KAMAD Throwback Thursdays 1975 "Diamonds"

Throwback Thursday #TBT

Throwback Thursday on the KAMAD site will be a regular occurrence in the next year. As a motivational project, to make sure I am working on something, even in a week where I don't see a new film in a theater, I am going to post on movies from 1975. Along with 1984, this is one of my favorite years for movies and it is full of bittersweet memories as well. 1975 was my Senior Year in High School and my Freshman Year in College. The greatest film of the last 60 years came out in 1975, as well as dozens of great and not so great cinematic endeavors. Most of the films in this weekly series will have been seen in a theater in 1975, but there are several that I only caught up with later. I hope you all enjoy. 

Diamonds

The trailer here represents one of the issues with selecting this film for the TBT project. The movie is not commercially available so no one seems to have cared to find and post the trailer for the film. What you see above is a fan created promo, obviously done on free software since the watermark is all over the video. I had never heard of this movie before checking a list of 1975 films on IMDB. When I saw that Robert Shaw and Richard Roundtree were the stars, I was enthusiastic about including it on the project. The problem is that it is not really available. No streaming services were offering it, it never had a DVD release, and the only home media that was available was a VHS tape for sale on ebay. 

So I made my purchase and dug out the VHS player that my wife had used in her classroom, it also has a DVD player, and hooked it all up. It turns out I could have watched a bootlegged copy on You Tube. In the long run, a You Tube viewing will be my last resort for these lost films. I still prefer physical media, even if it is an antiquated format. 

Before I talk about the film itself, there are a couple of interesting points. First of all, the film was also marketed as "Diamond Shaft". That is the cover title on my ebay acquisition and the art work there pretty well explains why the title switch. Richard Roundtree was best known as the actor who portrayed Shaft in the movies. The character of John Shaft is nowhere in this film, and Roundtree does not ever hold a gun in his hand in the movie. Another alternate title was "Ace of Diamonds", which I think would have worked better, but back in 1975, no one asked my opinion.

This is a heist picture and it has some interesting elements to it. Robert Shaw for example, plays twins. He is both Charles and Earl Hodgson. Earl is a security expert who designs protection for large businesses. Charles is a diamond merchant. An early scene establishes the competitive nature of the two brothers, they are both blackbelts and they spar with one another. Charles has tricked his way into having a social evening with Sally, played by Barbara Hersey who was going by Barbara Seagull at the time. Sally is the girlfriend of recently released prisoner Archie, the professional thief played by Roundtree. It is a convoluted sequence designed to bring all of them together but also to potentially drive a wedge between Sally and Archie. Charles has some agenda that we are not yet privy to.

"Diamonds" was written and directed by Menahem Golan, who was yet to partner with his cousin Yoram Globus, to form Cannon Films, but they did have a history of making films in Israel, which is exactly where this movie is mostly shot. The rest of the cast are Israeli actors who I did not recognize, but they were all pretty good. Oh there is one other American actor in the cast, Shelly Winters appears as a widow visiting the Holy land, but her role is completely superfluous to the story. At best she is comic relief, but if you took her out of the film completely, it would not have changed a thing about the plot.

The three act structure is very clear in the plotting. The opening section is the recruitment phase, which largely takes place in London. When they arrive in Israel, things get more complex as the plan is being laid out for us and there is a substantial amount of police attention paid to Archie because he is a known criminal. I enjoyed seeing the Israeli locations and seeing all the people in the squares and marketplaces. This elaborate set up contains a lot of cat and mouse playing between the thieves and the police who have them under surveillance. There are also a couple of red herrings thrown in, to baffle the police and us. 

I am usually of the opinion that we as an audience should be in on as many details of the planning as possible, without giving away any surprises. There were a couple of technical elements in the execution of the theft which would have been more dramatic if we had seen them coming. However, the casing of the security vault and it's procedures was shown pretty effectively. Charles has some insider information that could have been laid out to his partners, but it was not of critical importance. I do think though that Shaw's character needed to have a little more development as a personality. The interactions between him, Archie and Sally, after the opening section in London, are pretty dry. There is a suggestion of some tension but none of it is very dramatic.

When we get to the heist itself, the parts we see were well staged. As is required in a plot featuring a crime like this, there are some complications, but the main variable is the cooperation of a representative of the security vault. His motivation to provide information is a result of threat and duress, but when he overcomes that, he is so tentative about approaching the authorities that the extra time feels like a dramatic cheat. Robert Shaw was on the other end of an elaborate con game in "The Sting", so it is kind of fun when the tables are turned on the cops and his partners at the climax of the film. "The Thomas Crown Affair" seems to have also been something of an inspiration for the story turns here. 

