menschell (Dooley), the only living member of the original group, fronted by Terry and Laurie Bohner (Higgins and Lynch), and prominently featuring Sissy Knox (Posey), the daughter of Fred Knox (an original Main Street Singer). In their new incarnation, they are managed by Mike LaFontaine (Willard), a former actor who appeared in a very short-lived 1970 sitcom called, “Wha' Happened?” and tends to confuse everyone by constantly quoting his sitcom character's catchphrases (including the titular tagline - hence everyone at my high school doing the same for months) and sticking his foot in his mouth at various PR events leading up to the concert by making tasteless jokes. The group is large - nine members in total - and is known for their complex harmonies (what Menschell calls a "neuftet") but they are also deemed the most "commercial" and cheesy of the groups, performing folk songs about stereotypically heavy folk themes in an incongruously carefree way. And finally, we have Mitch & Mickey (Levy and O'Hara), a former couple who released seven albums together and captured the hearts of their fans with their public image of pure, innocent, romantic love. They would end performances of their biggest hit, "A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow," by actually kissing each other on stage, to the delight of one and all. But behind the scenes, the relationship was troubled by Mitch's frequent infidelity, substance abuse, and gambling problems and Mickey's growing anger towards him, and they broke up dramatically, ending their creative partnership in the process. When they reunite after nearly 25 years apart to prepare for the concert, Mickey has moved on, she is married to a medical supply salesman and living as a housewife, while Mitch has never fully recovered from his emotional breakdown after Mickey left him and is still suffering from severe mental health issues and erratic behavior. During their rehearsals, romantic tension and personal regrets come to the forefront for both of them, which ends up nearly threatening their performance in the concert. And here, folks is the emotional foundation of A Mighty Wind . The lynchpin of the entire film is Mitch and Mickey’s relationship and their story. While the other actors in the film portray their characters and storylines with the wickedly funny comedic improvisation that one would expect from a Christopher Guest film, Levy and O'Hara play the Mitch and Mickey storyline completely straight. They reminisce about how they first met (he stepped in to fight a heckler at a folk club where she was performing with her sisters and got badly beaten up), remember the joy of creativity they experienced working with each other, and awkwardly stumble around how to end a performance of "A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow" now, with all of this loaded history behind them. There is a real poignancy to this storyline, as Mickey reflects that their fame was based on how their audiences believed them to be a perfect, golden couple - and she believed it too. "That's why I was able to sell it so well." And again later, when Mitch recalls the exhilaration and anticipation they always felt before each gig and Mickey confesses that she was always so nervous during shows that the only way she could ground herself was to ignore the audience and focus solely on Mitch. "I wonder if that will happen again?" Mitch wonders, "Oh, it will," Mickey says, "And I'll be there in the best seat in the house." Reader, every time I see this scene I tear up. There are some moments of humor in the Mitch and Mickey storyline, but they are darker, bitter humor. Mitch has a tendency to ramble nonsensically when he is nervous, but while it makes you chuckle, it’s clear that his verbal eccentricities are a result of his mental illness. Similarly, Mickey has a wildly funny outburst minutes before their set at the concert, as she, Jonathan, and Lars look for Mitch, who has gone missing, and she asks them sharply if there is a cock-fighting arena nearby, her French-Canadian-inflected accent increasing tenfold in her heightened emotional state. But again, this is also a dark joke, as you can see how much anger and hurt she still holds towards Mitch, who has obviously done this to her before (not to mention the implication that her first instinct as to where Mitch would have disappeared to is a place where he could gamble). When Mitch finally turns up, it's revealed he went wandering out into Times Square to look for a rose to place on stage for their set, and Mickey's rage melts away, so completely touched by this lovely gesture from him. With this one panicked scene, a whole relationship's worth of anguish and pain is revealed, and you understand the intensity of their love and how terribly it fell apart. The concert begins with a hitch: The New Main Street singers start their opening set with a folk standard called "Never Did No Wanderin'" which The Folksmen were also intending to feature during their set. The Folksmen express frustration backstage hearing this unfold, especially since they always perform this song in a passionate, emotional manner in the spirit of the song's lyrics, whereas the New Main Street singers do it in their usual peppy, show-boating way. The bad feelings this engenders, along with The Folksmen having to scramble to stretch their set to fill time while Jonathan, Lars, and Mickey search for Mitch, threaten to mar the success of the concert. But when Mitch and Mickey finally go onstage to perform and the other two groups realize that they are going to sing "A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow", everyone begins to wonder whether Mitch and Mickey will go through with the onstage kiss as they did when they were young and still in love, and they gather in the wings with Jonathan, waiting together to see what happens. Who knew that a memorial concert featuring three throwback acts of various levels of musical irrelevance could feel so high-stakes? And all resting on a potential kiss at the end of a sweet little love song? I won't tell you what happens. You just need to watch this movie. Mitch and Mickey's professional and personal reconciliation is what ultimately brings all of the singers together in a place of true exuberance and collaboration for one final song, and gives the memorial concert real depth and meaning. Six months later, we see that the three groups have all come out of this experience for the better in very different ways, given their disparate goals and values as artists. Mike LaFontaine has brokered a deal for The New Main Street Singers to star on a sitcom as Supreme Court judges ("The Supreme Folk"). The Folksmen have decided to permanently reunite and tour again (mostly at casinos in upstate New York), and Mark Shubb (their upright bass player) comes out as transgender - a kind of random character swerve that is nonetheless handled surprisingly respectfully for a 20-year-old film made when trans rights and visibility were still often played for cruel laughs. And Mitch and Mickey? Well, again, I won't tell you what happens. You really just need to watch this movie. In my eyes, A Mighty Wind is the best film of Christopher Guest's oeuvre. The amount of work and love that went into authentically recreating aspects of the folk music scene of the 60s is astonishing - every song featured in the film is an original composition, written by Guest, Levy, Shearer, O'Hara, McKean, and his wife Annette O'Toole, but they sound uncannily like real folk music of the time period. John Michael Higgins arranged all of the complicated nine-part harmonies for the Main Street Singers, which is a staggering feat. Every single actor portraying one of the musicians did their own singing and played live in the film and for the soundtrack album. McKean and O'Toole were nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Song for "A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow," marking the first time one of Guest's films was recognized by the Motion Picture Academy (while sadly they didn't win, viewers did get to see Levy and O'Hara perform the song live during the 2004 telecast as Mitch and Mickey). And the title song, "A Mighty Wind," won a Grammy in 2004 for Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television, or Other Visual Media. The folk music verisimilitude and awards and accolades are not really what sets A Mighty Wind apart from Guest's other work. What makes this film so wonderful and so powerful was Guest's choice to have Levy and O'Hara portray the Mitch and Mickey storyline completely straight, showing the raw feelings and brokenness of these two characters and the love they used to share, and the real sadness of the loss of that love and the innocence that accompanied it. I don't think my high school pals and I were emotionally mature enough, back in 2003, to recognize that the Mitch and Mickey story was the true heart of the film, so that's why we ran around screaming "WHA' HAPPENED?!" at each other and laughing like idiots. But with the hindsight of 20 years - an entire lifetime, during which I have experienced my own forms of love and heartbreak and innocence lost - it's clear to me that the strength of this film lies completely within Mitch and Mickey's story, and that’s why it still holds up so well now. And even if we didn't fully realize it back then, Mitch and Mickey are in fact, subconsciously, what so deeply moved a bunch of jaded teenage Millennials in the early aughts. A Mighty Wind is available on Amazon Prime. Like I said, if you haven't seen it yet, please go rent it now. And if you have seen it - watch it again. As Irving Steinbloom used to say about The Main Street Singers, it's "the kind of infectious that's it’s good to spread around." Reeya Banerjee Staff Writer Reeya is a musician and writer based in New York's Capital District. Her debut album, “The Way Up,” was released on January 27, 2022. She can frequently be seen in her car on the NYS Thruway cursing traffic on her way to the Hudson Valley for band rehearsals or to Brooklyn for recording sessions. In her other life, she works as a staff accountant for a management company that oversees veterinary practices nationwide, enjoys watching Law & Order SVU returns while eating gummy bears, and has a film degree from Vassar College that she does not use.

Story Screen Reports is our team REACTING to the top 5 film, television and entertainment news stories of the month. Join us as we dissect and comb through everything from upcoming releases to studio drama. On this episode, Bernadette Gorman-White hops on to discuss the national controversy of that NOT being Jenny at the Oscars, Tarantino announcing the plot of his "last" film, Roger Deakins dropping straight knowledge on the Academy's taste in cinematography, as well as a few other stories. You can find those stories, and the sourced articles, linked below. 1. ‘The Lord of the Rings’: Amazon, Warner Bros. Ready for Tolkien Battle Written by James Hibberd at The Hollywood Reporter Other Sources: Peter Jackson was ghosted by Amazon Explainer and how fucking confusing the LOTR rights situation works Who is Embracer Group 2. Breaking Baz: Oscar Winner Sir Roger Deakins Says, “The Best Cinematography Hasn’t BeenNominated” This Year, Thinks Oscars Are “Snobby” About Cinematographers Of Popular Movies Written by Baz Bamigboye at Deadline 3. Quentin Tarantino’s Final Film Is Coming as Filmmaker Readies ‘The Movie Critic’ Written by Borys Kit at The Hollywood Reporter 4. Jenny the Donkey’s Oscar Cameo was all a Fraud Written by Zoe Guy for Vulture 5. Damon Lindelof and Justin Britt-Gibson exit Star Wars flick Written by Jeff Sneider at Above the Line Listen on....

“Helloooooooo.” Every year after the hangover of watching "oh so many" films for both Oscars Season and forming my "Best of the Year" list, as well as my usual fare of consuming film after film for podcasts and other such content, I like to unwind with some casual viewing. This year brought me to the likes of binging all four Hunger Games movies in a single day (a choice I stand by), and also checking out two beloved films from my youth that I haven’t rewatched in over twenty years: the City Slickers movies. Now, historically, these films are considered to fall into the most common of two-part comedy franchises: the first one is really great and the second one kinda sucks. This is sort of true in the case, but I’d argue that’s because City Slickers is probably one of the best comedies made in the 90s, and a follow-up was already destined for falling behind. Let us discuss. The first film, released in 1991, finds three lifelong friends venturing out on the chest-thumping, manliness-proving exercise of driving cattle from one ranch to another across the Colorado landscape, all a part of a dude ranch experience they’ve paid for. These three men include: Mitch (Billy Crystal), who has become more and more depressed with his lot in life as a recently turned 39-year-old with an unfilling job and a family that is feeling the repercussions. Phil (Daniel Stern), has just ended a toxic relationship with a henpecking wife by accidentally impregnating a store clerk that works for him at his father-in-law's grocery store after very intentionally sleeping with her. And finally, there’s Ed (Bruno Kirby), a full-of-himself, machismo type who has recently married an underwear model but still has doubts about settling down. Great guys with zero issues. At the ranch, they encounter a number of oddball characters, but none more concerning than the cattle drive’s trail boss, Curly (Jack Palance), whose old cowboy ways and general “I crap bigger than you” demeanor leaves a lot to be desired on the communication front. What follows is a story about a group of (you guessed it) city slickers embarking on an adventure that has the “Old West” test their bravery, but more importantly, their friendship and worldview. Now, this first movie is an all-timer, loaded with absolute peak Billy Crystal charm-edy, and giving you all the laughs you want but with a little bit more heart and thought than you might have been expecting. That’s the secret sauce to City Slickers . The tangent conversations in the film range from matter-of-fact, slice-of-life comedy to truly personal thoughts of existence, time, regret, and love, made all the more affecting by the fact the three leads (and the script) really make you believe that these three guys have been friends for a long time. There’s a back-and-forth that is present in just about any buddy movie, especially comedies, but there’s an amazing lightning-in-a-bottle effect that occurs whenever Crystal, Stern, and Kirby are on screen together talking about anything from operating VCR recordings to having affairs with voluptuous aliens. Roger Ebert described the movie as being about “human nature” more than anything else, and I partly agree with him, since the movie is pretty much more about “mid-life crisis, white guy” nature. It’s about three men trying to prove their manliness, though that means something different to each of them, and learning that they’ve reached an age and a time in their lives where it’s more about being honest with yourself and finding out what matters most than trying to do what you think you’re supposed to, or even what you want to. Desson Howe of The Washington Post mentioned in his review at the film’s release, its similarities to The Wizard of Oz , which I agree with but also have some slightly different interpretations. Phil, who learns to stand up for himself and accept that life can start again even at his age, gets his courage. Ed, after realizing that life is too short to be hung up on what might be down the road, learns to think rationally. And Mitch, being given the meaning of life from Curly as “find that one thing,” eventually discovers that his family that he has built and the life he has been afforded is the thing that matters the most, finding his heart. All of this is due to the otherworldly guidance of trail boss Curly, as the “Dorothy” that leads them along in this scenario. But don’t tell him that. City Slickers is playfully action-packed and bordering on mumblecore comedy in all the right ways. The movie operates as a very good western tucked into the mid-life crisis comedy of Crystal at the time, who is the sex symbol we deserved in the early nineties. And I’m not one to preach the legitimacy of the Academy, but hot damn Jack Palance pulling in the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for this is a hell of a win for Team Fun. After the massive success of City Slickers , it was only natural for a sequel to begin to sprout, and that came in the form of the much-maligned City Slickers II: The Legend of Curly’s Gold , hitting cinemas everywhere in 1994. While released three years after the first film, the plot of City Slickers II takes place one year after the events of the original, with Mitch now perfectly content with his family life and running a very successful radio ad agency. Phil, who has been sinking back into his self-pity and desperate lifestyle, is working at Mitch’s agency unknowingly as a favor from Mitch, one that has a ticking clock that unfortunately is about to bounce springs and gears. To top it all off, Mitch’s deadbeat, and previously undisclosed brother (we’ll return to this), Glen (Jon Lovitz) has dropped in for a surprise visit that Mitch and his wife are sure will lead to a little money lending and much Godfather reenactments. Long story short, Mitch discovers a treasure map in the hat of the deceased Curly, a token he had held onto from the first film, and he decides to use a business trip to Las Vegas as an excuse to go after the gold, bringing Phil and Glen along for the ride. But once they’re on the hunt, they encounter Curly’s previously undisclosed twin brother (see), Duke, once again played by Academy Award winner Jack Palance, who is also after the gold. The crew agrees to work together and split the wealth, forging forward into the West, all the while talking about VCRs and brotherly affection. So, let’s get two things out of the way: City Slickers II is nowhere near as good as City Slickers . I mean, it got nominated for a Razzie Award for Worst Remake or Sequel, which is a totally legitimate reason for someone to think the movie sucks, amirite? But more importantly (or seriously), what City Slickers II lacks is the practically undefinable synergy of comedy and soul that the first nailed with ease. That’s the easiest takeaway. And while I agree that the sequel fails to live up to the levels of both of those ingredients from the first, I do think that there is a lot here of worth. I’m drawing a blank on thinking of anything in cinema history as impressive as the writers and everyone involved in this movie just being like “Fuck it, Curly had a twin brother and he’s played by Jack Palance again. His name is Duke. He pretty much acts just like him, only give him more dialogue.” That’s some baller shit, even if it’s also some daytime soap opera shit. Those two things are not mutually exclusive. And honestly, I think the choices they made with Duke’s character are pretty cool. He’s actually a bit more cutting and unkind than Curly, which isn’t to say that both characters have different hang-ups on “city folk.” It’s just that Curly had a very personal experience with Mitch in the first film that opened him up, and Duke doesn’t really have that, but he’s also not Curly. He’s a totally different guy. His distaste for these idiots is relatable to Curly’s, but he’s actually a bit nastier than his brother in the interactions. I think that’s a pretty cool choice! As for the rest of the movie, there’s an obvious parallel to Curly’s brother showing up just as we, the audience, are learning about Mitch’s relationship with his brother Glen. And I think that’s where the movie has its strongest through-point in comparison to what the first film was really talking about in between the jokes and gags. Bruno Kirby decided to not return for this installment, reportedly because he was aggressively allergic to horses, something I learned halfway through my rewatch of the first film, and, buddy, yep that shows. No disrespect to the actor, his character was usually miffed at all times anyways, but anytime he is in a scene with a horse, you can notice he is increasingly distempered. So, having to fill the third slot in Slicker's gang, Mitch’s brother makes the most sense given what the rest of the film is about to explore. Not only because of the similarities to the Curly/Duke dynamic but also as an extension of the first film that found Mitch coming to terms with who he is and what matters to him most: family. This chapter finds him not only wrestling with maintaining that newly found serenity in the face of wealth and success but with his past familiar actions as well. Granted, Glen is presented as a pretty lame, burn-out bro, but Lovitz brings an energy to the performance that is equal parts comedic and quotable as well as touching and understandable. I just really dig what his inclusion, as both actor and character, brings to this chapter. While we’re on Lovitz, I absolutely must confess this. I didn’t realize how formative this movie was to me until this recent rewatch. I owned City Slickers II on VHS when I was growing up, and would watch it repeatedly, for no reason I can fathom at this time. Rewatching it now, I was shocked to discover that I had seen this movie at least a dozen times before I had seen any of the Godfather films, and Jon Lovitz’s character bit of quoting Godfather scenes is actually where I pull a lot of the most famous quotes from those films. I know they’re from the Godfather(s) , but they’re in Jon Lovitz’s voice when I think about them in my head, most specifically “THIS is the business we’ve chosen!” Just needed to speak my truth on that, and confess that using those quotes in my day-to-day life has returned and I don’t know how to feel about it. Ultimately, City Slickers II is a distant and different achievement than its predecessor, and that’s kind of why I love it. Some choices could’ve been made in the design and execution of the sequel that might’ve made it better, but I don’t think that any of those choices would’ve made it more enjoyable. The fact that they are making a movie about a bunch of guys chasing hidden gold while making a movie trying to capture the gold that was City Slickers , is just too hard for me to ignore as a context pervert. I just love them both so much, for different reasons, just like you would one son and another previously undisclosed son. City Slickers III , please? City Slickers and City Slickers II are currently available on HBO Max. Mike Burdge Editor-in-Chief Founder of and programmer for Story Screen. Lover of stories and pizza in the dark. When he isn't watching movies, you can find him reading and listening to things about people watching movies. He currently resides in Poughkeepsie, NY, and most assuredly is going through a French Connection phase.

