I love Spielberg and his sheer volume of work and number of greats among them put him in God Tier… but everybody has an off day.
Of the ones I’ve seen The Terminal was easily the worst. Sickly sweet and crammed with patronising political messaging.
I haven’t seen 1941, which I gather is a failed comedy, and many people say Lincoln is boring. I suspect I’ll prefer them to Terminal but what do you think?
Any other stinkers in the Spielberg catalogue?
jurassic park 2 fuckin SUCKS! war of the worlds is just as bad.
1941, always, the terminal, and BFG are all lame but serviceable. not terrible movies at all.
War Of The Worlds is fantastic (and Spielberg’s second holocaust film), the bratty son is annoying and the ending feels cornball (although it’s true to the spirit of the book) but it’s a tense and disturbing sci-fi horror.
Lost World is a step down from Jurassic Park but it has some of Spielberg’s best action and suspense set pieces, and the dinosaurs look incredible - much more so than today’s CGI. The filmmaking on display flushes 90% of directors down the toilet.
nah tom cruise plays the worst character of his career...an unlikable prick who lies. his entire goal is to dump his kids off somewhere so he can go be alone and not have any responsibilities. he also survives the impossible and dodges lazers an inch from his face like he is in mission impossible again. the kids are all annoying too, but tim robbins is so awful.
JP2 is boring as hell, needlessly dark and cruel for no reason (that bald guy who gets ripped in half by two t-rexs...cmon, why??? he was the nicest character in the film) it's way too long, and the characters are all morons. not a single likable character in its entire runtime.
The things you dislike in those two films are amongst their greatest strengths, and in other cases you’re flat-out wrong. Goldblum is very likeable in Lost World, as are Pete Postlethwaite and Vince Vaughn, despite their antihero traits. The only bum note is the daughter, who is inexplicably black and a weak actress.
shareWhile I love several Spielberg films, and like quite a few more, there are some which I disliked strongly.
The Terminal is bottom of the barrel for me, closely followed by Always, Hook, War of the Worlds and the third and fourth Indiana Jones movies.
Among his ‘serious’ films, The Color Purple, War Horse and The Post are mediocre at best.
Note that I don’t recall much about 1941 (I did see it when I was a kid) and have never seen Amistad or The BFG.
Best movie by far: Raiders of the lost Ark
Worst turd ever: Indy 4
It was always Crystal Skull for me. But then I watched 1941
1941 wins by a landslide
Close Encounters of the Third Kind: pure manure from beginning to end!
shareI’ve gotta say - I didn’t particularly enjoy Close Encounters. There’s clearly good filmmaking on display and Dreyfuss turns in a nice performance but it just never grabbed me. Maybe you ‘had to be there’ in 1977 🤷🏻♂️
shareI'm not a fan of The Terminal either, but because I was familiar with the original story and thought the movie was going to be more faithful to it.
shareI didn't like 1941. It's an exhausting movie, very loud and frenetic but the jokes just don't work.
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