"Diamonds" or "Diamond Shaft" if you prefer, is not an essential film. Shaw was better in "The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3" the year before. The film is however interesting enough for fans of heist films and Robert Shaw. Roundtree and Seagull(Hersey) have little opportunity to shine because character development is not a goal of the screenwriter/director. This is a movie that is all about the crime, and it is only moderately interesting in spite of the tricks that get played.  

  

Movies I Want Everyone to See: The Taking of Pelham One Two Three

[Originally Published on Fogs Movie Reviews Fall of 2013] [Re-Published now in conjunction with the 2018 TCM Film Festival]

I recently spent the weekend with some friends and a guy I know well, and have been friends with for more than thirty five years, had the audacity to suggest that the remake of this film was more entertaining than the original. I instantly dropped my jaw, exclaimed loudly that he had to be kidding and then proceeded to disagree in a condescending manner. I have to apologize for the tone, it was not called for and I would not want my friend to be angry at me because I mocked his preference for the 2009 version. I do want him to know and understand that although I liked the Denzel/Travolta film, it can't really hold a candle to the original and that vigorous defense of the 1974 classic  begins now as I once more recommend a movie that I want everyone to see.


The nineteen seventies were the last golden age of movie making. There have been plenty of great movies since then, and there have even been periods of time when a film making movement has taken center stage. Yet pound for pound the period of time when the studios were still controlled by film makers and not corporate conglomerates, remains the longest sustained period of film making excellence since the 30s. The mavericks that ran the studios lead by the seat of their pants, and their taste in films. When they succeeded, like Robert Evans did at Paramount, the atmosphere was invigorating. After "Heaven's Gate" and the fall of United Artists, the movie business changed. Not always in negative ways but it was very different. "The Taking of Pelham 123" is one of those films that represent a gritty view of the world, with cynicism that reflected the time and place and was not simply a joke or a stylistic flourish. It's not the kind of film that would have appealed to a modern studio as much. Maybe the indie world would be able to put something like this on the screen these days but it would not have had the cache of this version. The remake exists because there is already a story, and a success that the marketers can shoehorn into their philosophy. The remake is a casting gimmick, it worked but only because the groundwork had been laid out by the original.


This is a crime film where the crime involves holding hostages for ransom. The conceit is that the location of the kidnapping is a moving target underground. The set up of the movie familiarizes us with a variety of characters, most of whom are working stiffs in the NY Transit System. Walter Matthau, who made his daily bread playing cynical types, is the worn down head of the transit police in charge of one section of the subway system. Lt. Garber, mouths off at his co-workers, dutifully provides a tour to visiting transit dignitaries and generally growls his way through another work day. The re-make casts Denzel as as a dispatcher rather than a cop. OK that might work, except it the remake then  gives him a back story and a plot line that have nothing to do with the main event. The goal is to layer the character and make the plot deeper. In my view it comes off as uncertainty as to how to make the plot as tense as possible. They resort to tricks to build empathy for Garber.  Matthau's cop version is just doing his job. He is good at it and he struggles with the crisis he is faced with but our rooting interest is in the events not the man. Denzel is given multiple crisis to deal with and his willingness to do the job is undermined by the suspicion around him because of a separate story that is not really the focus of the film.

As a great illustration of the urban grittiness found in the original, take a listen to this terrific main theme that muscles the story onto the screen and tells you this is a film about tough men and dangerous situations, and manages to do so without resorting to theatrics.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCdTIar1Ug8&w=420&h=315]

I don't remember the score from the remake, but I do remember the over the top "bad guy" played by John Travolta. Dark glasses, close cropped hair, Fu Manchu mustache and tattoos galore are all trademarks of movie bad guys in the last twenty years. All the gang in the original had fake mustaches but they wore them as a cover not as an attempt to intimidate. Even though there is not any back story or character costuming, the four hijackers in the 1974 film all had distinct personalities and they were easy to remember by their colorful sobriquets.  I am pretty sure this is where Tarantino cribbed the idea for naming his characters in "Reservoir Dogs".

