Tagarchief: Steven Spielberg

Apple TV Special: Mr. Scorsese

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

Mr. Scorsese is a five episode film portrait about one of the greatest film directors of all time now playing on Apple TV. It’s the most extensive documentary ever shot about the Italian American cinematic master, featuring interviews with a.o. Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro and Daniel Day Lewis. Reason enough for me to subscribe to Apple TV. An additional benefit of the subscription is that Marty’s latest film – Killers of the Flower Moon – is also available on the channel.

Scorsese is a very sympathetic guy; I have seen many interviews with him before, logical since he’s my favorite filmmaker, but in this series, you really get to know the man. He grew up in Little Italy and later Manhattan. He was very asthmatic as a child and he couldn’t play outside. There is this shot in GoodFellas where a young Henry Hill is staring out of the window observing the wiseguys outside. That’s Marty right there.

Movie theaters had air conditioning, so that’s where young Martin wanted to be as much as possible. He could breath there, and the movies formed his mind. At home he watched old Italian films with his family. He started making extensive storyboards which his father thought wasn’t very manly. Marty learned of the mobsters who controlled much of the economic activity in his neighbourhood. His father had a good job in the garment industry, which was worked out by the mob. He told young Marty: “Don’t ever let them do you a favor. They’re nothing but bloodsuckers.”

The young Scorsese initially wanted to become a priest, but that path wasn’t for him. Neither were the streets. Literature wasn’t part of his culture either, but a priest encouraged him and his friends to look beyond what they knew; to go to college, to read, learn, and explore. He attended a talk about film school and heard a professor speak passionately about cinema. That was the moment he knew what he wanted to do.

At New York film school he met Thelma Schoonmaker, his future editor. She recalls seeing his student work and knowing immediately that “he had it.” His student film It’s Not Just You, Murray! (1964) won the award for Best Student Film. In 1967 he made his first feature, Who’s That Knocking at My Door, starring Harvey Keitel.

Scorsese married young, but his first marriage collapsed quickly because his mind went more and more to making movies. He went to Hollywood to further his career and met an amazing assortment of talent there: Coppola, Schrader, Spielberg, Lucas and De Palma, known collectively as the ‘Movie Brats’. They were given this name because they were the first generation of formally trained filmmakers to unite film knowledge with artistic ambition.

In the early seventies, King of the B-movies Roger Corman gave Scorsese the chance to direct a movie. This became Boxcar Bertha (1972), a Bonnie and Clyde-style crime movie. His artistic friends hated it. Marty thought it was a good practice in shooting on budget and shooting on time, but his friends thought he had betrayed himself as an artist.

John Cassavetes had seen his feature Who’s That Knocking at My Door and advised him to make more personal movies like that. About Boxcar Bertha he said: “You just spent a year of your life making a piece of shit. Don’t do that again.” Scorsese showed him his Mean Streets screenplay and Cassavetes told him to go find a lead actor to star in it. Then he met De Niro who was from the same neighbourhood.

Mean Streets was based on people and experiences from his neighborhood and people fell in love with it, because it felt completely authentic. That makes sense, because it was real. Now, Marty got more opportunities. With his next film Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974), he showed he could also direct women. Ellen Burstyn won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her lead role.

Although Scorsese gained recognition, this period also marked the start of heavy drug use. Film remained his way of working through deep inner turmoil. Drawn to darker characters, he was captivated by Paul Schrader’s script for Taxi Driver. He and De Niro set out to portray a loner like Travis Bickle without turning him into a caricature. Travis is isolated in almost every frame. Taxi Driver (1976) was a huge critical success and won the Palme d’Or.

Everybody praised it. It hit a nerve and showed a true understanding of the American unconscious. A lone man who commits atrocities, like the snipers who killed politicians at that time. Travis has a saviour complex: he wants to save the girls and kill the bad guys. The final scene was too violent for the sensors, so Scorsese changed the colour of the blood to dark, rusty brown or brownish-pink rather than bright red. Daniel Day Lewis was hypnotized by the film and went to see it five or six times. It was the first time he saw Bob (De Niro) act, which was a big thing for him.

After the success of Taxi Driver, he made the costly musical failure New York, New York (1977). His second marriage also fell apart and what started then was a period of self destructive behavior. He started doing lots of drugs and tried to find his cinematic muse again. He almost died – and part of him wanted to because he didn’t know how to create anymore. De Niro had a big part in getting him back on his feet. They went to Sint Maarten where they worked on the script for their next masterpiece: Raging Bull (1980).

