REVIEW: SPIELBERG: A LIFE IN FILM

'Few great film directors are as picked on as Steven Spielberg.For a large segment of the cineaste population, a liking for Spielberg over say, Scorsese, is like saying you prefer McCartney to Lennon, David Hockney to Damien Hirst, pop to rock, sun shine to storm clouds  —  sign of an aesthetic sweet tooth, an addiction to flimsy childlike fantasy over grit and darkness and ambiguity and fibre and all the other things we are taught are good for us in film crit class. I once suggested to a scowling Sight & Sound reader that while a director like Kubrick might be the epitome of the aesthetic will-to-power — bending the medium to do the master’s bidding  — Spielberg’s work was the place you looked to see the medium of cinema left to its own devices — what it gets up to in its free time.  The look of disgust on his face was immediate. Conversation over. I might as well have told him I still sucked my thumb. Partly the is down to his outsized success: he's an unignorable target. That success discomfits our notion of the artist, an ill-notion when applied the movies at the best of times, but particularly someone like Spielberg, athletically slam-dunking one box office record after another in the first half of his career, before omnivorously morphing  in the second half, greedily bent on acquiring the credibility that is naturally accorded someone like Scorsese, the auteur agonistes, tearing his films from his breast like chunks of flesh while wandering in the Hollywood wilderness. Never mind that Scorsese’s reputation for speaking to the Human Condition rests on his strip mining of a narrow strip of gangland and the male psyche. Spielberg is a people-pleaser and nothing attracts bullies more.' — from my review of Molly Haskell's Steven Spielberg: a Life in Film

MOST ANTICIPATED MOVIES of 2017

• FEBRUARY 
• Kong: Skull Island (March 10th) The Circle (April 28) Emma Watson,  Tom Hanks 
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• MAY
• Snatched (May 12) Amy Schumer w Goldie Hawn 
• Alien: Covenant (May 19) — Scott, Katherine Waterston, Danny McBride, Noomi Rapace, Guy Pearce 
• The Dinner — Oren Moverman,  Cate Blanchett , Richard Gere and Steve Coogan, Laura Linney, Rebecca Hall and Chloë Sevigny 

• JUNE 
• Wonder Woman (June 2) starring Gal Gadot.
• The Beguiled (June 30) Sofia Coppola remakes Clint Eastwood’s 1971 western w Kirsten Dunst, Nicole Kidman and Elle Fanning.
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• JULY 
• Dunkirk (July 21) Christopher Nolan w Tom Hardy and Harry Styles 
• War for the Planet of the Apes (July 14) — Matt Reeves, Andy Serkis, Steve Zahn, Judy Greer
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• AUGUST 
• Baby Driver (TriStar, 8.11)  Edgar Wright,  Ansel Elgort, Jamie Foxx, Jon Hamm, Kevin Spacey 

• SEPTEMBER
• American Made (Universal, September 29th) — Doug Liman, Tom Cruise  

• OCTOBER
• Blade Runner 2049 —   w/ Ryan Gosling, Robin Wright, Dave Bautista, Barkhad Abdi, Lennie James and Jared Leto.
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• Personal Shopper (IFC Films, 3.10.17) — Assayas, Stewart
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• NOVEMBER
• Darkest Hour  Joe Wright (Focus, 11.24), about Winston Churchill (played by Gary Oldman)  John Hurt  Kristin Scott Thomas  

• DECEMBER
• Star Wars: Episode VIII —  Rian Johnson Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Adam Driver, Lupita Nyong’o 
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• Downsizing — Payne,  Matt Damon, Kristen Wiig, Christoph Waltz, Alec Baldwin, Neil Patrick Harris, Jason Sudeikis.

• Suspiria — Luca Guadagnino, Tilda Swinton, Dakota Johnson, Chloë Grace Moretz.
• Untitled Dick Cheney Drama — (Paramount) Adam McKay, Will Ferrell and Kevin Messick.
• Untitled 1967 Detroit Riots Docudrama — Kathryn Bigelow, Mark Boal, John Boyega 
• The Current War (Weinstein Co.) — Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, Benedict Cumberbatch, Sienna Miller
• Lean on Pete (A24) — Andrew Haigh, Charlie Plummer, Travis Fimmel, Chloë Sevigny, Steve Buscemi, Steve Zahn
• Ismael’s Ghosts (Magnolia) — Arnaud Desplechin, Mathieu Amalric, Marion Cotillard, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Louis Garrel
• Call Me By Your Name — Luca Guadagnino,  Timothee Chalamet, Armie Hammer and Michael Stuhlbarg  
• Untitled Paul Thomas Anderson Fashion Project — Daniel D Lewis
• The Lost City of Z — James Gray
• Okja — Bong Joon-ho, Jon Ronson
• Wonderstruck — Todd Haynes, Julianne Moore, Michelle Williams
• A Quiet Passion — Terence Davies, Cynthia Nixon
• Happy End —Michael Haneke,  Isabelle Huppert, Jean-Louis Trintignant 
• A Ghost Story (A24) — Casey Affleck, Rooney Mara
• Roma — Alfonso Cuaron,  Emmanuel Lubezki  
• The Kidnapping of Edgardo Montara — Spielberg, Tony Kushner, Oscar Isaac, Mark Rylance 
• Mother — Darren Aronofsky, Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Michelle Pfeiffer, Domhnall Gleeson, Ed Harris
• Logan Lucky —  Steven Soderbergh,  Adam Driver, Channing Tatum, Seth MacFarlane, Daniel Craig, Katherine Heigl, Hilary Swank 
• Chappaquiddick — John Curran, Jason Clarke, Kate Mara, Ed Helms 
• Last Flag Flying — Richard Linklater w Bryan Cranston, Steve Carell, Laurence Fishburne and J. Quinton Johnson
• Stronger (Summit) — David Gordon Green, Jake Gyllenhaal 
• War Machine (Netflix) —  David Michod,  Brad Pitt,  Ben Kingsley
• Suburbicon (Paramount) — George Clooney, Joel and Ethan Coen, Matt Damon, Julianne Moore, Josh Brolin and Oscar Isaac
• The Shape of Water — Guillermo Del Toro, Sally Hawkins, Michael Shannon, Richard Jenkins, Doug Jones, Michael Stuhlbarg and Octavia Spencer
• Inner City — Dan Gilroy, Denzel Washington  
• The Sisters Brothers — Jacques Audiard 
• Battle of the Sexes (Fox Searchlight) Emma Stone, Steve Carell, Andrea Riseborough, Elisabeth Shue, Sarah Silverman and Alan Cumming
• Tully — Jason Reitman, Diablo Cody w Charlize Theron, Mackenzie Davis, Mark Duplass and Ron Livingston
• The Mountain Between Us (20th Century Fox, 10.20.17) —  Chris Weitz, Idris Elba, Kate Winslet 
• Based On A True Story —  Roman Polanski,  Emmanuelle Seigner, Eva Green.
• Untitled — Woody Allen, Vittorio Storaro, Kate Winslet, Justin Timberlake, Juno Temple, Jim Belushi
• Annihilation — Alex Garland, Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh  
• Lady Bird — dir. Greta Gerwig, Saoirse Ronan 
• Vox Lux — Brady Corbet, Rooney Mara 
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