Bernadette Gorman-White leads the conversation with guests Robby Anderson, Diana DiMuro and Mike Burdge to chat about the latest HBO sensation to sweep the nation: the television adaptation of The Last of Us . Robby and Mike discuss changes and comparisons to the game, while Bernadette and Diana bring fresh takes on the show and story. Listen on....

If you grew up in the early to mid-90s, it’s safe to say you were deeply affected by one, if not all, of the following: 1993’s The Secret Garden , 1994’s The Pagemaster , 1995’s The Indian in the Cupboard , and 1996’s Matilda . Alongside the lingering effects of films such as Labyrinth and The Neverending Story , the last decade of the 20th century was filled with childlike wonder and films that bridged the gap between real-world limitations and fantasy, all focusing on the power children can possess. Creating strong ties between nature, exploration, imagination, and curiosity, these films all inspired the last pre-social-media generation to get out and discover their own fantasy worlds. Speaking as a member of that generation, it was a pretty good childhood. Despite the popularity of the aforementioned films, there was no other film that spoke to this sense of adventure, intrigue, and nostalgia in my household better than 1994’s The Secret of Roan Inish . It had been well over a decade, maybe two, since I had returned to Roan Inish , and I (alongside my husband, who had never seen it) was long overdue for a rewatch. Growing up in a family that sports an Irish surname, albeit a few generations removed, my mom, siblings, and I would watch The Secret of Roan Inish constantly on repeat during the 90s. Recently taking the time to revisit Roan Inish reminded me of a bygone era less saturated with streaming services and content and (here’s the nostalgia talking) it eased my mind as it took me to a time where I saw the world for possibility and not for what it would come to lack. On a more positive note, however, Roan Inish reminded me of the folklore I loved in my childhood and how it magically made me feel closer to my distant Irish heritage, not to mention, how watching the film itself became a beloved tradition in the threads of my own personal, immediate heritage. So, this St. Patrick’s Day, I hope to pique your interest in the little-known gem, The Secret of Roan Inish . Holding strong on Rotten Tomatoes with a 96% Tomatometer and an 87% Audience Score, I have yet to meet someone outside of my family who has seen this film. Let me tell you why you should. John Sayles’ The Secret of Roan Inish opens in 1946 in the aftermath of a series of family tragedies. Our protagonist, young Fiona (a delightful Jeni Courtney in one of her only three film acting roles), is being shipped off to stay with her grandparents in Donegal Town, due to her father’s lack of ability to care for her. In a series of flashbacks, we find out why Fiona’s father, Jimmy, has sunken into this state; before their entire family was evacuated from their generational home on Roan Inish during WWII, Fiona’s mother passed away, and then later, during the evacuation, their youngest son (in his ship-like cradle, resting on the beach) was taken out to sea during an unexpected tide, never to be seen again. Needless to say, Jimmy is well in his cups, so Fiona must go elsewhere, for her sake and for his. Once living with her grandparents, Hugh and Tess (a wonderful Mick Lally and Eileen Colgan), Fiona slowly learns more and more about her family history. She learns, from Hugh, the story of a distant grandfather who held onto his Gaelic dialect in the face of English suppressors. She learns more about fishing and boat care from her grandfather and her cousin Eamon (a great scene partner for Fiona played by Richard Sheridan), who accompanies Hugh on his fishing trips. But, most importantly of all, she learns from a distant cousin, Tadhg, about the legacy of the “dark ones” in their family. Legend has it that a member of their clan, generations ago, took a mysterious wife on Roan Inish. He went out to sea alone and came back with a beautiful woman, one he beguiled by stealing her skin, the skin of the selkie. The woman, Nula, stayed with her husband, Tim, and together they happily raised their brood. But Nula always ached for the sea, and one day, when her eldest asked why their father kept a leather coat hidden in the roof, Nula knew she must return. Generations later, Fiona’s family still occasionally birthed a descendant of Nula, known as a “dark one.” Jamie, her brother lost to the sea during the evacuation, has been rumored to be a true descendent of Nula, one of the generational “dark ones.” During her trips to Roan Inish (for Fiona begs to spend time on the island while her grandfather and cousin are fishing), she begins to see signs that Jamie might still be alive after all these years, living side by side with the seals. A fire just finished and still warm, an assortment of tools laid out on a table in one of the abandoned homes, footprints on the beach..and then an actual sighting! Similarly to the other fantasy films of the era, The Secret of Roan Inish never doubts young Fiona; what she’s seeing is the truth. So, she and Eamon hatch a plan to fix up the familial homes on Roan Inish in order to lure the grandparents back to the island and to finally be reunited with Jamie. But, will Fiona and Eamon’s plan work? It’s here I leave you with the tale of Roan Inish , but I promise there’s much more to be seen. The beauty in The Secret of Roan Inish is that the folklore is deftly woven into the story like a tapestry, inseparable from the “reality” of Irish life (and the film still feels remarkably fresh and spry after nearly 30 years). Adapted from a Scottish story, Roan Inish was originally called Secret of the Ron Mor Skerry by Rosalie K. Fry, but the story mainly remains the same as the selkie folklore, one of Celtic and Norse mythology, and could easily be adapted for an Irish setting. The Secret of Roan Inish may be my favorite selkie movie, but the mythology was also beautifully spotlighted in Cartoon Saloon’s 2014 Song of the Sea , as part of Tomm Moore’s “Irish Folklore Trilogy,” sandwiched sequentially between the equally great The Secret of Kells and Wolfwalkers . Additionally, the selkie mythology was given a more “adult” treatment in 2009’s Ondine (starring resident Irish cutie Colin Farrell), which I will now be watching as it had not previously been on my radar. It’s a good time to be a selkie fan. Returning to Roan Inish brought me great joy this St. Patrick’s Day season, and I hope it does the same for you. With films like Leprechaun and The Luck of the Irish , there’s truly an Irish film for everyone, but I think the most special ones are those that bring you back to your family and those warm memories of yesteryear: an earlier time when wonder and luck felt vibrant, within reach, and just outside your front door. We’ve been blessed with some quality Irish films in the past few years (2015’s Brooklyn and 2022’s The Banshees of Inisherin , to name a few), and I hope they keep on coming. But sometimes it feels good to go home, back to Roan Inish . Happy St. Patrick’s Day: Éirinn go Brách. ************************** The Secret of Roan Inish is available to stream on AmazonPrime and Mason Daring’s excellent soundtrack can be found on Spotify. Bernadette Gorman-White Managing Editor Bernadette graduated from DePauw University in 2011 with a Film Studies degree she’s not currently using. She constantly consumes television, film, and all things pop culture and will never be full. She doesn’t tweet much, but give her a follow @BeaGorman and see if that changes.

