Empire of the Sun (1987)
QFS No. 177 - This year marks the 50th anniversary of Jaws (1975), the film that made Steven Spielberg a household name. So revisiting a Spielberg film feels like an appropriate thing to do as we approach the summer. You can make the case, as many have, that Spielberg invented the “summer movie” with Jaws. Empire of the Sun, however, is not a summer movie. I remember when it was released when I was a kid and the reaction to the film was lukewarm. “Lukewarm” or course, is a relative thing, given the stratospheric heights and expectations of a Spielberg film of the time.
The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
QFS No. 137 - For our four-year anniversary of QFS, we decided to select an epic by the great David Lean. Yes, it took us four years to get to a David Lean film, and for the most part it’s because I’ve seen most of the epic classic ones. Lawrence of Arabia (1962) remains one of my favorite films of all time and we could easily have selected it to commemorate our four years of watching and talking about movies. But instead, I picked what is my second favorite Lean film, The Bridge on the River Kwai.