steven spielberg

Disclosure Day

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Emily Blunt hangs off a car, with Josh O'Connor trying to save her

There’s nothing lean about Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi epic Disclosure Day. Even the title has a portentous ring to it. What is it exactly that is to be disclosed? Is it a secret of the universe by any chance? Of course it is. Grandiosity to one side, Spielberg delivers an entirely enjoyable 145 minutes, in a set-the-controls-to-Spielberg kind of way. We’re here to be awed not enlightened. Every character has a backstory and an arc, as if Spielberg and co-writer David Koepp were organising a children’s birthday party rather than making a big-bucks movie, and are determined that no one is to go home empty handed. There Dr Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor), a black … Read more

Lincoln

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Daniel Day-Lewis as Abraham Lincoln

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 29 November The Zong Massacre, 1781 On this day in 1781 the Zong massacre took place. A Liverpool slave ship called the Zong got lost on the high seas en route for Jamaica and, running low on water, decided to throw some slaves overboard. On 29 November 54 women were thrown overboard. 42 men were jettisoned on 1 December and over the next few days a further 36 slaves were thrown into the sea. A further ten slaves threw themselves overboard as a protest against the inhumane treatment of their fellows. When it arrived at Black River, Jamaica, the ship had … Read more

Jaws

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Richard Dreyfuss, Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw in Jaws

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 18 October Moby-Dick published, 1851 On this day in 1851, Herman Melville published what is considered to be one of the great American novels, about the elemental struggle between one Captain Ahab and the whale that once bit off his leg. The story is told from the viewpoint of Ishmael, and “Call me Ishmael”, its opening sentence, has become one of the most recognised opening lines in literature. The book is based on two actual events. One took place in 1820, when a sperm whale rammed and sank the Essex, a whaler that was in hot pursuit of it. The other … Read more