Throughout his career, Steven Spielberg has created some of the most popular films of all time, garnering him an enormous amount of respect on both a critical and financial scale. He is considered by many to be the most famous director of all time, given his track record as both director and producer of some of the most recognizable films of the past 50 years. Movie Daddy is a series by Story Screen Editor-in-chief, Mike Burdge, which aims to cover the Beard's directorial filmography in an attempt to present just why Steven Spielberg is very much that hot fire when it comes to being an American filmmaker. In this installment, the topic of discussion is the Spielberg-Kubrick hybrid from 2001, A.I. Artificial Intelligence . ==================== "None of us love our electric toothbrushes. But if you carved a face into it, and every morning it talked to you and knew you well enough to be able to sense your mood, and depending on your mood in the morning, would make you feel better, would just set you off on the right foot, would whisper in your ear, would sing you a song, then suddenly that electric toothbrush, if the dog chewed it up, that would not be a happy evening when you came home from work or from school and found your electric toothbrush, that used to challenge you and help you in the morning, chewed up by the dog. So, it's what we project into mechanisms, into machines, that’s important. It’s not so much that the machine can love us, it’s how much love do we invest back into it in return. And that determines how far we should go in creating things that remind us of ourselves. I think that we have to be very careful about how we as a species use our genius because we are an amazing species, the human race. And every year, we create things (that) two years before would have appeared as magic to most people. Suddenly, it’s a reality, and then years later it's commonplace in our homes, like the internet. I just think that we all have to be careful as we continue to quantumly leap ahead into the future that we create for ourselves. To take responsibility for the things we put on this planet, to take responsibility for the things we take off this planet. In a sense, you know, we need to have limiters on how far we allow ourselves to go. Ethical, moral limiters that will say, ‘Uhh, hey, this isn’t for us to mess with.’ A bit of that theme, as you know, was touched upon in 'Jurassic Park,' and a lot more of it was touched upon by Stanley Kubrick through 'A.I.'" - Steven Spielberg A.I. Artificial Intelligence is more than just a hard film title to type, it’s also a hard film to talk about. Layered in years and years of misconceptions and negative reactions, the film has become one of those dark spots in Spielberg’s career that can be brought up from time to time whenever the discussion of his prowess comes into debate. Now, am I gonna be the guy that sits here and writes to you, the film lover, all about how A.I. is a misunderstood masterpiece and y’all should give it another look, after having read this piece, to formulate a more removed and earnest opinion on what some have described as Spielberg’s most pretentious and god awful work? Do you really think that I would take it upon myself to even attempt to defend what some consider to be the most damning cinematographic connection to the great Stanley Kubrick, in a way that haphazardly attempts to connect pieces of context and hearsay to explore the mindset of the creators? Can we all actually assume that my intent as the writer of this article is to express my own adoration for the craft of the film in question, and to lovingly butter your mind-bread with the sweet, yet salty, cream of my researchitory efforts? Is "researchitory" even a word? The answer to all of the above (except one) is both a shocking and expected, “Yes.” A.I. is a timeless, futuristic fairy tale wrapped in an unbelievably ambitious project for the time, and even for today. A film with an ending its own production designer, Rick Carter, describes as “Waaaaaaaaayyyyyy out there,” this Pinocchio-influenced nightmare-o-rama is bleak, depressing, aggressive, and filled with an astonishing amount of wonder and amazing fright, which is what every good fable should be all about. And just like all the best, classic fables, the more one considers its parts, the more is revealed of its true intent. There’s no right way to kick into talking about A.I. other than to start off talking about the other big daddy in the room: Stanley Kubrick. Spielberg adored Kubrick, and, in his own way, it’s highly agreed that Kubrick adored Spielberg as well. The stories of Spielberg’s first few experiences with Kubrick’s films and Kubrick the man are notorious. Spielberg, as a young high schooler, waited in line to watch Dr. Strangelove , a movie he has preached, "immediately spoke to him." A few years later, while a college student, Spielberg again waited in line for hours to catch 2001: A Space Odyssey , a film that had been described to the young man as “a drug movie.” Spielberg, who at the time and pretty much ever since, was a “straight and narrow” individual, has watching Odyssey was a life-altering experience. This brings us to their first meeting, on the set of The Shining in 1979. With bangers like Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind under his belt, (but also with the twinge of embarrassment after the flop of 1941 earlier that year), it’s understandable that Spielberg would’ve been a bit cautious around a talent like Kubrick, even though he spent most of his time rubbing elbows with the fellow new wave of Hollywood, e.g. Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, and Brian DePalma. One of the wonderful anecdotes of their meeting is when Kubrick, who was visually raptured by the young filmmaker's presence on set, asked him to watch the film and tell him what he thought. Spielberg was not a fan of The Shining upon his first watch but has since claimed he’s watched it over 25 times and calls it one of the best horror movies ever made. This meeting of the minds created a friendship between the two directors, and they kept in touch over the next few years before the initial scratch of the idea of A.I. came to Spielberg from Kubrick, who had been developing the idea for some time, based loosely on the book, “Super Toys Last All Summer Long and Other Stories of Future Time” by Brian Aldiss. After exchanging ideas for a decade, over phone calls, as well as storyboards and notes sent through fax, Kubrick asked Spielberg if he would like to direct the project, while he himself would produce, believing the young Beard would be perfect for bringing the story alive with his usual flair for genre cinema and sentimentality. While Spielberg initially accepted, this would be the first part of a very long process of making the final film, specifically because of issues in getting the script off the ground. "I sort of learned a long time ago to be careful about detailing what motivates me to tell a story, as if it’s some tremendous thought process that takes years to figure out, first emotionally and internally and then be able to turn around and tell you the story that I worked so hard to figure out if I wanted to tell at all. And I realized that all the decisions I make about the stories I tell are intuitive decisions. I either respond to a story or I don’t. And in this case, when Stanley first told me about 'A.I.,' and let me read the treatment in 1984, I immediately said to Stanley, ‘This is the best story you’ve ever had to tell.’ I felt that in 1984. And I think that gave Stanley encouragement to pursue the project even further." -Steven Spielberg The script for A.I . went through nearly thirty years of changes, with six different writers, all spanning from a seed of an idea in Kubrick’s head, to the vastly expansive story you see in the finished film. Along the way, professional screenwriters from different backgrounds added and cut from it, including Sara Maitland, a short-story novelist who specialized in religion and myth. Kubrick gave all of these people, and maybe mostly Maitland, a very dastardly run for their money in his collaboration with them. Most writers who worked on the project, while respectful of Kubrick’s talents and genius say it was top-tier misery working with the director on this specific script. Eventually (read: after over twenty years), Spielberg thought it best if he produced and Kubrick directed, with Kubrick finally agreeing. But when Kubrick passed away in 1999, his widow, Christiane Kubrick, reached out to Spielberg and said that if he didn’t direct the film, it would never come to be, essentially condemning the story to nothing forever. Not only was this because of Spielberg’s connection to and knowledge of the project, but the idea of tackling an unmade Kubrick film, especially so close to the filmmaker's death, was an intimidating challenge that few others would even consider, let alone be capable of pulling off. Kathleen Kennedy, one of the greatest producers to ever live, said: “He (Spielberg) was attracted to it because it embodied many of the things he had explored with, obviously, E.T. and Close Encounters . But I think this in many ways takes Steven several more steps because Stanley Kubrick is bringing something to the project and Steven would embrace that and pay homage to that. And so he took Stanley’s contribution and added that to his own.” "I said ‘yes,’ first, because it was a wonderful story, and second, because it was a way for me to honor Stanley." - Steven Spielberg Spielberg felt that this might be a project which he would like to handle by writing the script himself. He’d been thinking about the movie for quite a bit by that point, so it only made sense for him to push the final screenplay across the finish line, especially with the number of hands that had already been involved. When trying to parse through the notes and alterations that had happened over 20+ years, Spielberg found it best to go back to his and Kubrick’s original correspondences to see where things grew from, and from what he was engaging with was really Stanley. And while it might seem strange for America’s favorite director to be tackling screenwriting this late in his game, that just wasn’t the case as far as our boy was concerned: "I’ve done a lot of writing that I haven’t taken credit for over the years between 'Close Encounters,' 'Poltergeist' and now. I haven’t stopped writing, I don’t sit down and do entire screenplays, but I do a lot of collaborative, the stuff that directors often do in close associations with certain writers. So, this wasn’t unusual for me to write it, but the story was unusual and so personal to Stanley that I thought it would lose Stanley’s personal ideals if I had to re-communicate his ideas through me to yet another party. And I just thought it would preserve the purity that Stanley wanted to achieve and the story he wanted to tell if I just bit the bullet and wrote it myself." - Steven Spielberg Spielberg made hundreds of changes here and there to the script, but never drastically changed the overall structure, finding the moments where his sensibilities would make the most sense for the moment, and altering impressions Kubrick had left behind to be built upon. It’s actually quite endearing that Kubrick’s original reasoning for wanting to collaborate with Spielberg, (his keen sense of sentimentality), was the thing Spielberg found to be the most rewarding, and the most challenging when it came to even slightly altering the script he had worked on with his friend for so long. Before moving on, it must be noted the wild tale of the public and critical reception A.I. received upon its release, and how that vision has changed up to today. In his initial review of the film, Roger “I Am All That Is Man” Ebert wrote, “(David) seems a real boy, but lacking a certain je ne sais quoi.” Ebert had a slight change of heart between the film's release in 2001, and its ten-year anniversary, predictably taking place in the year 2011. In his 2001 original review, he writes: "We are expert at projecting human emotions into non-human subjects, from animals to clouds to computer games, but the emotions reside only in our minds. A.I. uses its responsibility to deal rigorously with this trait and goes for an ending that wants us to cry, but had me asking questions just when I should have been finding answers." Ten years later, Ebert reconsidered: “That is true enough on the principal level of the film, which tells David’s story. Watching it again recently, I became aware of something more: A.I. is not about humans at all. It is about the dilemma of artificial intelligence. A thinking machine cannot think. All it can do is run programs that may be sophisticated enough for it to fool us by seeming to think. A computer that passes the Turing Test is not thinking. All it is doing is passing the Turing Test.” Now, I agree with MOST of this and certainly respect Ebert’s ability to reassess his critique on a film that is, quite frankly, a little hard to assess upon the first watch. What some may call messy delivery, I simply, and perhaps foolishly, see as mischievously layered, whether intentional or not. Does that make it a bit messy? Sure. Intriguing to parse through? Most definitely. Where Ebert keys in on the story’s fascination with artificial intelligence, he also loses the thread from his previous notes: this film is also about humanity, and its humanity being served up in multiple different ways, be it how we act, how we react, or how we do not act. He nails this point later in his ten-year anniversary review: “( A.I. ) involves man’s relationship to those tools that so closely mirror our own desires that we confuse them with flesh and blood. When we lose a toy, the pain is ours, not the toy’s....” Ebert, like many critics, (including myself), is notorious for knocking films right out of the gate, in an attempt to try and make a dent, while also working through his opinions, only to later revisit the same film and have a completely different, more positive take. He ended his original review with, “It has mastered the artificial, but not the intelligence,” concluding it was pretty and had ideas, but ultimately felt empty and overly sentimental, a wild take considering Ebert has seen and covered all of Spielberg’s previous movies up to that point, which, dude, you LOVED E.T. !! C’mon, man! And Ebert, like most general audiences, misjudged the film's ending as happy and over-the-top sentimental, a Spielberg twist on a Kubrick-ian futuristic nightmare. Absolutely NOT. First off, that ending is full-on Kubrick, full stop. Like literally. Kubrick wrote that ending. But also, no, no, not happy at all. As much as I’d love to go into it, my buddy Damian Masterson, actually wrote a piece ( Love & Loneliness: A.I. at 20 ) sometime back on this exact argument, so I’ll let him take it from here on that: David doesn’t really get Monica back in any meaningful sense. He gets a simulation of her, that, no matter how literally you want to take the evolved mecha’s explanation that they’ve pulled Monica through time to live this day with him, it is still the Monica that in her own timeline will abandon David as soon as he becomes inconvenient. David does get this one perfect happy day, but when it’s over he lets himself die because this is the best he can ever hope for. (Masterson, "Love & Loneliness: A.I. at 20"). I’ve seen a lot of messed-up things in movies in my time. And while this is far from the most messed up, (it’s definitely more Kubrick than Spielberg), it’s perhaps the Spielberg of it all that makes it simultaneously confusing and more affecting. Granted, your interpretation of the film’s moments and themes, and overall thesis, land on how you perceive David as a character: boy, pet, or toy? All are given equal points throughout the film, yet this allows for confusion in the specificity of their intentions. While that might not be your bag, I love it, and so do all of your favorite writer/directors. Artificiality, like many things, is in the eye of the beholder, after all. What is a soul? What is it to be unique and appreciate that quality of being unique, or seeing something unique? What does love even mean, really? Okay, let’s talk about David. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a philosopher and absolute baller of a Frenchman, is arguably most famous for this line: “There is a within to things,” or alternatively translated, “Things have their within.” This all stands to his point that there is a biological layer hidden beneath every aspect of the universe. Heavy shit for a Spielberg retrospective article, so I’ll tread lightly for your sake. In the most useful of understandings, Chardin’s point is this: no matter what we believe to be inferior or artificial, we will always be just as real as how we define ourselves as real. The artificiality is never-ending. Remember when Thor made that funny joke in Avengers: Infinity War (of course you do): “All words are made up.” Well, that’s also true for everything you believe about yourself, everyone, everything, ever. It’s messed up. And that’s what David’s story in this film is. Stanley Kubrick, being the OG psychopath that we love, apparently wanted to actually build a robot boy to perform the role of David, because of course he did. Technology wasn’t ready, obviously, and continued to not be ready for many years, which ended up being one of the main things that kept Kubrick from ever launching the film into production. But once Spielberg was in the chair, human boys were up for consideration, and Haley Joel Osment was Spielberg’s “first and last choice.” Yes, Jeff Foxworthy’s sitcom-son himself was the main grab for this decades long hunt for the perfect robot boy. Granted, the young Osment had stacked up a bit of a good resume by the time the Beard came calling. Who can forget his thrilling third act portrayal of Young Forrest in Forrest Gump , his endlessly charming screen presence from the 1996 Whoopi Goldberg vehicle, Bogus , or his poignantly charged interpretation of Trevor McKinney from the film adaptation of Pay It Forward ? Hold on, I’m gonna check my notes here, that seems like a wild choice… Oh yes, he was also in The Sixth Sense in 1997 and was nominated for an Oscar for that. All joking aside, I find Haley Joel Osment to be a captivating child actor, which is something that’s not easy to do. His performance in A.I. grows more human throughout the story, which is always a sight to behold every time I rewatch it, and I’ve seen this movie a lot, y’all. He doesn’t blink throughout the whole film. Did you know that? Do you know how crazy hard that is? You do? I figured! And Osment also had a ridiculously clued in understanding of what the intentionality of the character was supposed to be: “I remember he (Spielberg) described the movie as mostly being about your responsibility to intelligence. When they (Spielberg and Kubrick) brought love into the equation, it’s not really a sentimental thing. It’s this really important philosophical thing: What’s your responsibility to that?” The obvious Pinocchio similarities aside, David is presented in the film as simultaneously simple and complex. Sure, David is not a real boy, he’s artificial. But how are we meant to compare the “realness” between David and Martin, the comatose son of David’s adoptive parents, who is both real and not real in the sense of presence. To be here is to exist and to be there is to be elsewhere, yet still exist. But David is here in the sense of his parents, and Martin is there in that same sense. While this relationship only exists for the beginning of the film, it is the beginning of the film that I think is the most important towards the theme: What does it mean to be real and what does real mean? The film's ending really purports the question of "When does a fairy tale end and reality begin?" and really, what’s the difference, anyway? Many of David’s “emotional outbursts,” are interpretively linked to his survival coding, which we see activated multiple times before the story's ending, where he destroys the other David, which could be seen as a competition to his one major goal: being loved by Monica/Mommy, i.e. what he deems being real, being loved. But moments after that, David, who we understand to be a machine with code, tosses himself off the ledge of Cybertronics out of sorrow. What does love mean, what does it do and why is it so important? Is it the questioning of these very ideas that make us human? Why should we need to be human in the first place? Agh! Okay, talk about the movie, Michael…. Okay! Let’s talk about some random fun stuff, quick. Teddy, the animatronic robot teddy bear, is just the purest of delights in movies, isn’t he? The prop bear weighed nearly 40 lbs, which Osment would have to carry around constantly. Teddy’s voice and tone, voiced by Jack Angel, were inspired by Eeyore, with a little wisdom tossed in there for good flavor, and I think that’s what really makes the character soar. The fact that Chris Rock and Meryl Streep show up in this movie for one scene is a bit wild and almost a bit much. But Robin Williams as Dr. Know is a just a breath of fresh air into this movie. Don’t get me wrong, I love everything in this movie both