PhantomKnight Goes Spielbergian

Infernal Affairs is a good 50-60 minutes shorter than The Departed and Departed uses that time to flush out the characters and make it more dramatic than just a frantic cop movie. That said Infernal Affairs has the better ending of the two. It cuts out at the funeral with Matt Damon's character knowing that he lost everything instead of Departed's cheesy Hollywood ending and eye-gougingly awful CGI rat.

Eh, I don't give it that much credit. I think they just wanted to give the audience closure by killing him off whereas Infernal Affairs left the character to live with the consequences of his actions.

Well FINE!

It happens.

This movie allowed Spielberg to take the basic blueprint of Duel, and use it again. But instead of the open road, we have the open ocean. And instead of an 18-wheeler gas tank truck, we have a big-ass shark. Also, much like Duel, Jaws makes splendid use out of its simple premise. The movie notoriously had a troubled production where almost nothing seemed to go right for very long, but that's certainly not reflected in the final product, which flows so damn smoothly. At its heart, Jaws is most definitely a classic B-movie, but it has a number of elements which elevate it past that. First and foremost, you've got the characters. Spielberg wisely recognizes here that if you don't care about the people going up against and trying not to be eaten by the shark, then what is it all for? Fortunately, Jaws is anchored (no pun intended) by three great characters: Chief Brody (Roy Scheider), Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) and Quint (Robert Shaw). All three of these guys are brought vividly to life by the actors and by Spielberg and the screenplay. All of them work in tandem to make sure our interest stays firmly in place in-between all of the shark attacks. Individually, each of these men are interesting and compelling, but when the movie puts them together on a boat for the second half, things just get that much better as we see the clash of personalities, but also a camaraderie that develops between these men. The scene at night where Hooper and Shaw compare scars before Shaw goes into recounting a harrowing past experience he had with surviving a shark is the highlight in that regard. Seeing these guys bond and try to survive together is great stuff.

But, of course, there’s also the action/spectacle component, which is just as strong. As already mentioned, Jaws had a well-documented hell of a production, mostly boiling down to the simple fact that the mechanical shark simply wouldn’t work the majority of the time. But, this turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as it allowed Spielberg to get creative with the way he executed the shark scenes. For the first 2/3rds of the film, we really don’t see the creature in full – again, because of the technical issues – but that just served to make the attack scenes that much more terrifying. Instead of showing us the shark every time, Spielberg utilizes arguably more effective methods. From the ways in which he cleverly takes advantage of fake-outs (a false fin in the water, a swimmer coming up to surprise another person) to how he establishes ominous events that happen in the middle of everything, i.e. the disappearing dog. These work tremendously because they put you in the center of the confusion, uncertainty, fear and the ultimate resulting chaos of a shark attack without having to rely on how good the shark looks when it comes out of the water. Although, when it finally does, it is rather convincing. I can’t help but think if the mechanical shark had worked as well as intended, then maybe the final product wouldn’t have been as effective as it is?

Also, as a sidenote, Jaws is a movie that, in 2020, feels all the more relevant. I mean, you’ve got a significant side character – the Mayor of Amity – who’s insistent on keeping day to day operations when it comes to summer beach-going running, even in the face of a serious/significant threat to the safety of the public. Sound familiar?

Just pointing it out once again.  It would've felt wrong not to.

There was a dolly zoom shot in Ready Player One?  More importantly, there was a dolly zoom shot in Ready Player One that Spielberg thought was as good as the one in Jaws???

NE beat me to it. I dunno, there's just something about seeing a dolly zoom in a digital camera that makes it...unimpressive.

Haven’t you heard of the W.I.L.L.I.A.M. system?

It’s right when the video starts, disregard everything that happens after about the third second in. Sorrento stays the same size in the foreground center frame while the BG zooms out. It’s seriously a weird place to have that type of effect, there’s so much going on, it’s right in the middle of the action and it doesn’t really hold any significance. There were several other places in the movie where it could have worked better.

With 1977's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Steven Spielberg elected to continue to hone his blockbuster sensibilities, but in the sense of using them to enhance a more innately human and personal story. Close Encounters is mostly remembered for its sci-fi hook, that of aliens coming down from outer space to communicate with the human race. And yes, that stuff is handled spectacularly, but it's the human component at the center of it all that really makes this thing soar, no pun intended.

The main character of the film is Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss), an electrical lineman in Indiana who unexpectedly has a close encounter with a UFO one night while out on a job. From there, he becomes obsessed with trying to see it or just any one again, and even becomes haunted, one could say, by the vision of a mysterious shape he can't quite figure out the origin of. This obsession becomes so overpowering that it eventually causes his wife Ronnie (Teri Garr) and his children to leave him. This, in fact, has a basis in reality, because Spielberg was drawing on his experiences with his own parents' divorce. As a result, that aspect of the film feels all the more raw and authentic. Spielberg's own father left his family when the director was young, and this movie is really where you start to notice the theme of fathers and father figures that would come to run throughout most of Spielberg's filmography. The scenes depicting this family unit deteriorating because of Roy's obsession are all the more effective and harrowing because it really does feel like Spielberg is writing from the heart, which he is. It's also one of the elements that gives Close Encounters a kind of darker edge that you don't really remember until you watch it again.

On that subject, I can also single out the character of Jillian (Melinda Dillon), a mother whose son has his own close encounter with the aliens and whose life becomes almost nightmarish as a result. Like with the Neary family storyline, Spielberg is able to mine some genuine drama from this, and a lot of it is because of the authentic-feeling anguish Dillon brings to her performance. But, also...let's talk briefly about the second scene in which Jillian's son, Barry, encounters the aliens. This time, it takes place at their home, but the scene has a decidedly more sinister quality, as Spielberg directs it like something out a horror film, and this is where you see the same filmmaker who made Jaws and Duel.

Point being, Spielberg knows when and how to ratchet up the drama here when the story requires it.

So when the Third Act comes along, the sense of wonder and awe and youthful yearning for discovering the unknown that had been steadily building throughout the rest of the movie feels all the more cathartic. More often than not, when it comes to movies about aliens visiting Earth, they do so with the intention of destroying us. But here, it's to discover and open a line of communication so that we may learn from one another. You see that with the way Roy can't stop smiling when the musical notes are being traded back and forth. It's here where Spielberg captures the youthful innocence he'd also come to be known for. As for the culmination of Roy's arc in the film, it absolutely works, but that's because of how Spielberg handled the family storyline. You can see that it's him trying to deal with his own father leaving by giving the stand-in for his father in the film, Roy, a purpose for leaving. It adds an extra layer to this film that gives this ending a real emotional punch. If Roy had stayed, I don't think it would've worked nearly as well.

Couldn't disagree more.