Thelma Schoonmaker explains the film’s shooting and editing, and the documentary allows you to rediscover the beauty of its black-and-white imagery. It’s a true work of art. Scorsese had found his muse again, and also his third wife: the daughter of Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini.

After Raging Bull he wanted to do Gangs of New York and The Last Temptation of Christ. The scripts were there, but the movies were too expensive to make at that time. He did another project with De Niro, The King of Comedy (1982), which flopped. Scorsese’s career was now once again in a bad state. “He was done for in Hollywood”, they told him.

He made a comeback with After Hours (1985), an odd ball comedy shot on a low budget. Key to the film, Scorsese explains, was the collaboration with Director of Photography Michael Ballhaus, who would later shoot GoodFellas. In 1985, he married for the fourth time, this time with Barbara De Fina, who would produce a number of his movies, including Casino.

The re-established Scorsese followed up After Hours with The Color of Money (1986), a pool hall movie starring Paul Newman and Tom Cruise, and a sequel to The Hustler (1961). The movie did well, so now Scorsese could finally make his beloved project The Last Temptation of Christ (1988). He made the film to “get to know Christ better”, he explains.

The budget was tight, so he could only do two takes of every shot during the difficult shoot in Morocco. It was very tough, he says. Even tougher was the reception of the film: people were very upset. It was banned in Rome, Israel, and India – and someone set off a bomb during a screening in Paris. Blockbuster didn’t carry the film. Marty needed FBI protection for the second time (he had gotten threats after Taxi Driver and had needed protection then as well).

While working on The Color of Money, Scorsese read Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi, the true story of mobster Henry Hill and his life within the Lucchese crime family. Pileggi and Scorsese had both grown up in the same neighborhood and collaborated on the screenplay for GoodFellas. Scorsese had the film fully mapped out in his head – frame by frame, song by song. The result is pure montage, weightless and electric. Scorsese created a new cinematic language for this movie. “It has this crazy energy”, says Spielberg. “Like a runaway train.”

Previews strangely enough saw a lot of walk-outs. Executives wanted him to cut out the last twenty minutes, which is the whole cocaine sequence. Marty stood up to them and saved the movie. God bless him.

After GoodFellas, Scorsese worked with De Niro again in Cape Fear (1991), a successful remake of the 1962 thriller – and in 1995 they made another mob masterpiece with Casino. It’s about mob guys who were given paradise with Las Vegas – but they got kicked out of paradise because they are so evil. The movie has a unique structure like GoodFellas, but it takes it one step further.

In between, he explored another closed society with The Age of Innocence (1993), his first collaboration with Daniel Day-Lewis. It’s about a man imprisoned by the culture he belongs to, and a great love doomed to remain unconsummated.

In 1997, he returned to another genre he loved to do: the spiritual film. Kundun (1997) is about the Dalai Lama in Tibet. There were no actors in that country, so he had to get all these performances out of non-actors. The film was panned-down as dull. Then came Bringing Out the Dead, a loose follow-up to Taxi Driver, but it was still born at the box office.

Scorsese was dead again, but then who came knocking? Leonardo DiCaprio was now Hollywood’s new golden boy, a guaranteed name for box office success – and a movie star with resources to invest in the projects he chose to star in. Now, Scorsese finally got the opportunity to make his long awaited dream: Gangs of New York (2002).

The film reconstructs 1860s New York in massive sets built in Rome. This was the Five Points neighbourhood, which was dominated by gangs. Scorsese calls it science fiction in reverse. George Lucas came to visit the sets and said that “this is the last time sets like this will ever be built”.

The film has an uncanny reverence to today’s political violence, with the natives who can be seen as the proud boys of that time. People who claim to be the only true Americans and are prepared to use savage violence on immigrants.

Fortunately, the very expensive film – that was produced by Harvey Weinstein – did well at the box office.

He continued to work with DiCaprio, first on The Aviator (2004), a biopic about Howard Hughes, a man obsessed with filmmaking and aviation. The film received 11 Oscar nominations, and then it dawned on the film community that Scorsese never won an Oscar. But, even though The Aviator won in nearly every category, it lost the director award to Clint Eastwood for Million Dollar Baby.