before and after Dr. Know, but by the time he arrives, I was in need of a good laugh, and Robin Williams delivering Shamwow-salesman-turned-Mother Goose-storyteller was exactly what I needed. And probably the funnest of facts: Kubrick actually directed Robin Williams’ voicework for Dr. Know before Kubrick passed away, and this is the material that’s used in the finished film. That’s a hard magic, baby. While there are clearly a lot of visual references to classic Kubrick moments that Spielberg places in the film, (which this video pretty quickly illustrates), the tone is what’s more impressive for me. Spielberg has always had a palette that is more defined by emotionality within cinematic scope than the daring turbulence of Kubrick’s usual flair. Not to say neither has what the other is an expert in, but there are moments throughout A.I. that scream Kubrick just as much as they scream Spielberg, and as a lover of both filmmakers, it’s an enrapturing experience to find yourself in. Spielberg changes his technique in blocking that suggests an attempt to capture a kit of Kubrick’s style, while never quite being able to lose the flair that makes Spielberg who he is. The shot of David sitting at the dinner table, centered in the middle of a light fixture from above, presenting him as an alien in a UFO, is ridiculously awesome, 100% Spielberg’s shit and inarguably Kubrick-ian. In any other movie, one might not even think of the Kubrick comparison. The two filmmakers are operating symbiotically, one from the ground and one from the grave. It’s truly captivating once you watch the film with these shared ideas in mind. Steven Spielberg is the perfect filmmaker to tell a story that visually makes us empathize with an “other” type of being. The man made E.T. , for crying out loud. Just as we ensoul and enrich items we learn to care for, so too do we add our affectations, understandings and even our dreams onto fictional characters, who at first share very little similarities to our own lives. That’s the magic in the magic of the movies! Of course, Spielberg is sentimental. That’s one of his most defining attributes as an American director. But I think that’s a strength, and furthermore, I think most people’s distaste for those aspects of his films are more, albeit unknowingly, complaining about his sincerity, which is vibrant and unabashed, and a thing many people don’t like being reminded of (the lack of sincerity in their own lives). A bit presumptive, I know, but that’s psychology, dawg. It manifests and wraps and unwraps and dissolves into perceived realism and truth. A lot like trying to figure out what A.I. is talking about. Things that are profound tend to confuse some people, and people who fancy themselves smartypants and tastemakers don’t like getting confused, so the thing must just be confusing and bad! That brings us all the way back to the initial misunderstanding of the film, whether it be in the best of interests or the worst. While, yes, Spielberg has overstayed his welcome on the “buttoning up” of his movies, this one is on some different, darker shit, my dude. And I think that was something, at least upon release, that some people were not ready to look beyond, even though this guy had given them Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan . It makes sense that Kubrick’s seemingly most sentimental idea would be a good fit for the seemingly most sentimental director of the past 20+ years. The coldness of Kubrick and the cuddliness of Spielberg is such a short walk that I’m surprised so many major critics fastened their horses to that wagon. Like, that’s your whole take? All of you? Lawd. "What’s really funny about that is, all the parts of 'A.I.' that people assume were Stanley’s were mine. And all the parts of 'A.I.' that people accuse me of sweetening and softening and sentimentalizing were all Stanley’s. The teddy bear was Stanley’s. The whole last twenty minutes of the movie was completely Stanley’s. The whole first 35, 40 minutes of the film, all the stuff in the house, was word for word from Stanley’s screenplay. This was Stanley’s version." - Steven Spielberg "He tried to direct a Kubrick film. I would jokingly call him, ‘Steveley Kuberg” during it, because the material itself is just a crash of the two of them." - Bonnie Curtis, Producer Spielberg utilized in-monitor graphic composites, so he could get a good feel of how shots would look in post on the day of shooting. Much like with Tintin , this method was insanely helpful for Spielberg’s style of directing and blocking, which is very improvisational and in the moment. The dude was figuring out how to shoot mostly-composited film before that was even a thing that most films would wrap their entire productions around. Stan Winston was helping him out in all of this! LEGENDS! Speaking of Stan Winston, that goddamn Moon Ship is one of the best special effects AND best moments in a movie I’ve seen in the 21st century. Even if you don’t like this movie (which, if you’re still reading this and don’t: Sup, dude? Love you!), you can’t deny that’s a baller scene in cinema CGI history. The Teddy robot and FX are also incredibly well done and impressive even by today’s standards. I highly recommend finding videos showing how they practically pulled off the bulk of this, but this one on how they made Teddy interact with Osment's David is pretty wild. The entire designs of the different Mechas are also crazy, utilizing combinations of varying degrees each of practical effects, special effects, human players and puppeteers. There’s a tactileness to even the most CGI’d characters, something that makes it feel both real and otherworldly at the same time. This is important, since a big hook of emotionality to the film is caring about the robotic characters, whether they be smaller parts or our main lead. From metaphors of Civil War approaching, working class people losing jobs being given to newer models and, of course, the Flesh Fair, which is a wild set piece that both feels totally Spielberg but also very out of line with how he usually treats scenes like this. There’s just so much dread packed into this 10 minute moment in the movie that is also brimming with character design, world building, and of course, shot beautifully by Janusz Kaminski. Kaminski describes his evolution of the staging and lighting throughout the film as starting very sterile and clinical, and the second act becomes more action/adventure oriented in its approach and style. The third act, which he described as “extremely emotional,” was given a much more dramatic and artistic approach to its feel. It’s stuff like this that makes him the boss, and in A.I. in particular, he seems to have really leaned in on the visual partnership to the story being told: "A story always dictates its own look and its own approach in the way it's supposed to be photographed and blocked. I firmly believe in reading the screenplay and studying the screenplay and trying to figure out what is the writer saying, so you really reflect that through photography and lighting." -Janusz Kaminski The cinematographer also mentions his and Spielberg’s affinity for utilizing blocking and framing with a very particular device in this movie: "Steven likes smoke. I like smoke. Y’know, umm, I probably like smoke a little bit more than he does. But y’know, I like ambience, I like rain, smoke, mist, y’know, I like looking through things. I like having the frame be obscured by other things, not to just have a clean frame. If the story allows for it, you do it." -Janusz Kaminski It really seems A.I. turned into a real labor of love from everyone working on it, including Spielberg’s most recurring collaborators. John Williams, once again composing for Spielberg, described the movie as being “about very wonderful things to conjure and to ruminate on,” calling the tone and variety of the score “schizophrenic.” It should be noted that, while unsurprising, John Williams composing electronic music is very, very, very, very cool. Williams is in top notch collaborative mode throughout A.I. , much in the same way Kaminski was lending a perfectly articulated visual style to help the story communicate, so too does Williams' score help to maintain the specific lyricism for the emotional palette Spielberg is trying to conjure. While the presence of music can sometimes feel manipulative or distracting, here the visuals and audios dance perfectly in sync. When talking about the very special experience of scoring A.I. , Williams said, “These are subjects that are abstract and spiritual and very personal. And they go right to where music can speak to. Music is really about this kind of thing, at its core. I think the thing that’s unique about A.I. , for me at least, is the essential spiritual aspects of what it was examining. The idea that to be able to love someone is the thing that defines humanity in the end.” With all this in mind, A.I. presents much more than a Spielberg/Kubrick curiosity to be reassessed, again and again, as time marches forward. In the grand scheme of Spielberg’s filmography alone it is a huge standout in terms of look and tone, slightly hinting at the director's more dramatic focused turn he would take in his later career. But his clever love of fun and adventure is also present there, be it buried underneath a dreadful world of loss and love, highlighted by Blade Runner -esque neon lights. For me, what’s so special about A.I . is its script, its story, one told from the mind of Kubrick, but also the heart of Spielberg, using his genius talents to present a multi-million dollar, studio blockbuster as a farewell gift to his good friend, a gift that both of these men were fully capable of giving. The story is all about the human condition. What we believe. What we trust. What we understand, or at least think we understand. How we affect others and allow them to affect us. And all this coming from the mind of one of the most famously affecting directors of all time, that’s something very, very special to consider. Mike Burdge Editor-in-Chief Founder of and programmer for Story Screen. Lover of stories and pizza in the dark. When he isn't watching movies, you can find him reading things about people watching movies. He currently resides in Poughkeepsie, NY, and most assuredly is going through a French Connection phase.

Throughout his career, Steven Spielberg has created some of the most popular films of all time, garnering him an enormous amount of respect on both a critical and financial scale. He is considered by many to be the most famous director of all time, given his track record as both director and producer of some of the most recognizable films of the past 50 years. “Movie Daddy” is a series by Story Screen Editor-in-Chief, Mike Burdge, that aims to cover the Beard's directorial filmography in an attempt to present just why Steven Spielberg is very much that hot fire when it comes to being an American filmmaker. In this installment, the man in the cap returns to the adventures of the man in the hat with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. When George and I were in Hawaii, and I agreed to direct “Raiders,” George said that if I did wind up directing the first one, that I would need to direct three of them. He said he had three stories in mind. It turned out George did not have three stories in mind. We had to make up all the subsequent stories. So it was like two weeks after “Raiders” opened that we knew we were going to have to sit down in a room and figure out what “Raiders 2” was going to be. -Steven Spielberg Movies like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom were meant to be seen by eight-year-olds hiding under their blankets late at night, with the volume on super-low, wary and ready to turn off the TV set and pretend to be asleep should they hear the faintest sound from their parents’ room up the hall. It’s a horror movie to a degree and a cruel one at that, like “Indiana Jones vs. Hell,” or essentially “Indiana Jones in a haunted house,” which was an idea that George Lucas had early on in the treatments. There’s an edginess to this thing that really doesn’t come up in any other Spielberg movies of the time, at least not in such a wholly entertaining and all-consuming way. It’s so different from the first Indie movie and all the subsequent films, making it a pretty unique oddity. Typically mocked as “the bad one,” before Kingdom of the Crystal Skull came along and shut that shit down hard, Temple of Doom is kind of inarguably the best-looking Indie movie in terms of set design, lighting and atmosphere. There are set pieces and moments throughout the movie that absolutely sing, and even though there are moments that are weird and seem a little odd for this type of film, it still very much works overall as an adventure story with more spooky elements tossed on top. Temple of Doom is often regarded as Spielberg’s first sequel, even though it’s technically a prequel, (it takes place one year prior to the events of Raiders as relayed to us through the opening titles: “South America, 1936 / Shanghai, 1935”). While that argument is a semantic one, this opens up a very fun read when considering Indie’s character development throughout this film, and how he doesn’t fit “just right” with the motivations and methods in Raiders . In his review at the time of its release, Gene Siskel pointed out that all the things that have made previous Spielberg films click were on full display in Temple of Doom , reiterating that, “The magic of Spielberg is a collaborative effort.” Also of note in that same review, is Siskel’s phrasing of “starving kids workin’ the miiiiines,” which simply must be heard to be believed. I n this video at 0:12 Siskel goes on to compliment Spielberg’s classical abilities calling him, “a film scholar because he’s studied classic movies. He knows his classic movies,” to which his very attractive counterpart, Roger Ebert, retorts: “He studied classic movies, and he’s making classic movies.” Hear, hear, gentlemen. Heavily criticized upon release for its level of violence and stereotyping, this movie has its fair share of issues that have really only become harder to swallow as the years have gone on. We’ll get more into that in a bit (unfortunately), but it’s good to note this up top because none of these more polarizing issues stopped the film from being pretty much as commercially successful as Raiders of the Lost Ark. Where Raiders was inspired by old adventure serials, Temple of Doom uses that same spark-premise with a 1920s/1930s horror aesthetic, like Haxan, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari , and most notably, the 1939 film Gunga Din . Loosely based on a poem and separate short story by Rudyard Kipling, Gunga Din follows three British officers into the throes of a Thuggee-esque cult in colonial British India. It’s very easy to make the connections with that one, and it’s also a damn great movie that clocks in at Cringe-o’clock. Temple of Doom was my favorite when I was a kid, much like Back to the Future Part II was my favorite of that series; I just loved the tenacity that comes with the aggressive “go for it” attitude this early sequel era was producing. A big plus as well: Doom was way darker than a lot of the stuff I was ALLOWED to watch back then, so I felt like I was getting away with something. This reasoning is also, most likely, why my favorite movie is Who Framed Roger Rabbit . That is a movie parents just let children watch. They let it happen over and over again. In his attempt to crack what the follow-up to the ravenously successful Raiders would even be about, Lucas wanted to match the dark tone of The Empire Strikes Back , which is understandable. Empire was a thrill to develop and make; it took chances and risks that history now shows us have paid off, but at the time, it was a precarious roll of the dice with the biggest movie franchise of all time. But what really gave Empire its endearing nature and made it such a massive success, was its team of writers, and director Irvin Kirschner, who all helped smooth out Lucas’ more intensely disconnected ideas and tones. With Temple, dark magic and fiery caves started to spring into Lucas’ mind. He said of the change: “Part of it was I was going through a divorce… and part of it was we wanted to try something a little bit more edgy.” And suddenly, Gunga Din became a huge inspiration. After initially being pretty uninterested in Lucas’ vision of a haunted house-esque ghost story, Spielberg was intrigued by the switch to black cults and dark necromancy. “What came to mind immediately,” Spielberg said, “was torchlight, long shadows, and red lava light. I wanted to paint a dark picture of an inner sanctum.” This worked out as well for many of the intended set pieces. Many of the sets were actually left over from Raiders . When they couldn’t be worked into the plot, they were repurposed and utilized for Temple . These included: the phenomenal “Shanghai Club Fight,” the “Raft Drop and Rapids Escape,” and, most serendipitously, the “Minecart Chase sequence,” which takes place in a set of underground mines that Roger Ebert referred to as “a vision of hell.” And that mine cart sequence, ultimately developed by ILM, did the best thing you can ever do, which combines miniature effects with live-action footage to create a wildly entertaining sequence. It’s the stuff that keeps movies like Jurassic Park still dropping jaws to this day. The effects are grounding, immersive, and take you away. These bastards had everything ready to go to start punching out a script. Lucas turned to his buddy, the writer of Raiders of the Lost Ark , who had made Empire’s screenplay such a success: Lawrence Kasdan. (Side Note: This is Lucas’s opinion. Not mine, nor fact. Everyone knows the reason Empire’s script slapped as hard as it did was all because of Leigh Brackett. Hear, hear!) But, whoopsie daisy, Kasdan refused to be involved with Temple , citing that he thought the movie was moving in the wrong direction and generally thought it was a “mean-spirited story.” So Lucas hired Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz, who had previously worked on his earlier film, American Graffiti , to take on the script. They were avid visitors of India, and collectors of its artifacts, so... Umm…. I guess they were perfect to write the movie?? The government of India is very involved with anything produced by foreigners in their country that might reflect poorly on their culture. Unsurprisingly to anyone who has seen this movie, they demanded that changes be made to its initial script. These changes were ultimately not made, and so India wouldn’t allow the film to be shot in their country. Instead, the crew shot in Sri Lanka, as well as London, and the movie was eventually banned in India upon its release. Production was off to a bad start, so let’s take a step to the side to examine what actually works well in the movie: its comedy. Now, yes, there are things in there played for laughs that are insulting and bluntly insensitive (more soon, I swear), but I’m talking more about the materialistic comedy that makes up the adventure genre. Pauline Kael praised Temple of Doom as, “One of the most sheerly pleasurable physical comedies ever made.” And the “pleasurable” point of that statement is the most profound because while the movie is entertaining and exciting for sure, it is also very obvious that a lot of fun was had while constructing some of the simpler aspects of the movie as a whole. “An example?” you may ask? Gladly. This movie opens with two very distinct things happening simultaneously: a musical number and a James Bond-esque opening sequence. Noted owner of many sandals and India Scholar Extraordinaire, screenwriter Willard Huyck, says, “The conceit was that Bond movies often start with an action sequence from another story. George wanted to open like that and then go into a second story.” And they do. Indiana Jones was very much pitched as a more adventurous (in genre) take on James Bond, and this was a slick way to pay homage to that trivia fact while also having a lot of fun with the concept. The opening number for the titles is indicative of Speilberg’s long known desire to do a musical, something we’ll finally get in 2021’s West Side Story . And, just for fun, this all takes place at a bar called “Club Obi-Wan.” C’mon, now. For a movie with a reputation for being very dark, it’s also extremely funny and adventurously paced, making it everything an exciting blockbuster should be. It is the darkest of the bunch for sure, but I’d argue it’s also the funniest, or at least, it’s the one that has its eye on being funny most often. Levity is definitely kept in mind, but once again, no amount of levity could help some of the moments in this thing (it’s coming, I swear!) The specific pulp of the serials being honored here has two distinct flavors: the thrilling, and the forbidden, both equally entertaining and captivating. Raiders leans more towards the thrills, as does Last Crusade eventually, but Temple of Doom very much prides itself on showing and exploring “the forbidden.” Both Lucas and Speilberg had all these movies - from the classics to the cult - in their blood. They took this shot to capture the spirit of all of these weird