The ultimate measure of any story like this is the villain, and while Travolta was scary and played the part as was written, his character is not as interesting or unnerving as Robert Shaw's Mr. Blue. While we ultimately hear a little bit more about his background, the truth is none of it matters because we know from the beginning that he is a ruthless professional. The look in his eye and the demeanor he conveys is all we need to know he is an alpha. Shaw never screams or shouts. Mr. Blue's cool voice and nearly expressionless face tells every passenger on that train that he is not a man to be f***ed with. The next year after this, Shaw did "Jaws" which was a performance that draws attention to the characters idiosyncrasies.  Except for his intolerance of the psycho Mr. Grey, we see little of his motivation or internal processes. Shaw underplays every scene and the dialogue with Matthau on the radio is deadly earnest. He never compromises. The one time his timetable is adjusted has nothing to do with negotiating but everything to do with the situation, he still is in charge.

The way the hijackers maintain their control of the situation is by following Mr. Blue's lead. He guns down a hostage in cold blood and he doesn't accept the improvisation of his reckless ex mafia colleague. When he speaks to the passengers there is no mock sympathy or reassurance. He simply speaks directly and he acts as he has promised to.

Robert Shaw as Mr. Blue, menacing Matthew Broderick's Dad.

The supporting players are a combination of believable types and loathsome stereotypes. Most of the employees of the N.Y. Transit system come off as they are supposed to, harried professionals who view these events from the point of view of a bureaucrat rather than an average citizen. Ben Stiller's Dad shows up, not cracking wise so much as he is humorously supporting Garber as his partner in the Transit police. Veteran TV character actor Dick O'Neil plays the intolerant train schedule manager who can't be bothered to worry about dead customers when the trains are getting off schedule. He asks at one point what the customers want for their  lousy 35 cents, to live forever? This is the kind of casual negativity that pushes Garber into one of his few outward displays of frustration.  We get a chance to see the craven actions of political figures as they calculate the costs of paying a ransom. A calculation that has more to do with the next election than saving the lives of the hostages.  We never get to know much about the captives, they are stereotypes; old man, panicked mother, hooker etc. This is not a story of the lives of the victims of this crime or the perpetrators or the cops. The story focuses on the events of the crime.

The New York subway system seems familiar because we've seen it in a hundred movies. Overcrowded, not quite clean, sometimes antiquated and claustrophobic.   The film manages to convey all of that without dwelling on any of it. The darkness surrounding the train car becomes the background for some good tense scenes. One cop even jokes that because of his color he wants everyone to be aware that he is between the SWAT team and the criminals. There is a very morbid sense that everyone in those tunnels is just another rat in a hole and they all have to fend for themselves. While there are nihilistic films out there today, it is hard to see a major studio building a film around that sort of attitude. The characters would have to be sympathetic and the bureaucracy would be the focus of anger rather than the kidnappers. The cops at the surface have many of the same attitudes that we might see fifteen years later in "Die Hard".  They are ready to shoot first and ask questions later. They are not always competent, witness the car crash that delays delivery of the money, but they don't play most of this for laughs. The police in authority are not figures to be mocked like Dwayne Robinson, they are also working professionals that are worn from the job but shrug their shoulders and do it anyway. This whole film is very much a blue collar thriller. The bad guys are a team of desperate men not an army of tactically trained experts. The Transit employees are real people in a tough thankless job that have become jaded. The cops are overwhelmed and smart but not brilliant. The only pure comic personae is the Mayor with the flu.

The remake is filled with visual twists and plot developments to astound us. This movie is not filled with fireworks but it manages to hold our attention and be entertaining. The plot scenario might sound farfetched but set in the days of D.B. Cooper and hijacking of planes to Cuba it feels real. The city, the subway the  passengers, the crooks and the cops all come across as real people. This is not a spy adventure or an action film with a hero who overcomes incredible odds. It is an urban thriller that makes it's story feel like it could happen and characters that might really exist. The final clue that nails the hijacker that gets away is even more fun now a days when we see so many stories about stupid criminals. Even though the denouncement is played for a laugh, it also feels authentic.

Click on the above picture to check out an earlier post I did on this film.

I'm sure most of the readers of this site have probably watched this film a time or two. Fogs gave me a term in a on-line post that I now use regularly. This is a "Black Hole" film. It's gravitational pull for me is overwhelming, and every time I encounter it I lose another 104 minutes of my life but I gain a 104 minutes of time with story tellers who know what the hell they were doing.

Richard Kirkham is a lifelong movie enthusiast from Southern California. While embracing all genres of film making, he is especially moved to write about and share his memories of movies from his formative years, the glorious 1970s. His personal blog, featuring current film reviews as well as his Summers of the 1970s movie project, can be found at Kirkham A Movie A Day.

