The Movie Brats: Steven Spielberg

Spielberg puts feeling into spectacle with an almost religious zest. Like Cecil B. DeMille, he knows how to craft an entertainment. For DeMille, though, entertainment won out. He loved to be crass, was honest about it. He never really sported a higher agenda, I’d say -- and if he not so secretly did, bread and…

The Movie Brats: Francis Ford Coppola

Pre-Apocalypse Now (1979), Coppola was a god. He’s been off since. The Cotton Club (1984), Tucker (1988), Rumble Fish (1983) — these are good films. (The first five minutes of Dracula [1992] are his best work in a long time.) But none of them are sustained efforts. Coppola is a writer. He directs to protect his scripts. Like Hal Ashby, he can band talent…

The Navigator

The Navigator is great comedy. Buster Keaton and Kathryn McGuire play a young rich couple cast adrift on a deserted ocean liner. Never having to fend for themselves before, they must suddenly think about survival. They must learn to accept the technology that webs them: Noticing supplies have been stored in mammoth size, they set up…