movies. This is a mean, mean, self-aware movie, arguably more experimental than blockbuster. At least up front, they got away with a lot. This Indy is not like the Indy we meet in Raiders of the Lost Ark; he hasn’t matured yet, both as a person and in his reputation. He’s called a “graverobber” at the dinner table, and he doesn’t flinch or attempt to defend himself. He’s almost proud of that label, something he fights back against in morals and actions in both Raiders and The Last Crusade . As a prequel, Temple shows us that Indy has not yet learned to respect the power and sanctity of the pieces he unearths. He’s all about “fame and glory.” He’s kind of a lot like Belloq - the villain from Raiders - at the beginning of Temple , which is interesting, given that there was already a sort of yin and yang relationship happening between them in that first adventure. Throughout Temple of Doom , Indy learns to appreciate his place in all of this artifact hunting and adventuring, and he comes to understand the respect that these totems deserve, (which is exactly how he acts towards the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail in his future adventures). While each film in the franchise offers a different arc for our hat-wearing hero, this second installment is the one that offers the largest in sense of character development. That character development comes in part from his interactions and experiences with his two co-stars: Kate Capshaw as Willie Scott and Ke Huy Quan as Short Round. Look, I’m gonna say it: I’ve never been annoyed by Kate Capshaw in this film, (as seems to be the heavily agreed-upon opinion). And, yeah, I guess I get it. Personally, I’ve never liked the character all that much because there’s just not, well, a real character there, at least not in the way I’d define character. And sure, that’s the thing that gets under people’s skin: she’s an archetype and a bad one at that. In Raiders, Marianne was a foil to Indy with an identity and agency of her own. In Temple, Willie’s lack of agency is kind of the whole point to her character and what she’s doing, (but that doesn’t mean anybody, or I, have to like it). I do think Capshaw’s performance is pretty funny. Willie’s relationship with Indy is a purely sexual one with zero of the romance we see sparking between him and Marianne in Raiders . While some (most) look at that as a downside, I kind of like the change in pace. If we’re gonna do this Bond-esque trope of a different bad guy, a different location, and a different girl in each installment, then I kind of like that they went the full opposite of Marianne in the sequel (prequel), even if it is another example of some wildly infuriating stereotyping. She’s funny! And, you know what? I’m going there, too: I don’t find Short Round annoying, and while, again, I get the annoyance of the Willie “archetype,” I don’t understand the hatred of Short Round. Is it the “adding a kid to the sequel for whatever reason” sort of line of thinking? He’s fuckin’ cool! Sure, he’s there as the kid character, with all the trappings that come along with that, including appealing to a younger audience, but c’mon! That kid is COOL! He’s cool!! Look at him! You know what? I’m only a few lines away from digging into some of the nasty stuff in this movie, and that last paragraph got my blood flowing, so I’m gonna spitball some goofy stuff about this movie that I love. First off, it’s kind of weird that the sword vs. gun callback exists in a prequel. We the audience get it, but Indy’s reaction to that seems like he’s done that move before. I guess he most likely has? And the brief “Evil Indy” we get is so scary and so cool. Having our hero go dark-mode for even just a few scenes is a masterstroke of an engaging idea for a follow-up. The bug bit death-trap? An insanely well-executed moment of cinema. So suspenseful, so funny, so flat-out good. The one-two of “We. Are going. To die.” into an all-timer frown from Harrison Ford is the Academy Award Winner we all deserve. And man, you just can’t beat that bridge scene finale: the setting of the scene, the building of tension, its overall effect and the payoff within the story. The last thirty minutes of this thing are INSANE! Blasting out into the sunlight after nearly a full hour underground is invigorating for a viewer. Hell, the entire final act is like gasoline being tossed onto an already raging fire. Just masterful, “Holy Mackerel” stuff. And speaking of Ford, he had his usual, laid back, dad-vibe opinion on the movie to throw at interviewers whenever they asked him about it: “I was fairly well-pleased with the final result. It certainly was a darker kind of story. But well worth it, I think, for the originality of that film, compared to what I think expectations were for it. I think it was a little bit more challenging than what people were anticipating.” So, flat out and upfront as we dive into some of this stuff, one thing should be made very clear: the way that Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom handles its portrayal of South Asian culture and its people, (however removed from time and reality to serve the fantasy they may be) is inexcusable. This is so much so that Spielberg and Lucas, as well as many others involved in the film's creation, have apologized for their careless handling of something that was, quite frankly, already not being handled all that well within the cinematic landscape of the 80s and well before. When talking about these fatalistic qualities, I’m very much of the mind to find out how these things happened, and why. While there are surely reasons, (which I’ll touch on), there are no true excuses, hence the term: “inexcusable.” Famed South Asian actor, and all-around heartthrob, Amrish Puri, who played the film’s villain, Mola Ram, referred to Speilberg as, “very boyish, an unassuming kind of person.” Puri notes that after appearing in the film, he and fellow South Asian actor, Roshan Seth (who portrayed the murder-mystery butler-esque Chattar Lal), were criticized as being “anti-national” by the local Indian press. Puri says: “It was a chance of a lifetime working with Spielberg, and I don’t regret it even for a moment… I don’t think I did anything anti-national; it’s really foolish to take it so seriously and get worked up over it.” Spielberg himself apparently even gave Puri a hand-written note at the end of production, which affirmed to Puri that he was “my best villain” in Spielberg’s eyes. From these tiny fractions from interviews and hearsay, we can assume the relationship on set between Spielberg and Puri was a respectful one. However, this obviously does not mean that the film was not without its blatant disregard for how certain scenes would be interpreted within the grand scheme of cinematic eternity. The “white savior” narrative in Temple of Doom is an atrociously overused one, and while we’re on the subject, it’s also very dull and lazy. Were this the only major grievance to point out, Temple of Doom would fall by the wayside like so many others in this category have before it, but luckily for no one, this is not the case. Temple contains within its runtime arguably the worst dinner scene in movie history and simultaneously, one of the greatest executions of exposition in movie history. The said dinner scene takes place within the palace of the Maharaja, containing a remarkable amount of exposition, which goes down easy when mixed with the comical reactions of Willie and Short Round to the different types of “food,” being presented, as well as Indy’s stern grasp on questioning his hosts about what exactly is going on. But this sensationally scripted and expertly toned scene has one gigantic fault: it’s ultimately using South Asian culture as a punchline. A LOT. Like, every thirty seconds. And it’s a LONG scene. As a film critic, I can tell you that the scene does have a phenomenal sense of humor, utilizing gross-out comedy techniques to wildly effective results. This is mainly due to the film’s performances and top-notch editing. As a human being with a fairly decent moral compass, however, I can assure you that this shit, in fact, ain’t right, dude. While, yes, the location our main characters find themselves in is fictional, that doesn’t change the fact that they are still in India, surrounded by Indian people. Capitalizing on the existing misconceptions of this country is not only disrespectful and stupid, it’s insanely dangerous. These moments in the film take these misconceptions and blatant racisms and give these ideologies ammunition. It’s what’s called the “Prejudice Western Eye.” There is a line when depicting cultures of a sensitive nature (and this nature is, unfortunately, in this case, defined by the American status quo), and Temple of Doom blows across that line during this scene. Was this all intentional? I truly believe it wasn’t. Does that matter? Not at all. The argument of ignorance vs. racism is a very important one, but the ship has sailed on Temple of Doom . I think we can earnestly talk about what’s great about the film, while also seriously contemplating the negative ramifications it had on South Asians and South Asian-Americans. Bollywood stereotypes Americans in their own films to some staggeringly cringy degree, but we SO deserve it, and honestly, it’s extremely funny to someone like me (an American white man) when they do. That might have something to do with the fact that we have no natural obstacles to tackle in society based on the biases of others, or I might just have a really good sense of humor. Total shrug, my guys, haha! (The world is terrible.) Of course, yes, there is a behind-the-scenes explanation of why some of Temple’s dinner scene might have been “taken the wrong way,” all very finely tied up within the prospect of a deleted line, (where Indy comments at the infamous dinner scene that a devout Hindu would not eat meat) which seemingly would explain away why all of these characters are eating crazy things. Do I believe this? Yes, I very much do. It sounds very Spielberg/Lucas. It would make sense in what we see throughout the scene (Indy is constantly looking at what everybody is eating during the scene, but he never comments outright), and it would be a good pin drop for the reveal coming up. Does it make any of this over-the-top and offensive material “better”? Ahem, louder for the people in the back: Nope. The ignorance and stereotypes don't stop at the dinner scene. The film is loaded with moments that characterize its Indian populace with childish behavior, treating certain aspects of Indian culture as grandiose proclamations as a whole. Maybe most nefariously, the thing to consider about the cultural effects of this movie are the effects it has on children. The bullying towards young children of South Asian descent after this movie was released was massive. This was a movie that was arguably targeted towards children. Kids saw this, and as a result, dipshit kids used the specifics of this movie to torment children that were similar to the characters they saw on the screen. Dumb kids don’t know any better. (Hey there parents, be good at your job). The effects of such ignorance were the ultimate irresponsibility of director Spielberg’s actions and choices within the film. He should have known better. It’s a touchy situation to throw your art form into, especially when you’re already trying to do something that pushes against standards and breaks expectations. To quote a great friend, who also happens to be a fabulously successful musician: “White people just be crazy.” There is a responsibility when depicting characters meant to inform the populace about other cultures in mainstream cinema, and in this regard, Temple of Doom has zero excuses for what we share with each other today. And just like that, let’s talk about Gremlins (also produced by Spielberg) which was released the same year as Temple of Doom . Gremlins is a great movie, and it does not feature any notable racist caricatures of South Asians, as far as I recall. It might though, who can really say? Good transition? Hell yeah, I’m great at this writing stuff. Moving on! As you may have heard, Temple of Doom sparked the creation of the PG-13 rating within the MPAA. A PG rating was originally given to both Temple and Gremlins , later being seen as, err, not quite right for some of the more intense moments they each featured. It was actually under Spielberg’s suggestion that the PG-13 rating was created. That’s right, Steven Spielberg, ya boi, helped form the modern American movie rating system that we all know today. It came into effect only a few months after his suggestions. Red Dawn was the first film to be officially released with a rating of PG-13. That makes sense, because Temple is wildly violent, almost as if pushing the limit was the point, so much so that Spielberg and Lucas may have lost sight of actually how far over the limit they had reached at certain points. This is most likely due to both of them being in the throes of some pretty bitter breakups, but maybe they also wanted to see what they could get away with. I mean, these two dudes have done some pretty dark stuff in their past movies: from killing children in first acts to messing up children forever (who would grow into adults one day), by showing a man getting his heart ripped out on screen while screaming for his life, which was in the same franchise, mind you. People did not like how dark Temple of Doom decided to go and came after it harder than an idiot that spilled coffee on their lap. But perhaps it’s not the darkness of the movie that affected audiences of the time so negatively, as much as the meanness of several specific moments, and how they are doled out in such a fanciful and almost delightful way. There are moments in Temple that seem to luxuriate in how crass and demonic they are that you can start to feel bad for finding something so grotesque both interesting and captivating. The guilt of cinematic thrills, both in production and final product, can be very real, and George Lucas was kind of aware of this as it was happening: I think we went darker than any of us wanted to go. But you’re in the middle of it and you’re doing things and it’s a matter of what you do in every moment. And you don’t realize what has happened until you put it all together and you see it as one piece. If you do a little dark thing here and you do a light thing, and do another little dark thing and then another little dark thing, and then pretty soon you put it all together and you go, “Uh oh… It’s darker than it is light!” And this stuff is stronger than we thought of it as. But I don’t mind the film. We definitely wanted to make a different movie from Raiders. We didn’t want to just do the same movie over again. When it comes to the darker tones in Temple of Doom , (something it is weirdly much more maligned for) Spielberg is similarly (as to racist content) apologetic and candid, expressing an unenthusiastic view on the film in many hindsight interviews, and probably, responsibly so. However, I think the end result is something extremely unique and special, if not quite problematic in some of its depictions. There’s an experimental nature to the film, something that distinguishes it from so many other quick-turn-around sequels of the era, or even today. They could’ve played it safe, and copied all of the good stuff from Raiders in the aforementioned Bond-esque way, but they went full bold af. Hear, hear. But Spielberg, to this day, remains hesitant to claim Temple of Doom as any sort of achievement, always seeming to revert to his discomfort with the levels of darkness Lucas’ story went to: You know, of all the Raider Indy films, Temple of Doom is my least favorite. I look back on Temple of Doom and I say, well, the greatest thing that I got out of that movie was I met Kate Capshaw. And we were married years later and that to me was the reason, I think, it was fated that I make Temple of Doom. And so even though Indiana Jones winds up getting the girl, I really did. He’s of course talking here about his eventual marriage to Kate Capshaw, who played Willie, and as delightful a story as that is (which it very much is) it shouldn’t detract from the bigger, general statement in that quote: Spielberg wasn’t happy with how Temple of Doom turned out. I wasn’t happy with Temple of Doom at all. It was too dark, too subterranean, and much too horrific. I thought it out-poltered Poltergeist. I didn’t do as many storyboards on Temple of Doom as I did on Raiders. Part of that was because I was not exactly secure with the story. I always had some problems with the darkness and I thought that I needed to be more spontaneous and try to put more humor in where it needed more humor. I think Temple of Doom was ahead of its time for my own sensibilities and exactly right on schedule for George’s. George was going through a dark period. -Steven Spielberg In George Lucas’ defense, many of the greatest moments in Temple of Doom can be directly attributed to a break-up: hearts get ripped out, people are forced into a state of powerlessness, and the paternal relationship between Indy and Short Round is threatened by Indy being “poisoned.” It makes sense. Lucas also has a very sobering take on his approach to making a sequel to one of the biggest blockbusters in the early 80s: The danger in making a sequel is that you can never satisfy everyone. If you give people the same movie with different scenes, they say, “Why weren’t you more original?” But, if you give them the same character in another fantastic adventure, but with a different tone, you risk disappointing the other half of the audience who just wanted a carbon copy of the first film with a different girl and a different bad guy. So you win and you lose both ways. Hey man, I think they made the more interesting choice! I’d much rather have had an Indy sequel that went crazy than one that played by the rules. As for the stereotypes and obligatory racist fixtures? I could definitely do with less of that. But come on, that bug bit in the death-trap room? I freak out for nine different reasons every time I watch it! And I’m not the only one, as Spielberg himself has put it down on record: “That whole sequence, I think for me, as a director, is the most successful of all the set pieces in the movie. That, to me, is my favorite scene.” Made on a budget of $28 million, Temple grossed $338 million worldwide. It’s no surprise that this follow-up to the beloved Raiders , with a ridiculous cameo by Dan Akrowd in the first act, was proof in the pudding that Indiana Jones had legs as a series. We’ll get to the future installments soon enough, trust me, but for now, let’s bask in some of the little things that really made this thing sing. For starters, John Williams' score is so different and valorous compared to his other works, even his other Indy movies, that it once again shows this dude can mess around with his own toy box. Temple of Doom won an Oscar for visual effects because of course, it did. The miniature effects utilized in the mine cart scenes are ridiculous, and again, the ending showdown on the bridge is the stuff of pure imagination. A fun fact that you may not be very interested in, but which I find orgasmic: Willie’s dress in the opening scene was created out of original beads and sequins from the 1920s and 1930s, meaning they could only make one dress. One dress. And, of course, the opening scene where Willie wears said dress was actually the last scene shot for the film. The dress, while appearing in the background of a later scene in the film, was half-eaten by an elephant! The dress had to be fixed with what little leftover 20s-era beads remained. This is the type of shit we long to hear when watching 2+ hours of behind-the-scenes footage on blu ray extras. This is that life and these are the spoils. Also fun: Indiana was named after George Lucas’ dog. Willie was named after Spielberg’s dog. Short Round was named after Bill and Gloria’s dog. (Bill and Gloria are the ones that travel to India a lot and wrote the movie, in case you forgot). And holy shit, the fly landing on Willie’s food in the early village scene is a miracle take, fundamentally adding to both the realism of the situation and Capshaw’s performance. Two for two on awesome, improvised fly moments in the Indy films. Fingers crossed. Lastly, but certainly not least, the most interesting, ridiculous tidbit about Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom : the arcade game made by Atari, based on the movie, was the first video game to incorporate digitized speech, using voice clips from Harrison Ford, as well as a must-hear version of John Williams’ theme. There is no better way to end this article than to share with you this deeply sacred treasure. Enjoy. On the next Movie Daddy , we’ll be venturing into one of Spielberg’s more maligned projects, but one that is very much worth inspection: A.I. Artificial Intelligence. Mike Burdge Editor-in-Chief Founder of and programmer for Story Screen. Lover of stories and pizza in the dark. When he isn't watching movies, you can find him reading things about people watching movies. He currently resides in Poughkeepsie, NY, and most assuredly is going through a French Connection phase. You can find him on Letterboxd .