Less Celebrated Lines from Jaws

We just finished our first of two screenings for Father's Day.

The time while people filed in was filled with a few trivia cards. Come on, you gotta find something a little harder than this.

Another Jaws List for you.

 

One of the myriad of things that Jaws is noted for are the quotes that have become part of the culture. The AFI has the most memorable quote from the film at number 35 on their list of 100 Greatest Quotes 

That's a little low in my view but still respectable.  Fans of the movie will have a dozen other quotes that they will harpoon you with if given a chance. 

Bureaucrats everywhere will be comforted by the rationalization of the mayor of Amity when he warns the Chief about being too proactive based on the first attack.
  

Mayor Vaughn: Martin, it's all psychological. You yell barracuda, everybody says, "Huh? What?" You yell shark, we've got a panic on our hands on the Fourth of July. 

It's awful hard not to smile with righteous glee when the truth gets flung back in the face of the sheepish police chief and the cow-towing medical examiner by young Mr. Hooper on examining the body of the first victim.

Hooper: Well, this is not a boat accident!

Of course  the misanthropic shark hunter Quint has no shortage of million dollar lines.

At the town meeting, after he gets a introduction worthy of Errol Flynn in "The Adventures of Robin Hood", he sums up his offer to all the locals succinctly.
 

Quint: $10,000 for me by myself. For that you get the head, the tail, the whole damn thing.

As Quint engages in the male ritual of one upmanship with the Chief by offering a toast with his own home made moonshine, he shows himself to be as crude as the Chief fears he might be.

Quint: Here's to swimmin' with bow-legged women. 

Of course Quint also gets the whole monologue about the sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis. That five minutes has some of the greatest visualizations and quotes in it and star Robert Shaw delivered it perfectly.


Chief Brody has no shortage of good lines. One quote inspired Director Bryan Singer to name his production company.

Brody: That's some bad hat, Harry. 

Perhaps the greatest ad-libbed line ever created, comes from actor Roy Scheider, when he first gets a look at their nemesis. He backs of in fear and awe and tells Quint everything he should know about what is going to happen.

 Brody: You're gonna need a bigger boat.  

 

This post however, is a salute to some of the lesser lines in the film. They often convey a character or render a bit of humor in the first half of the movie. Screenwriter Carl Gottlieb, who appears in the film as the local newsman Meadows, was a TV writer who added punch to most of the script which had a spine from novelist Peter Benchley. He is almost certainly responsible for the quotes that follow, many of which are spoken in the background of the scene.

The Chief's Secretary is in only one scene but she quickly conveys to the audience how mundane the work of the police department in Amity should be. Her big piece of news is the complaint from some of the local businessmen.

"It seems that the nine year olds from the school have been karate-ing the picket fences."--Polly

The mayor says it in more than one spot, Amity is a summer town, it depends on summer dollars.  When the Chief goes to the hardware store to get the materials for printing "Beaches Closed" signs, we hear in the background the local merchant complaining to the jobber who has failed to bring the requested summer product. You can tell from his language that he's an "Islander".

"This stuff isn't going to help me in August, the summer ginks come down here in June."--Store Owner

The Chief's Deputy conveys his sense of powerlessness, lack of status and personal insecurities when the Chief instructs him to let Polly do the printing on the signs. He demurs with an understated question.

"What's the matter with my printing?"--Hendricks

As the town selectmen announce support for closing the beaches, the Mayor tries to buy some calm with his pronouncement that the closure will only last 24 hours. The Chief says, "I never agreed to that", but from the crowd comes the fearful response.

"Twenty four hours is like three weeks."--Unidentified voice at the Council Meeting

The story is full of colorful characters who don't really get any development except their one or two scenes. When their attempt to catch the shark from a jetty on the opposite side of the island goes bad, you can hear the understatement of the year from the first guy out of the water:

"Charlie take my word for it, don't look back".--Denherder

Fisherman Ben Gardner has disdain for the outsiders showing up to collect the bounty put up by Mrs. Kitner on the shark. As he takes his charter out, he mutters a curse under his breath that sounds like it would come from the mouth of a local fisherman.  

"Wait till we get them silly bastards down in that rockpile they'll be some fun, they'll wish their fathers had never met their mothers."--Ben Gardner

Matt Hooper attempts to be helpful by identifying the shark that is caught by one of the cast of idiots that went out on an overloaded launch. The quote itself is not so special, but the way in which it was delivered results in a laugh that is still hard to explain.