But two years later, they made it up by giving him the Oscar for The Departed (2006), another gangster film. It was awarded to him by his old friends George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola – a bittersweet moment. In 2010, he made another film with DiCaprio, Shutter Island. And to complete the streak with Leo, he made The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), a commentary on how excessive and moralless capitalism has overtaken our society.

Marty once again portrays the dark side of human nature in all its forms, including terrible domestic violence. Scorsese has often been accused of glorifying bad behavior, but another way to see his work is that he refuses to sanitize human nature. The Wolf of Wall Street was a massive success, tapping directly into post-financial-crisis anger.

The documentary concludes with The Irishman (2019) and early footage from Killers of the Flower Moon (2023). We also see Scorsese at home, caring for his fifth and final wife, Helen Schermerhorn Morris, who suffers from Parkinson’s disease. It’s deeply moving to see the great filmmaker in this intimate setting.

Steven Spielberg provides the perfect closing tribute for this must-see documentary about the legendary director: “There is only one Marty Scorsese. He is a cornerstone of this art form. There is nobody like him and there will never be anybody like him again.”

Indeed.

Easy Riders, Raging Bulls

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

BBC documentary (2003) by Kenneth Bowser, based on the book by Peter Biskind. Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock ‘N Roll Generation Saved Hollywood tells the story of Hollywood in the 1960s, a time when the studio system was in crisis. Their films had become increasingly irrelevant.

The problem was that movies were run by studios rather than directors, and the studios had lost touch with what audiences wanted to see. Then a new generation of filmmakers emerged who reconnected with viewers. Directors such as George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Dennis Hopper, Sam Peckinpah, Francis Ford Coppola, Arthur Penn, Warren Beatty, Robert Altman, Jack Nicholson, and Peter Bogdanovich.

“In 1963 the studio system collapsed”, says Bogdanovich. “It was over.” After the disaster of Cleopatra (1963, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Rouben Mamoulian), the Fox lot was shut down. It became a ghost town. Television took over. The old moviegoers died off, and American films grew more and more meaningless.

Meanwhile, art theaters screening foreign films were doing very well. Many of the new generation of filmmakers learned the language of cinema from auteurs like Fellini, Godard, and Truffaut.

Outside the studio system, Roger Corman played a pivotal role in training young filmmakers to make low-budget B-movies that performed well at the box office. Jonathan Demme, Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, and Francis Ford Coppola all started under Corman. They succeeded by targeting the youth who flocked to the thousands of drive-in theaters across the country, audiences that loved horror and action. Corman also had a knack for choosing hot topics: Hells Angels were in the news, so he made The Wild Angels (1966, Roger Corman). LSD was trendy, so he made The Trip (1967, Roger Corman) based on a screenplay by Jack Nicholson.

In Hollywood, directors proved just how out of touch the studios were. Executives hated Bonnie and Clyde, but young people loved it. Studios had to adapt. Paramount, in deep trouble, was taken over by Gulf & Western, led by the eccentric Austrian Charlie Bluhdorn. He brought in the now-legendary Bob Evans as a producer, who helped turn the studio around. How? By giving directors more creative control. Like he did with Polanski, who made Rosemary’s Baby in 1968.

At Columbia, Bert Schneider also trusted and empowered directors, resulting in massive hits, most notably Easy Rider, released in 1969. The drug-fueled chaos of director Dennis Hopper and his team is visible on screen. It was a great film, and audiences loved it. It was the kind of movie that never would have been made under the old studio system. The same goes for Midnight Cowboy by John Schlesinger, also released in 1969 – an outstanding film. That same year saw The Wild Bunch by Sam Peckinpah, which pushed violent realism to a whole new level.

The 1970s began, and the director’s era was in full swing. Peter Bogdanovich released The Last Picture Show in 1971, a film rich in emotional depth and sexual content, more than audiences were used to at the time. Dennis Hopper tried to follow up on Easy Rider with The Last Movie, but botched the edit due to his drug use and constant partying. “I had final cut, but I cut my own throat,” he says in the documentary.