Throughout his career, Steven Spielberg has created some of the most popular films of all time, garnering him enormous respect on both a critical and financial scale. He is considered by many to be the most famous director of all time, given his track record as both director and producer of some of the most recognizable films of the past 50 years. Movie Daddy is a series by Story Screen Editor-in-Chief, Mike Burdge, which aims to cover The Beard's directorial filmography in an attempt to present just why Steven Spielberg is very much that hot fire when it comes to being an American filmmaker. In this installment, we’re gonna talk about the 2004 lighthearted comedy, The Terminal. ==================== When you’re a guy like Steven Spielberg, who has traversed many genres throughout his nearly 50-year career as a director, there will always come a time of scratching the bottom of the barrel for a good idea, as well as seemingly flying too close to the sun of a great one. Some films border on the razor’s edge of these two polar opposite sides of the filmmaking spectrum: films that just barely pull off a decent job of being entertaining and films that land with absolute perfection. The Terminal is none of these. Rather, it is a perfect example of all the other films that fill the space between them: the ones that are alright. Described by Spielberg as a film about “a unique snafu,” The Terminal has always been isolated within the director’s filmography as one of his odder entries, garnering decent success both critically and financially, but never really standing out for anything, be it positive or negative. Sure, the film has its rigid haters (cool, guys), as well as its defiant fans (also cool, guys), but in my opinion, the film is just… okay. Like many films, The Terminal isn’t outlandishly offensive (although, yes, there are some weird problems in there), nor is it anything special really. It just is. It’s a movie, with actors and music and all that jazz. But a movie that Roger Ebert commended for its lessons of “hope and integrity” can’t be all that bad, right? I’d argue that the most interesting thing about the film (besides its obviously impressive production design) is its theme of perseverance, including the choices we make for ourselves and others, something easily undervalued since its greatest points are buried underneath loads of awkward dialogue and scenes of Tom Hanks almost eating condiment saltine sandwiches. Let us begin. "I think that Steven always brings a larger element, a larger emotional element, and almost a larger examination of the theme than the screenplays actually present to begin with. Steven sees something in it that can only be expressed in cinematic terms, that can only be captured in cinematic ways." -Tom Hanks The Terminal is an extremely well-directed film, a statement I’d contest is inarguable to anyone who has actually sat through it. It’s an ideal representation of the stance I’ve made about Spielberg from the very beginning of this series, as well as years before that: even Spielberg’s “bad” movies are expertly crafted from the directorial side of things. Granted, many of these things: lighting, framing, set design, music, etc, are all products of others, working in tandem with Spielberg to achieve his vision, but he’s there, making the calls and getting the shots. The worst Spielberg movie is often just as good as any passable film you think of. He’s like pizza, in that way. After all the darker fare he had thrown himself into over the past decade ( Amistad, Saving Private Ryan, Minority Report ), 2002’s Catch Me If You Can’s light, connectedness was a breath of fresh air for the ol’ hat-wearing boss man, and he wanted more, damn you. MORE. "I wanted to do something that could make me smile, and could make other people smile, and this is a time that we need a smile, and Hollywood movies are supposed to give that to people at times in our own history when we’re going through some painful experiences. I wanted to do another picture that just could make you laugh and cry and feel good about yourself and others." -Spielberg Swoon. Now, before getting into the film proper, I’ve got a couple “quick” things I came across in my research of the film that I’d absolutely love to share with you: the history of the real dude this movie was technically based on, as well as the crown jewel achievement of the film, the set. It should first be noted that while, yes, Dreamworks paid a man anywhere from $250,000 to $500,000 for the rights to his life story of being stuck at an airport for a very long time, this is very much the point where the similarities cease. Mehran Karimi Nasseri was stuck in an airport terminal for eighteen years, seemingly for many reasons, most of which are also contested by officials and people familiar with the event. It’s possible he had been able to leave for years, due to immigration laws and zones changing, but because certain forms were not signed and specific tasks not completed, there he stayed. For eighteen years! When the movie was released in 2004, this guy was STILL in the airport. Apparently, he didn’t see the actual movie when it was released, which is believable because (checks notes) he was stuck in a fucking airport. History time (and then, I swear, back to the Tom Hanks movie)! In 1977, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah (King) of Iran, was doing a bunch of very bad things that resulted in a lot of backlashes and protests. During this time, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) organized that many Iranians were able to receive refugee status in certain European countries, and Mehran Karimi Nasseri claimed to be such a refugee. His mother was British, and so he had stayed in Britain until 1986, and when attempting to move from Britain to Paris, the French government claimed he was never expelled from Iran at any point, and therefore ineligible for this specific type of refugee status. It should be noted that when Nasseri arrived, he claimed that all of his bags had been stolen, along with all of his official papers and documents, and this, naturally, led to the French police swiftly arresting him. After being released by police shortly thereafter, it was technically legal for him to remain in the airport, but not venture into the city, and with no proper documentation, he could not travel. So, he started living in the departure lounge of Terminal 1 in Charles de Gaulle Airport in France. This is where stuff gets very irritating, so brace yourself: he repeatedly tried to get his documents from Belgium, but this required him to physically be there to obtain them, which was impossible. Then, after nearly ten years of this nonsense, the government of Belgium agreed to allow him to travel to their country in order to retrieve the documents, but only as long as he was under constant supervision during his travel and stay. He refused. At a few points, both France and Belgium granted residence to Nasseri, but he once again refused, referring to his British citizenship, which he demanded be on his papers. He also, at one point, changed his name to Sir Alfred Mehran, which, umm, wasn’t real. So, yeah, he wasn't doing himself a ton of favors. Nasseri stayed at the airport from August 26, 1988 until July 2006, when he was hospitalized for unknown medical reasons and removed from the airport, along with his “living space,” which was a small area containing his minimal belongings and bedding. In 2007, he was transferred to a Christian foster home in Paris, where he resides to this day. Now, there has been a lot of documentation released on the apparent mental health of Nasseri, who seemed to have slipped into a state of agitation and refusal of his own identity by the late 90s. The same year that The Terminal (that’s right, the movie we’re talking about!) was released, Nasseri had an autobiography published, called The Terminal Man . As briefly stated at the top, Spielberg’s company, Dreamworks, had bought the rights, but the director seemingly decided not to get too specific in the story they were trying to tell. I say seemingly, because, and here comes the weirdest part about all of this to me, Nasseri is never mentioned in the extensive behind-the-scenes featurettes or in any of the release tour interviews that I could find. There is no mention of him by the cast or crew before, during or after the production of the film. The only reason we know Dreamworks bought the rights in the first place is from a 2003 article in The Guardian , which simply reports that the rights had been acquired, as well as the legend that Nasseri himself draped a poster of The Terminal over his luggage during the years following the film's release. Alright, let’s gush over this set for a minute. Alex McDowell, the production designer, who also worked on Minority Report with Spielberg, realized that there was no known set or warehouse in Hollywood that could hold their designed set plans for their version of JFK International Airport, and so, he began scouring the greater LA area, leading to the discovery of an old hanger in Palmdale, which was originally used to build airplanes. There they constructed three stories of a fully fleshed-out set, which spanned the size of four football fields, creating a gigantic 360 degrees of shootable space. Good lord! In a cinematic world now filled with CGI for massive locations, this is a refreshing, tactile spectacle. Remarking on the set, Tom Hanks said, “It’s immediately inviting. This is actually the antithesis of what most motion picture making is. It is bright. It is airy. It is cool. And there are plenty of places to sit!” Further infusing this feat with realism, more than thirty-five companies are represented in the mall, all of which were, for lack of a better term, as real as the movie making business would allow. McDowell commented that, “The set had to carry its own weight,” and he sought the invisibility aspect of set design, and my holy hell did he pull it off. The set was based off of a dozen different terminals, from Denver to Osaka, incorporating all the modern and throwback feels they encountered across the world of international airports. Things like welcoming architecture and natural light were all taken into account, and the finished product is truly the main star of the film. It all creates something that feels both natural and real, bland and normal even, but also has a monumental sense to it from any angle in every shot. On a daily basis, the film had five to six hundred extras, all touched by wardrobe in varying ways. Wow. And, on top of the building of the actual set, which took (checks notes) forever, Spielberg had McDowell create a fairly large model of the terminal set early on, which he used to spend the summer planning many of his shots and set ups using a mini-periscope with a small camera attached to the end. Crazy and cool. Spielberg says: "I did want to memorize the set before I began the movie. I wanted to discover the set the way Viktor Navorski was discovering his environment, his new home… It really kept me stimulated cinematically. I used every square inch of that space that Alex McDowell built for us." Thanks for sticking with me on that. Now, back to the movie itself. Spielberg says that the script came to him through the many, many scripts tossed his way from Dreamworks, the production company which he co-founded in 1994. After reading “three scripts on Saturday,” and “three scripts on Sunday,” The Terminal was the last one to land in The Beard’s lap, and it apparently floored him. Now, this script doesn’t seem to present anything special at my glances, so maybe he’d been worn down by whatever these unlucky five previous scripts were. But to be fair, he does, in an interview, refer to the script as “very well treated,” so it might have just been the concept that grabbed him. I mean hey, it’s a good concept! Wasn’t this based off of someone Steven? Hmmmmm?? Steven??? He loved the script, and told his co-producers he’d love to direct it, based on an affinity he had for Viktor’s story. He just liked this story, I guess! And that’s no surprise, as even Roger Ebert admitted in his soaring review of the film: “ The Terminal doesn’t have a plot, it tells a story. We want to know what will happen next, and we care.” Co-screenwriter Sacha Gervasi, who wrote the final draft with Jeff Nathanson, took it upon himself to live at the Tom Bradley Terminal at LAX for several days for research. In doing this, he discovered what anyone who has ever worked in the service industry knows very well: you learn to rely on one another, and any constant that retains the mere semblance of normalcy, be it co-workers, customers, or repeating events. This is the community theory that injects itself into any stable, healthy working environment. The social and emotional end point that is suggested, and lightly played with, throughout the film is actually quite profound, especially when attributed to an airport of all places, a setting most of us have dealt with as a means to an end; a sort of “passing through” to other more interesting and desirable things. But producer Laurie MacDonald absolutely nails it in this quote about the greater meaning of the setting of film: "In a real airport and in our set, which is as good as a real airport, it’s all about people on their way to someplace. It’s all about movement. And in our own lives, I think, we’re all about movement. We’re about our jobs and rushing to get the kids to school. It often leaves little time for reflection. And in some ways, I think Viktor’s stillness allows him to be a kind of mirror for these people. He allows them to kind of examine their own lives. I don’t think Viktor really changes as an essential person from the experience… I think it’s more about how he affects the lives he intersects with." Similarly, Spielberg says this: "There’s a tremendous pace to this story. The average scene in this movie is like a minute and forty-five seconds, and so, even though Viktor is stuck at an airport, where you would expect the film to have no energy, for the film to close in on itself, and be extremely lugubrious, just the opposite is what I intended. I wanted everybody, passengers coming, passengers going, to create a kind of gauntlet. There’s a shot where Viktor just stands and the camera pulls back to the very, very end of the airport, and Viktor, you just lose him, he becomes invisible, and he’s the only person not moving, everyone else is moving in every direction of the compass except him. And so there is that energy in the story. Waiting can be exciting. Waiting can be entertaining." The story, in and of itself, is rather lackluster and pretty flawed; it is not a script alone that makes a film, however important it may seem and actually is. No, my dear reader, even the faultiest of teleplays can be risen ever higher by the production that sets out to bring it to life. We’ve already talked about the miraculous set constructed for this thing, but what about the tiny humans hired to act in it? Let’s run down a few of the major players: Stanley Tucci: anytime, anywhere, baby. Tucci is an ace up the sleeve for any movie, a performer that truly shows up to play and gives great acting. Tucci was Spielberg’s first and only choice to play Dixon, and the naturalism he brings to a character whose humanity and faults needed to tip-toe the line of villainy were crucial to the right mood for the character. The photocopy scene is, I’ll admit, a bit intense though. The character, out of nowhere, is allowed to go beyond the intentions of the script with blatant disregard for what all involved were hoping to communicate. It’s a brief blip of a betrayal of the character, and it happens a bit more throughout the latter half of the film, but not as intensely. Still, it’s Tucci, so you love to see it. Diego Luna: a giant cheek you wanna pinch throughout the entire movie. Luna’s charm would be undeniable if it wasn’t for his character unintentionally being written as a huge creep and definitive weirdo. This guy does the weirdest shit in a movie that is filled with weird shit that doesn’t make any sense. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to get into it at length, because I spent four paragraphs talking about a mentally ill dude in a French airport earlier, but I’ll just say this: “The Spielberg Touch” is working on full overtime to get this one under your nose, and for some it worked, but people don’t forget. (More on “The Spielberg Touch” coming up.) Zoe Saldana: Yeah, I know her character is a Trekkie, and that this movie was made years before she’s cast as Uhura in the Star Trek reboot. Not only do I know this, but I also concur that it is neat. That’s neat! Her character is given the same soft edges as everyone else (which can and unfortunately does lead to generally not really caring about any of these people), and her interactions with Hanks are genuinely sweet, even though the underlying motives are creepier than a crime scene flashback from Se7en . But Saldana, like Spielberg and MacDonald, seemingly gets it: "Every character in this film has been affected, in one way or the other, by this man who out of nowhere is completely dropped in a very hopeless situation and somehow he still has the power and the influence to bring hope to everybody and their own circumstances." Catherine Zeta-Jones: Spielberg saw the actor in the TV mini-series Titanic , a hard-recommend from me for anyone who truly wants to live life on the edge. The director fought for her to get cast as Elena in The Mask of Zorro , which he was executive producing. From there, her star shot high and did so insanely fast with Entrapment, High Fidelity, Traffic and her Oscar winning performance in the one movie that had it all, Chicago . From there, a brief stop in the Coen Brothers’ unfairly forgotten Intolerable Cruelty , and off to The Terminal she went. Zeta-Jones’ Amelia is a character that’s designed from the ground up around her inability to nurture her relationships based solely on her job as a flight attendant, which is to say, she can never allow herself to be content because she is in constant flux. I like this idea, Terminal , but like, just because of her job?? Slightly more interesting, Amelia builds this grand outlook on her life based on the people she reads about in history books, which she buys at all the terminal mall gift shops on her travels for work. That’s friggin’ really cool character work that goes nowhere. It is unfortunate that much of Amelia’s role in the film is anchored to the reactions and growth of its central figure, but that’s just the way misogyny gonna misogyny, bucko. The fascinating thing the film (unsuccessfully) attempts to communicate is that the romance is destined to be a platonic evolution for Viktor Navorski’s character. Says the Spiel: "In a sense, Viktor comes into Amelia’s life as a good listener, as a good confidant. Not so much as a lover, not so much as her next boyfriend, not so much as her knight in shining armor, but HE LISTENS. And she doesn’t know many men that listen. And because Viktor doesn’t speak English very well, all he can do is listen!" This does end in Amelia’s character suffering a romantic-comedy version of the end of Chinatown , but what ya gonna do, write a strong female character with an arc? Naaaahhhhhh. At least she doesn’t end up getting married at an airport to a future lieutenant of the Jigsaw Killer. Which brings us to Tom Hanks. It can’t be understated how amazing of a run Hanks was on leading up to this movie, but in defiance of that statement, I’ll understate it anyway: your dude was on a run. The simplicity of Hanks’ Viktor, in how he is both written and performed, is central to this tried-and-true tale of a good person changing the lives of those around him by just being his good ol’ self. Viktor is heartfelt and good, a hopeful and helpful man, succeeding by his wits alone in a variety of encounters and situations, and Hanks's selling this is the underlying magnetism of the film. It really is a wildly captivating performance, even with all the shenanigans going on around it. There’s an experiential evolution written into the character that is just so fascinating to watch Hanks really dig into; it’s one of the many reasons he’s just such a great performer. On this Hanks says, “He (Viktor) really does go through a transformation that by the time he leaves, he probably has a much better appreciation for America when he leaves this terminal than he would have if he had been out in America all this time.” And that accent? In an interview with the ravishing James Lipton, Hanks said the accent of the fake Eastern European country, Krakozhia, was based loosely off his father-in-law, who spoke Russian, Turkish, Polish, Greek, Italian and French, and who was himself Bulgarian. Acting, folks! The relationships Viktor has with each main character build the thematic intentions of the film, another piece of evidence that there is something going on in this movie underneath all this. Dixon and Viktor are the same, seemingly just following rules, but where our “villain” can seem strict and suspecting, our “hero” is easy-going and generously trusting. Amelia and Viktor are both lonely, but for different reasons, and both are stuck in the hindrances of the airport(s), and neither is going anywhere of worth anytime soon, which unbeknownst to them is the foundation of their attraction to each other, again for different reasons. And then there’s the way that the characters in this world see Viktor, and in turn how we the audience interpret how we should feel about him. There’s a sentiment here that tip-toes the lines of Anti-Americanism, however manipulated this may feel, or actually be, in the finished film. Viktor is seen, at first, as inept and simple, not even understanding basic concepts because, simply, he doesn’t speak English. But his nobility and earnestness come in stark contrast with what we think a “hero” should be. This all comes from Spielberg’s attempts to paint the terminal as a “small microcosm of society,” going on to say, “There’s places to eat, places to shop, places to go to the bathroom… Airports are mini-communities.” Returning again to orchestrate the tickling of the ivories and strings is Big Daddy John Williams, turning out a score that is, at first glance, generic and what you’d come to expect from the master giving it his fine touch. But much like Spielberg as a director, John Williams is very much pizza. And given his exhaustively impressive career, it may surprise you that his work on The Terminal , and the film itself, is one of his fondest memories: "I like this film very much. It’s a love story, of course, in a way. But I also see this film as an Ellis Island poem, if you like. And so musically, you know, it’s an opportunity to create music for Viktor that has an ethnic texture." To give texture to the score, Williams subtly utilized the accordion, clarinet and cimbalom, all go-to Eastern European musical instruments, and he did it marvelously, incorporating rarely heard tunes and sounds into an otherwise familiar epic in scope Williams joint. This worked well when starting to mess around with what could be used to define character’s cultures and backgrounds in unexpected ways, such as the introduction of Amelia’s theme, or the “love theme” of the film as Williams and Spielberg would call it, which brings an Americanization to the sounds so far established to be heavily Eastern European. Williams, sweetly, referred to this composition as “a lovely piece that I was very grateful to have worked on.” The Terminal’s big third act reveal (which is also cleverly hidden throughout the film in throwaway lines of dialogue and keenly inserted music) establishes the very reason for Viktor being in America is tied around the legacy of jazz, not just as a genre of music, but as an American way of life and identity. This, naturally, appealed to Williams very, very much: "I like the jazz sequence, of course, very much at the end. I love this whole idea: the photograph of the jazz greats is, at least in my part of the culture, a very well known photograph… Storywise, that a man would come from Eastern Europe with a little can of photographs is a fantastic idea. You know it’s a very nice point about the jazz being the subplot of the film… the poetic sense, I’d guess you’d say, that Viktor is here. To have the autograph of Benny Golson, who’s a great jazz musician." What Spielberg brings to the table for The Terminal is what he’s brought for every movie he’s ever directed. He’s like your grandma, always bringing the same dish to every family dinner, but boy howdy does that dish slap every time (and as someone who has a grandmother who is a terrible cook, I understand this comparison won’t be easy for everyone, but you get what I’m saying). There’s a comforting charm to this film. So many elements are bad and should spoil much of the movie, be it individual subplots, failed romantic moments, general believability, or very much an assortment of moments featuring problematic stereotyping. In hindsight, removed from the warm embrace of the film, these things are most assuredly condemnable and can present the picture of a poorly made movie. But Spielberg makes you believe in the good of his characters and world, and while you’re in it, it’s all sprinkles and ice cream. This is what I mean when I say, “The Spielberg Touch,” and I’ve held off on speaking about it in the past year of articles because I wanted to wait for my discussion on a movie that would most benefit from its presence. Spielberg is a brand name. If Alfred Hitchcock is called the "Master of Suspense," then Spielberg could be called the "Master of Believability." As a director, he is as exacting as he is generous, and both of these are the things that truly come across in anything he makes. “The Spielberg Touch,” is quite simply, the inexplicable yet undeniable energy you feel flowing through you when you watch a Spielberg movie. It could be a whole damn movie, or just a scene, or even the smallest of moments within a scene, but you know it when you feel it. It is the arrival of imagination, and Spielberg is the one pulling the ship slowly into port. Or, I guess in this example, landing the plane. The Terminal , much like Saving Private Ryan and Lincoln , is also a great example of Spielberg being a director of actors, as well as a director of scenes and moments. "I think that what I’m attracted to as an actor is the same sort of qualities that he’s (Spielberg’s) attracted to in the story as a filmmaker, and he constantly surprises me with his visionary idea of how to make a shot interesting on one hand, but much more important, how to tell a story with a shot in the scene." - Tom Hanks Perhaps you have heard, in all of your extensive conversations surrounding 2004’s The Terminal , that Spielberg was heavily influenced by the works of famed French actor-director, Jacques Tati. This has been stated by the director in multiple interviews and discussions, but to quote Jesse Buckley’s Young Woman, “I’m not sure I agree.” The similarities between Tati and Hanks’ performances are obvious, but that’s where I think the influences stop. While I’m sure Spielberg had it in his mind to direct Hanks in such a way to emulate the late, great comedic performer, much of the blocking and antics used in Tati’s work were already staples of what made some of Spielberg’s more comedic moments in his previous films work so well. It’s an influence he’s felt, knowingly or not, for decades by the time he made The Terminal . Is it a little more on-the-nose because of the genre he’s working in? Yes. Does that make it a noteworthy influence? I’d say not, but you can’t blame a man for bringing out the big names of performative realistic comedy when trying to make his own comedy that is so aggressively trying to communicate mundanity. This also happens to be one of the movies “The Big Four” worked on together, which included the likes of Spielberg himself, the previously mentioned Big Daddy John Williams, as well as cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, and editor Michael Kahn. Kaminski is one of my favorite cinematographers, and for good reason. The man is unique in his style and approach to making things look naturalistic while simultaneously cinematic. This is why he and Spielberg have collaborated again and again because Spielberg’s approach to creating naturalistic magic works insanely well when grounded by the strong hand of Kaminski, firmly gripping the look and feel of the real world, an advantage he uses to an alarming degree in more serious works like Schindler’s List, Minority Report and Munich . For The Terminal , Spielberg had spoken with Kaminski to up the realism of every shot: "We’re not going to stylize the picture, we’re not going to visually editorialize on it, I’d just like to get this terminal, which is a set, to look like we were on location shooting in the real place. And that is exactly what Janusz did. Janusz still had some tricks up his sleeve, he gave it a kind of really nice, colorful wash, he lit it beautifully and elegantly, but realistically, so it passed off the artificial arc light for real sunlight, so that you’d think it was real sunlight coming through the skylight." At this point, Michael Kahn had edited seventeen of Spielberg’s twenty-one films. They got each other, and so quickly, on the day editing allowed for the perfect moments to be captured from each workday. Love it or leave it, this is the exact movie they meant to make. While there will be much more talk in the coming installments on Kahn (and Kaminski), I would like to state how soothing I find the editing in this film. One of my deepest appreciations within film lies in “The Lie,” or the editing. It’s something that took a long time to get a grasp of, and much, much longer to sharpen in my own head where every cut I was noticing wasn’t distracting me from what was actually happening. Seriously, studying editing ruined a good 3 years of movies for me (sorry, Zero Dark Thirty !) But Kahn, like Spielberg and Williams, is an adaptive little monster, able to throw his usual signature on just about anything he approaches while making it feel fresh and original, and The Terminal is no different. There’s a lot of stupid stuff in this movie, and as a white man, I’m not ashamed to admit my hesitancy in shrugging off any racially insensitive stereotyping that is for sure going on with a load of characters (more on this in the next article), nor am I completely oblivious to the fact that the women in this movie are extremely one dimensional and without any resemblance to a real person I’ve ever met. But I do maintain that I think this was all done from a place of trying to tell a specific story about the good in all of us and the power that both cultural and gender differences can have in a world that, frankly, loves to exploit that stuff. In commenting on this, do I think The Terminal furthers the conversation in this way? I absolutely do not. I think the fun, whimsical nature of the film very much gets in the way of the heavier things it is so ironically lightly touching against. I’m not trying to be Mr. Positive here. There’s a lot wrong with The Terminal , but I do think the parts that do work, work swimmingly well, and really give a nice brush across the whole thing that leaves, at least me, satisfied. The public reception would seem to be in line with my feelings, at least for the most part. While many critics enjoyed the film for what it was, almost all were aware of the film’s shortcomings but remained generally positive on the quality and lightheartedness on display. Made for $60 million, the film grossed an unimpressive $77 million domestically, while worldwide it pulled in $218 million, also not very breathtaking. Barry Shabaka Henley, who played head guard Thurman, called the film, “an adaptation of neutrality,” and I find that a genuinely surreal statement coming from a man that has worked in some seriously amazing movies. Also, the bit of Gupta, played by Kumar Pallana, leaving the floor wet to watch people slip and fall for fun IS cinema. And on that note, the scene with a foreign traveler trying to explain his need for the medicine he has unintentionally brought into America, and the resulting moments between him, Viktor, Dixon, and a fleet of airport security, is pure Spielberg magic. The pacing, the tone, the editing, the delivery of each line. This is what he can do with just a few shots and some dialogue, akin to what I previously discussed in my Raiders of the Lost Ark article. Much like who the pills end up being for, Spielberg is GOAT. On the next Movie Daddy , we’re gettin’ back to that ol’ whip and hat man with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Mike Burdge Editor-in-Chief Founder of and programmer for Story Screen. Lover of stories and pizza in the dark. When he isn't watching movies, you can find him reading things about people watching movies. He currently resides in Poughkeepsie, NY, and most assuredly is going through a French Connection phase.