"A What?"--Belligerent Fisherman Pratt

Here is one that is so understated that I'm not sure I've ever heard it before. Amanda pointed it out to me when we were watching the film last Sunday. After Hooper offers his help in identifying the shark, he discovers that the know it all does not always endear himself to others. He made the mistake of suggesting that the shark might not be the one who killed the little boy. The bounty hunters take umbrage and offer to stick his head in the mouth of the shark to prove their point
  

"What I'm saying is it may not be the shark, just a slight difference in semantics that I don't want to get beaten up for."--Hooper

Obviously the lion's share of great lines went to the three stars. When the characters interact they reveal more about themselves to each other and us. As they are searching the waters where the shark has been feeding at night, Hooper chides the chief about being afraid of the water but living on an island. The Chief gives the only rationalization that makes sense of his situation:

"It's only an island if you look at it from the water".--Brody

The Mayor played by Murray Hamilton, is often seen as a villain in the story. In truth, he represents a part of the fear that the shark presents to the whole community. His way of coping is to cling to the trappings of his office and the illusion that some degree of control is still in his grasp. He's not as worried about the shark as he is about nascent Banksyies moving into the neighborhood.

 

"That is a deliberate mutilation of a public service message." --Mayor Vaughn

It is always funny to me when we show how predictable we are as humans. One of the prime examples of our craven natures is our desire to avoid responsibility for our actions. The world is full of excuse makers and apologists. Kids are much more honest about how this is true. When caught, one of the two kids with the cardboard fin is quick to sell out his buddy in order to weasel out of paying a penalty.

"He made me do it, he talked me into it."-- Whiny Prankster

OK, those are my choices. If you have some that you like and I neglected to mention, feel free to add them in your comments, then we will either take it under consideration or hang you up by your Buster Browns.

Steven Spielberg Blogathon: Directing Actors

Steven Spielberg is rightly credited with being the most effective visualizer of stories working in the last forty years. He took a liability like a non-functioning mechanical shark and managed to create an extremely visceral film out of it. That "Jaws" works is largely a function of his ability to feel how a movie will play to an audience. He took the extra step when making that film, of shooting additional material in the pool of one of his collaborators, to get the audience reaction right. The opening of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" is a litany of visual and emotional elements from the Saturday serialized films of the Golden Age, but updated and intensified as only Spielberg has been able to manage. The brutality and honesty of the first half hour of "Saving Private Ryan" is a testament to being able to connect with an audience's emotions in the strongest possible ways. Plenty of horror films have been as graphic and disturbing, but none have carried the power of those horrifying images the way that this World War II film managed to do.

Many have criticized his sentimentality in visual language. "Warhorse" although successful has been savaged by some for the Spielberg palate of color, lighting and cinematography. Had the film been made by someone other than Spielberg, it would be seen as a piece of artistic achievement rather than a three handkerchief cash grab. Some pretty picky elements of "War of the Worlds" earned that film scorn from some, even as it delivers the kind of frenzied panic and fear that audiences had not experienced since "Jaws" thirty years before it. He was hammered again for "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" for letting CGI and Shia LeBeof come between the fans of the series and the story being told. The same creative elements in "Minority Report", at least the visual ones, become a source of strife in other pictures. Like all artists, he cannot please every audience every time. There is one skill that he has managed to use consistently, without the same kind of criticism his visualization of a story sometimes gets. That talent is the directing of actors to excellence on the screen. Some of the finest performances over the last four decades have come from actors working with Steven Spielberg.

It is true that a talented actor can pull the weight of a movie on their shoulders and carry it for the audience, but they can only do that with a supportive director who knows what the story counts on. With young actors or inexperienced film actors, the role of the director is even more important. George Lucas has a great instinct for what looks good on screen. He can tell a story that will pull the audience in most of the time, but he does not seem to have the right touch with actors in the same way that Spielberg does. Martin Scorsese develops a troop of actors to work with and as they tune into him, they become more and more reflective of his sensibility. Robert DeNiro and Leonardo DeCaprio have worked with Scorsese on multiple projects. Spielberg has only one actor that he has featured in more than three films (Unless you are pretending that Crystal Skull does not exist). People may not realize it but Tom Hanks has only been directed by Spielberg three times in a starring part. To get a great performance out of a great actor is still difficult. There are plenty of pairings that did not pan out, but Spielberg manages to get actors in the right frame of mind, to give them the space to do their best work or maybe he just exerts enough control to stifle the actors excesses.