In 1972, Paramount released The Godfather in 4,000 theaters simultaneously, a massively successful strategy. The history of that production was recently chronicled in the excellent miniseries The Offer. Coppola had now become one of the greats. He used his influence to bring George Lucas back to Hollywood, where he made the wildly successful American Graffiti in 1973 – a film studios didn’t understand, but youth audiences loved. That same year marked the rise of another major talent: Martin Scorsese, whose Mean Streets won over critics and audiences alike with its originality and authenticity.

But 1973 belonged to Warner Bros., which released The Exorcist by William Friedkin. Using the same wide-release strategy as The Godfather, it became a huge box office hit. It was Friedkin’s second success after The French Connection, cementing his status as one of the untouchable directors of the time.

By now, the auteurs had taken over Hollywood. This led to artistic triumphs like Chinatown (1974). But the young directors hadn’t forgotten Corman’s trick of attracting young audiences. In 1975, Spielberg released Jaws, a film that redefined what success looked like in Hollywood. Corman said: “When I saw Jaws I thought: these guys know what I’m doing, and they have the money and talent and skills to do it better.” George Lucas took it even further with Star Wars in 1977. The age of the blockbuster had arrived.

It had taken a decade, but Hollywood was back on its feet. Expensive B-movies like Alien, Superman, and their sequels became the new studio model. For about ten years, directors ruled. That era came to an end in the late ’70s, but it was a glorious decade that produced countless classics – films still regarded today as some of the greatest ever made.

The 7 Best Movies About Restaurants

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

With the holiday season fast approaching, there’s no better time to gather with friends and family for a festive dinner. But if you’d rather stay in, why not enjoy a similar experience through a great movie or TV show centered around the world of food?

Rosa and I recently watched The Final Table on Netflix – not once, but twice – and we highly recommend it. This captivating competition show delves into the artistry and creativity of cooking on a global scale. Another excellent choice is the Emmy Award-winning series The Bear on Disney Plus. This comedy-drama follows a renowned chef who takes over his late brother’s sandwich shop in Chicago. It’s a gripping and highly entertaining portrayal of the intense, often stressful world of restaurant life.

When it comes to food-centric entertainment, these two TV productions are must-sees. But what about movies? For the occasion of Christmas 2024, I’ve curated an exclusive menu featuring seven of the finest films about food, restaurants, and fine dining. Just be sure to have some delicious snacks and drinks on hand while you watch these!

07. Burnt (2015)

On the Menu
– Summer vegetables on a bed of ricotta
– Smoked mackerel with duck egg
– Potato truffle velouté
– And many other beautiful looking dishes…

The Movie
Adam Jones (Bradley Cooper), a once-renowned head chef, is determined to reclaim his place in the culinary world after a self-imposed exile. Battling the ghosts of his past – fueled by booze and drugs – he heads to London to restart his career. There, he joins the restaurant of an old friend, Tony (Daniel Brühl), who has a not-so-secret crush on him. Adam’s ultimate goal? To earn the coveted three Michelin stars. To achieve this, Adam recruits former colleagues – some of whom he must make amends with – and hires the talented sous-chef Helene (Sienna Miller). The setup is engaging, but Adam is acting like such a gorilla-asshole that you almost don’t care what happens anymore. But then the filmmakers pull the right move at the right moment, and the characters become more relatable again. The film has a great cast, with Daniel Brühl portraying an especially likable character. Despite the somewhat flawed screenplay, the story gradually pulls you in, leaving you invested in the outcome of this engaging character study featuring delicious looking cuisine.

06. The Hundred-Foot Journey (2014)

On the Menu
– Saag Aloo
– Murgh Masala With Cashews
– Cardamom-infused Pigeon With Truffles
– Boeuf Bourguignon
– Veal With the Five French Mother Sauces: Béchamel, Espagnole, Hollandaise, Tomato, and Velouté

The Movie
Produced by Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey, directed by Lasse Hallström and based on the best-selling novel by Richard C. Morais, The Hundred-Foot Journey is a real feel-good movie with a lead role for the unlikely combination of French and Indian cuisine (subtlety versus teemingness). An Indian family starts a restaurant in the French village of St. Antonin across the street from the prestigious restaurant Le Saule Pleureur run by the competitive restaurateur Madame Mallory (Helen Mirren). Immediately a fierce battle breaks out between the two parties, but Madame Mallory discovers that her competitor’s son Hassan is a brilliant chef. And since she wants a second Michelin Star, the sworn culinary adversaries might find some unity after all in their love of food. Like the diverse cuisine on display, Hallström has made a very rich film filled with many ingredients like beauty, love, passion, grief, ambition, talent and culture.

