Not necessarily the best movies ever made, but these are twenty of my favorites, in no particular order.  Each post for the next twenty days will feature a brief discussion of one film (though one or two days will have multiple posts to make up for absences). 

Post 1: 1941 (1979 dir. Steven Spielberg)

Maybe the most shocking thing for me about this movie was later learning it was not well-received upon its initial release.  I was alive that year, but not yet old enough to see it in theaters. Researching reviews from 1979 I can understand what critics and audiences were saying and can better appreciate their perspective.

But they were wrong.  Or perhaps the gift of hindsight has helped provide a new perspective. 

Being strictly a comedy, it is an unusual film on Spielberg’s curriculum vitae and even he has admitted Bob Zemeckis might have been a better director for the film.  It was Zemeckis and Bob Gale who wrote the script after all (they would both a few years later go on to a small project known as “Back to the Future,” perhaps you’ve heard of it).  And they wrote it from a story by John Milius.

There is an energy to this film that can only be described as musical.  It’s a freaking musical without a lot of the usual kind of music.  Instead, the action and dialogue are choregraphed to an outstanding score by John Williams.  Spielberg’s first true musical film, his take on “West Side Story,” will be in theaters later this year.

Two moments to watch for are, first, when Eddie Deezan and Murray Hamilton are on the ferris wheel and Hamilton has to admit “The dummy’s right.”  Second Slim Pickens exclaiming to Christopher Lee and Toshiro Mifune (Yes, all three of those actors in the same scene!), “I knew it.  You’re all in cahoots!”