Throughout his career, Steven Spielberg has created some of the most popular films of all time, garnering him an enormous amount of respect on both a critical and financial scale. He is considered by many to be the most famous director of all time, given his track record as both director and producer of some of the most recognizable films of the past 50 years. Movie Daddy is a series by Story Screen Editor-in-chief, Mike Burdge, which aims to cover the Beard's directorial filmography in an attempt to present just why Steven Spielberg is very much that hot fire when it comes to being an American filmmaker. In this installment, we’re talking about the director’s underappreciated 2002 caper, which also happens to be one of his best films, Catch Me If You Can . ==================== In the oeuvre of Steven Spielberg’s many forays into different genres over the course of his nearly 50 year career, one would not be blamed for failing to recall his Little Leo Movie ™ , Catch Me If You Can . You’d imagine something like “DICAPRIO. SPIELBERG.” would be plastered all over the movie’s advertising, even sticking with its legacy as the team-up of the moment, much like Minority Report still remains today to be the legendary joining of the blockbuster forces that were late 90s Spielberg and Tom Cruise. But perhaps the reason CMIYC is so quickly lost within the director’s filmography isn't the fault of the movie itself, but rather, because the dude has made, like, a shitload of very good and even more popular movies. Case in point: I’m here to tell you that Catch Me If You Can is not only one of my favorite movies from Spielberg, but it just might be, pound for pound, one his top filmmaking outputs. A kid’s imagination is weaponized for personal gain in this rollercoaster of genre-mixing and effortless tonal balancing. (That would be my quote pull if I was trying to be a professional about quote pulls). The very concept and selling power of CMIYC could power a whole city for at least a week. You’ve got a coming-of-age drama tucked within a globe-trotting adventure, with spy and cop vs crook action and suspense, all nestled gently into a family-friendly comedy that’s not afraid to get quite sincere about some very adult ideas. It’s also got fucking Leonardo DiCaprio, that dang Tom Hanks, and ya boi, Christopher Walken, not to mention a radical supporting turn from one Amy Adams. More on all of them in just a moment. For now, let’s look at just what’s going on in this movie, and what particular set of skills Spielberg brings to the table to really pull this feast of spoils together. As I assume you’d be aware (if you’re reading this) CMIYC follows the real-life story of Frank Abagnale Jr. as a teenager and young adult, traveling the world and forging checks to pay his way in the 1960s, all the while, taking on the identities of several fictional versions of himself, in order to charm his way into a sizable fortune. All the while, Frank is also being pursued by an FBI agent (Hanks) with a penchant for Chinese food on Christmas Eve, using “Good Humah Bahhs” as a bargaining chip. Of course, the movie is heavily dramatized, as all true-life flicks are, and it focuses mostly on explaining what would drive a relatively bright and respectable kid to commit one of the largest cases of fraud and theft in American history, while evading every level of the authorities along the way. The real Frank, who wrote a notably successful book on his escapades, has been known to state that, “It was never really about the money.” And so too is Spielberg’s eye focused on the whys of Frank for the story’s true drama, and letting the hows fill in the action and set pieces to keep the pace going. Here, The Beard continues his exploration of the dynamic between fathers and sons, that he has been drawn to in so many of his other films, most notably: Close Encounters of the Third Kind , Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and War of the Worlds . As these movies, and others, all differ on the specifics of the paternal study, CMIYC finds its anchor in consideration of the odd ways different father figures can be formed from the most unlikely of relationships. While, yes, the very plot of this movie obviously revolves around success and the American Dream - and the idea of power that pure opportunism can grant to even the most inexperienced and well-intentioned among us - it ultimately reveals itself to be a whimsical study of loneliness and regret. The film posits two points, 1: “How does truth and lies come to define the self-actualization of our own identity and place in the world?” And 2: “How we affect those around us, can be much more important to our own identity, than the simple things we do.” In CMIYC, w e’re being told the story of a young man that’s trying to prove himself, seemingly, to the world, but who is ultimately unselfish in expected ways, and really just wants to to impress his father, and fix what his parents have broken. Along the way, we get an unexpected connection between cat and mouse, as both close calls and Christmas calls begin to bridge the gap between cop and crook. Dare we not forget: Catch Me If You Can is very much a Christmas movie, many of its moments of levity rely on conversations and events taking place on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. This time of year can be a lonely time, and our two main characters, both from broken homes, connect on this family holiday, at first as only a vessel for coy shots, but ultimately as friends in the end. While all of these things are well and fine to have within your movie, giving your finished product a point, that ever fleeting thing that many big blockbusters of this time forget to include (what truly makes CMIYC sing) is Spielberg’s unique approach to comedy, and the murderer’s row of talent that he lines up to execute it. This is easily one of Spielberg’s funniest films, rooted more in lightheartedness, good characters and a fanciful tone, than actual jokes and set-ups. Spielberg himself referred to the comedy of the film as something more in line with “a comedy of errors'' but not exactly: "I think the comedy is in the cat and mouse pursuit, but the drama, which I think is essential to the basis of the movie, is about a boy who was heartbroken that his parents got divorced and wanted to go into the world and make it all up to his parents." Here, we can see exactly where Stevey was looking to play: he saw a real, human story at the center of a visually appetizing adventure. Getting involved with this particular project was a little conventional, however. The Dreamboat of Los Angeles, Leonardo DiCaprio, was set to play Frank, based on the screenplay, which had been pitched and adapted from Abagnale’s book, and Leo more or less hired Spielberg out of a desire to simply work with the director. Spielberg was burned out from the darkness of his prior two films, Artificial Intelligence and Minority Report , and was looking for something light to get creative with when DiCaprio’s offer crossed his desk. And, performance wise, DiCaprio is at his smoldering peak, able to play both naive adolescence and cunning charisma back-to-back. However haphazard his character’s actions might seem in the moment, scene to scene, it’s a showcase of the many talents the actor has utilized over his massively wonderful career, tucked within the midst of an epic 10-year run that started with 1997’s Titanic and ran through his explosive performance in 2006’s The Departed . Leo’s been known to talk a phone or two in his films, and this movie is no different. He’s also got a habit for taking on slight (and sometimes, not so slight ) accents for some of his characters, and CMIYC finds him swapping accents based on who he’s talking to, in order to make them feel more comfortable, thus more likely to trust him. Embarrassingly, this is something I, myself, do subconsciously all the time, and there’s no control over or malicious intent behind it. I’ve no idea where it comes from, most likely, unknowingly adopted during my time in the military, where I was constantly speaking with people from all over the country with different dialects and ways of conversing, but it’s just interesting to see this tick of mine being weaponized onscreen in such a lighthearted way. And the rest of the cast? Wowie wow. Tom Hanks gave one of the best performances of his career just four years earlier with Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan , and here he tapped into a synergy that would come to define his comeback trail only a few years later. It’s interesting that Hanks’ career bumps and leaps seem so intrinsically tied to working with Spielberg. Saving Private Ryan really marks the peak of Hank’s second wave of the 90s as an awards worthy performer, while Spielberg’s The Terminal, rightfully shut that shit down for a while only two years after CMIYC . And while Hanks continued to work in low-brow thrillers (the Langdon Trilogy), collaborated with extremely exciting creators ( Cloud Atlas ) and kept his voice work as everybody’s favorite mini-cowboy friend, Woody ( Toy Story 3 ), it can be argued that his comeback to the main fold, seeded lightly by 2013’s Captain Phillips , can be directly pointed at Spielberg’s magnificent 2015 thriller, Bridge of Spies . The director and actor have had an enormously interesting and varied collaborative arc, and I look forward to covering these films in particular (warts and all) as this series continues. But in CMIYC , you can really see the beginning sparks of Hanks’ evolution into #AmericasDad, where his comedic gifts (that were so prevalent to his image in the 80s) combine with his captivating demeanor as an awarded thespian to really converge together to produce a respectable presence in every scene he enters. He’s also low key funny af in this movie, and that alone would make the entire movie sing if none of this other stuff was present. There’s no shortage of supporting roles in this movie either, as made evident by the Best Supporting Actor noms that were being thrown at Christopher Walken by anybody with a voting council. And Walken is, of course, a delight, and these nominations are well deserved and far more than earned in the quiet scenes he is given. It is unfortunate that he was up against some fierce competition at the Oscars that year for the big supporting award, with John C. Reilly ( Chicago ), Ed Harris ( The Hours ), Paul Newman ( Road to Perdition ) and, the eventual winner, Chris Cooper ( Adaptation ) really making it quite the tough exercise to get upset about one winning over any other on the list. Still, Walken imbues Frank Sr. with a quiet sadness, and his trademark irreverent energy, leading to a very much needed audience connection with Frank. You really want the elder Abagnale to find pride in his son’s actions, even if only to recognize the talent and skill our protagonist has acquired, but Walken’s sullen face and weathered soul remind us just what happens to folks who try to cheat the system for too long. It should also be noted that Amy Adams is on some next level shit in this movie, and I am here for it. Every scene she’s in is magic, and much like Walken’s Frank Sr., you really start to feel for the characters as you learn to love them and become more and more afraid of what tragedies Frank’s actions will unleash upon this quaint and darling soul. On the other end of the soulful spectrum, Jennifer Garner’s brief “working gal” scene really reminds you of what this actress was capable of when used correctly. As her character’s presence teaches Frank so much about confidence, charm and cunning, it also reinforces just how good he naturally is at these skills. But with help from Garner’s distracting performances and black widow-esque mannerisms, he misses the true point of the interaction, something Spielberg makes very plain for the viewer: none of this is actually real. Catch Me If You Can was ultimately a pretty well-regarded success. Great reviews and a $352 million worldwide box office against its $52 million budget is nothing to sniff at. It garnered some decent awards nominations and even healthier buzz. It does, as previously touched upon, have the curse of being lost in Spielberg’s gigantic legacy, which does also happen to be the case with some of his other films that we’ll be covering soon enough. Both in 2002 and in retrospect, the movie received loads of praise from some of the very highest of chairs. Roger Ebert loved it, specifically Spielberg’s approach to glamorizing the actions of Frank, stating: “Once he discovers how much he can get away with, there is a certain heady exhilaration in how easily he finds status, respect and babes.” And in answering some questions on some of his favorite underrated films, Sexually Attractive Person, Guillermo del Toro, lauded the 2002 caper as a work of pure perfection, tweeting: “It’s perfectly engineered. Spielberg is the modern master of the 1-3 minute single shot. Precision work.” And I agree. It’s a perfect movie. It might not be one of the greatest movies of all time, but for what this film sets out to do, you can’t get any better at how it does it at every turn. Some last stop notes I wanted to include: the visual evolution of the quality of Frank’s forged checks is movie magic at its best. Spielberg has such a gift for communicating information in ways that don’t feel expository, and seeing him utilize these techniques, normally reserved for action set pieces, for jovial montages is a sight to behold. And not only with his crime checks, but also with Frank’s increased confidence in charming people into doing whatever he wants. Frank learns most of his tricks and gets upgrades to his charm game through television. As a movie lover who was, in many ways, raised by TV, (as was Spielberg himself) this is something very heartening to behold as the story progresses in these ways. Hell, the movie even starts off with a fake TV Game Show showing you everything you need to know about Frank’s character as well as the story. And speaking of the opening, the opening credit sequence by French duo, Olivier Kuntzel and Florence Deygas, along with John Williams’ score, is a contender for greatest opening credits of all time. I will die upon this hill, and I shall not be going alone. Incorporating a classic feel for golden age opening credits, this is easily one of Williams’ best themes, and that is an extreme statement to make. The way he uses it in different situations, upping the speed and changing the development of the melody to create tension, is the perfect example of why he’s considered the best. “It’s really a sort of bonbon, if you like? It’s light, it’s amusing and entertaining,” said John Williams, speaking on the film’s appeal, and the welcome challenges he faced in scoring a film that was a change in tone and style from his other collaborations with Spielberg. I’ve always been evocatively attracted to the leitmotif of bottles and jars with their labels peeled off that reoccurs throughout the movie. Frank’s obsessive tendency to place himself in situations that require patience to be pulled off (get it?) successfully, as well as the obvious metaphor of removing identities from objects and tucking them away. We see that he does this when he’s younger, folding and putting them in his pocket, so this is something he was into before his spree started. It’s a super interesting idea, and an awesome visual that pays off multiple times throughout the film, most specifically, with the first encounter between Frank and Hanks’ Carl Hanratty in a cheap hotel room. As far as I’ve been able to tell, this specific tendency isn’t mentioned by Frank Abagnale Jr. in his book, so it seems to be something created for the film, and I am also very much here for that. Steven Spielberg is most known for his classics - his adventurous tales of a man with a whip, his epic scope WWII meditations and playing around with wet dinosaurs - but his smaller works are of equal, and dare I say it, often heightened importance, due to my own tastes as a cinema lover. And while most of his smaller (as under-the-radar as a Spielberg movie can possibly get) ventures tend to lean towards the dark ( Munich ) and stuffy ( Lincoln ), it’s refreshing to see a man as talented as him try his hand at a comedy-drama like Catch Me If You Can, and yield some amazing results that marks not only one of his best films, but one of the best capers of 21st century to date. On the next Movie Daddy , we’re gonna get all kinds of artsy up in this piece, as we cover Spielberg’s 1987 attempt to truly break through the awards stratosphere with Empire of the Sun . Mike Burdge Editor-in-chief Founder of and programmer for Story Screen. Lover of stories and pizza in the dark. When he isn't watching movies, you can find him reading things about people watching movies. He currently resides in Poughkeepsie, NY and most assuredly is going through a French Connection phase.