05. Chef (2014)

On the Menu
– An overcharged caviar egg
– Chocolate lava cake with the core not quite molten
– Grilled cheese sandwich
– Cubanos (Real Cuban sandwiches)
– Yuca Fries
– Tostones
– BBQ brisket sliders
– Medianoches
– Platanos
– Cerveza

The Movie
In this delightful food-centric film, directed by and starring Jon Favreau, a successful chef makes a bold decision to quit his job after clashing with his boss over creative freedom. He decides to buy a food truck and embarks on a culinary tour through the Miami area with his son. Thanks to his stellar cooking of classic Cuban dishes and his son’s knack for social media, their venture quickly becomes a smashing success. Chef is a true feel-good movie that’s as visually appealing as it is heartwarming. The characters are constantly eating all these mouthwatering dishes. It makes you wanna cook and eat yourself, and this is precisely what makes a movie like this so enjoyable. The impressive supporting cast adds even more flavor, featuring performances from Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson, Dustin Hoffman, John Leguizamo, Bobby Cannavale, Sofía Vergara, and Oliver Platt.

04. Dinner Rush (2000)

On the Menu
– Lobster & fried spaghetti with champagne vanilla sauce, garnished with salmon caviar and chives
– Snapper carpaccio with blood orange sauce (for the critics)
– Pumpkin risotto with chestnuts (also for the critics)

The Movie
Dinner Rush successfully fuses the mob movie and the restaurant film. A Tribeca restaurant owner and bookmaker (Danny Aiello) is squeezed out by two mobsters from Queens. They already killed his partner and on this particular night, they’re coming over to try to make a deal with him. There is a lot more going on. His son Udo is a talented chef who wants to take over the business. Their other cook Duncan has gambling debts and is two-timing with Udo’s girlfriend. There is also a food critic, a waitress with aspirations, a detective with his wife, and a power blackout… How this night will turn out is hard to tell, but something is gonna go down, that is certain. Very enjoyable movie, obviously made by a cast and crew with a lot of passion for this movie and Italian cuisine. You can almost taste it by looking at the screen.

03. Boiling Point (2021)

On the Menu
– Duck With Soy, Lamb, Krab, Oysters, Salmon, Liver, Mackerel, Brill, Risotto
– Château Marie
– Steak and Chips (off the menu)

The Movie
A health & safety downgrade, a rascist customer, a horrible food critic, an allergy fuck-up, an annoying ex-colleage, lazy staff members, drugs, debts, booze, and more. Boiling Point gives us a tension-drenched evening in a busy restaurant made in one, single, 90 minute shot. It is an amazing accomplishment, because nowhere does it feel inauthentic. Stephen Graham is superb als chef Andy, but all the supporting players are excellent as well. Due to the first Covid-19-lockdown, they could only make four takes and used the third one for the final movie. If you want a completely realistic sense of what it is like to work in an overcrowded restaurant on the busiest night of the year, then this is the one to check out. Followed by a television series with the same title and concept.

02. The Founder (2016)

On the Menu
Delicious:
– Hamburgers (grilled for exactly the right length, two pickles, mustard, ketchup)
– French fries
– Soda
– Milkshakes (with and without milk)

The Movie
The Founder tells the fascinating origin story of the world’s largest hamburger chain. Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton) is a relentless and ambitious milkshake mixer salesman who stumbles upon a hidden gem in 1954: an innovative family-run restaurant offering a revolutionary fast-food experience and the best burgers he’s ever tasted. Sensing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Kroc strikes a deal with the McDonald brothers to franchise their concept. Initially, the partnership flourishes, but tensions arise as Kroc’s cutthroat ambition clashes with the brothers’ principles. Determined to succeed at all costs, Kroc makes bold and ruthless business moves that ultimately transform McDonald’s into a global empire. The Founder is a standout business origin story, anchored by a terrific performance from Michael Keaton. The film has many memorable moments, but the ending for me stands out in which one of the McDonalds brothers asks Kroc why he didn’t just steal the concept but went for the franchise formula instead. “It’s the name”, he says. “That glorious name McDonalds. It sounds like America. Would you ever eat at a place called Kroc’s?” Indeed.

