Depending on whether you count 1971's Duel as Spielberg's debut (it's a TV film but most cinephiles seem to count it where they don't count television features as the debuts of other auteurs) Bridge of Spies, opening today, is Steven Spielberg's 25th or 26th full length feature film. His superstar-making run as an auteur (1975's Jaws through 1985's The Color Purple) is so often discussed and mythologized that for this week's edition of Posterized, let's just look at his output in this new century.
Bridge of Spies, the new cold-war thriller starring Tom Hanks, headlining his 4th Spielberg picture, appears to be divvying people up into two camps from early reviews. Doubters say it's too slow and lacks thrills. Devotees praise it's glorious classical filmmaking. Will there be a Happy Medium crowd that meets in the middle and says, 'a little dull sure but worth it for the glorious classical filmmaking'? We all have time to decide now that the movie's open.
How many of Spielberg's eleven most recent films have you seen?
All the posters and what's next for Spielberg after the jump...
What do you make of these 12 pictures besides the floating heads or lonely figures of male protagonists? (Thankfully two of his next three pictures are about women.) How would you rank them?
The great director is 68 years old now but he's still operating at roughly the same pace as always. His next two pictures are the Roald Dahl adaptation THE BFG (it stands for Big Friendly Giant) due in July 2016 which has already filmed and Ready Player One (a sci-fi adventure) which is currently scheduled for Christmas 2017 but who knows, you know? He's also got several undated projects in the work. The most exciting of which, from a change of pace perspective is surely It's What I Do, a war journalist biopic starring Jennifer Lawrence. He's also announced a fifth Indiana Jones but don't hold your breath. They threatened delivering the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull a million years before it actually happened and then once it arrived did we really want it, box office gross aside.
With Eastwood and Allen still going strong in their 80s and 2015's story being all about resurgent 70somethings (Hi George Miller & Ridley Scott) we can probably expect a lot more from Spielberg, who is strangely the last man standing from his initial peer group (Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas's huge influence on cinema is something, but they aren't exactly vital filmmakers anymore). What do you hope to see from him in the future?