Casting and script are part of the process as well. I don't mean to suggest that Spielberg can magically turn a marginal performer into an Olivier, but he can make sure that the right actor is in the part and that their strengths are played to. A good example is Christopher Walken.

Walken is an actor loved for his eccentricities and quirks in delivery. He may be the most imitated actor around because his voice and mannerisms are so distinctive and therefore more easy to imitate. In "Catch Me If You Can" he gives an Academy Award nominated performance that is largely successful because the usual quirks are held to a minimum. Instead of being a cartoon, which is how he is usually used in movies, Walken is given a chance to be a real human being. His flaws are not overplayed and the natural way in which he interacts with the other performers is far different than, oh let's say, his three minutes in "Pulp Fiction". Spielberg knows what he wants from his actors and it appears from the product that he knows how to get it.

He is perhaps best known as a director of actors for his work with children. The main child performances in "E.T." are the source of this reputation. Henry Thomas is the lead, and he carries the movie, but he could not have done it without the help of a patient director. I recently watched Thomas's next film, "Cloak and Dagger" and while he is a good screen presence, he lacks the depth and naturalness that came from working with a knowledgeable actors director. It had to have helped the kids immensely to have shot the film in continuity so the kids always knew where they were in the story for their performances.  Christian Bale delivers an amazing child performance in "Empire of the Sun". Both of these young men are talented performers but it took Bale almost twenty more years to break thorough as a widely recognized acting powerhouse. Both of these films depend on the child performer to carry the picture. Unless you are cast because you are cute, hot or a well known commodity, it is hard to imagine a kid without a strong director being able to hold an audience in their hands.  

His one obvious failure in this area was with "Hook" which was filled with so many kids that most of them don't get a chance to have personality and those that do are burdened with the broadest kinds of direction possible. Maybe Charlie Korsmo was adequate in his role but the other kids ran over Spielberg with their quirks. On the other hand, the kids in "Jurassic Park" are excellent, and you will believe Haley Joel Osment is an android.


Spielberg has had the advantage of working with many established stars but it is the first time or novice performers that he has been able to get the most out of. First time stars Oprah Winfrey, Whoopie Goldberg, and journeyman actress Margaret Avery were nominated for the Academy Award in their first major roles. Directors get credit for so many things on the set that they may have little input on but the one thing they have the most control over is the casting and performance of the actors. Sometimes the director does get lucky. In the movie "Lincoln", Spielberg had had his heart set on Liam Neeson for the title role at first, but as time went on, minor differences emerged in how the two saw the character being portrayed. After the project was repeatedly put on hold Nesson bowed out. I have no doubt that he would have given a towering performance but when Daniel Day-Lewis is your fallback casting, and he is driven to make the character come to life, fortune has smiled on you.

I've not read enough to know how important Spielberg was to Day-Lewis' performance, but I do know they kept late hours and shared information and inspiration even in the middle of the night. It is an interesting piece of trivia to note that of the dozen actors Spielberg directed to Academy nominations, Daniel Day-Lewis is the only one to have actually won.

Tom Cruise made two appearances in Spielberg films as distraught fathers. He has to sell the characters demons and weaknesses in both films while also handling an incredibly physical performance in front of green screens and doing stunt work. If you compare his performances in "Minority Report" and "War of the Worlds" to other roles in action films, there is a level of quality to those performances that certainly was enhanced by working with Spielberg. Nothing in "Oblivion" comes close to the anguish that Cruise displays when confronting the pre-crime scenario that John Anderson goes through as he confronts the man he believes took his child. Because this performance is buried in an action film it is easy to overlook the quality of work that the two of them achieved here.

 While all three leads in the movie "Jaws" were excellent, there are two performances that stand out. The flashy role and the greatest match of actor to part I can think of is the pairing of Robert Shaw with the character Quint. At least four sets of hands were on the script for the famous monologue, Spielberg knew what words mattered and enhanced the performance with camera work and sound design that makes that moment one of the essential film scenes ever.  The second performance is one that is often overlooked, Roy Scheider as Chief Brody is subtle and sometimes heartbreaking. Spielberg knows how long to let some of those moments linger in time. The dinner table scene is a wonderful example of the creativity that can come out when the director and the actor work together.

"...as an adult, filmmaking is all about appreciating the talents of the people you surround yourself with and knowing you could never have made any of these films by yourself.”--Steven Spielberg