01. The Menu (2022)

On the Menu
– Raw local oyster in a mignonette emulsion with lemon caviar and an oyster leaf.
– Amuse-bouche: Cucumber melon, milk snow and charred lace.
– First Course: ‘The Island’. Various plants from Hawthorn Island and fresh raw scallops. Served on a rock.
– Second Course: ‘No bread’. Just savory accompaniments.
– Third Course: ‘Memory’. House-smoked Bresse chicken thigh Al Pastor and tortillas made with heirloom masa.
– Fourth Course: ‘The Mess’. Pressure cooked vegetables, roasted filet, potato confit, beef jus, bone marrow.
– Palate Cleanser: Wild bergamot and red clover tea.
– Sixth Course: ‘Man’s Folly’. Dungeness crab, fermented yogurt whey, dried sea lettuce, umeboshi, kelp.
– Supplementary Course: A cheeseburger, crinkle cut fries.
– Dessert Dish: ‘S’mores’. Marshmallow, chocolate, Graham cracker, customers, staff, restaurant.

The Movie
The renowned chef Slowik (Ralph Fiennes) has twelve special guests over at his exclusive restaurant on Hawthorn Island for a unique tasting experience. The price tag is 1250 dollars a person, but for that they will get a night full of culinary surprises and more. If you don’t know what is going to happen yet, go see this movie. The elite is about to learn a few lessons and it’s very nourishing. The Menu is a beautiful work of art. The cast with Ralph Fiennes, Anya Taylor-Joy and Nicholas Hoult, the screenplay, the direction by Mark Mylod (Succession) and the art direction are as exquisite as the dishes served. Like Slowik is obsessed with his craft, so were the makers of this thriller in getting every little detail right. As a viewer, you become a part of the experience that Slowik has prepared and it’s an extremely memorable dining experience that is worth every penny. Bon appetit.

Duel

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

Director: Steven Spielberg
Written by: Richard Matheson
Cast: Dennis Weaver, Jacqueline Scott, Eddie Firestone

Year / Country: 1971, USA
Running Time: 90 mins.

A business commuter, played by Dennis Weaver, leaves his home in the morning unsuspecting that this will be a day from hell. He is targeted by an enormous, menacing truck for termination and he doesn’t know why. The duel of the title refers to the showdown between him and the unknown truck driver on the desert highways that lasts the entire movie.

Duel is Steven Spielberg’s masterful debut that captures the peril of an ordinary man thrust into extraordinary circumstances. Duel immediately establishes his cinematic genius. Originally made for television, the movie transcends its medium with exceptional production quality, boasting sharp editing, stunning cinematography, and masterful pacing. Spielberg demonstrates an innate ability to generate tension, crafting nail-biting action scenes that foreshadow the brilliance he would later bring to iconic films like Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park.

The running time could have been cut with ten minutes to make it perfect, but overall, he manages to maintain tension throughout its running time. The film also features clever visual metaphors, such as subtle nods to themes of impotence and primal survival instincts. The main character David Mann comments that it takes nothing to be back inside the jungle again. And that is precisely what happens to him. Instinct takes over and man becomes a force for survival. In Duel, Spielberg proves he is a director of extraordinary promise, blending tension, action, and deeper thematic layers into an unforgettable cinematic experience.

Rating:

Biography: Steven Spielberg (1946, Cincinnati, Ohio), is one of the most influential and celebrated filmmakers in cinema history. A pioneer of modern blockbuster filmmaking, Spielberg’s career spans over five decades, encompassing a wide range of genres and iconic films. Spielberg’s breakthrough came in 1975 with Jaws, a suspenseful thriller that became the first modern blockbuster. He followed this success with a string of iconic films, including Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), and Jurassic Park (1993). Spielberg’s versatility as a director is evident in his more serious works, such as Schindler’s List (1993), which earned him his first Academy Award for Best Director, and Saving Private Ryan (1998), which won him a second. These films cemented his reputation as a master of both spectacle and substance.

Filmography (a selection): Amblin’ (1968, short), Duel (1971, TV-Movie), The Sugarland Express (1974), Jaws (1975), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), The Color Purple (1985), Empire of the Sun (1987), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), Jurassic Park (1993), Schindler’s List (1993), Saving Private Ryan (1998), Minority Report (2002), War of the Worlds (2005), Lincoln (2012), Ready Player One (2018)