Last week’s Out of Theaters celebrated “Catch Me If You Can,” one of the lightest, most entertaining movies Steven Spielberg ever made. This week, things get darker. A lot darker. And not just because the movie is in black and white.
“Schindler’s List” is when Spielberg, arguably the most popular director in American history, got deadly serious and tackled the Holocaust. He’d depicted Nazis before, in “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” but this time around, there was no whip-wielding daredevil to beat the badguys. This time, history played out, the Nazis devastated Europe and millions of innocent people died horribly.
Spielberg focused his movie on Oskar Schindler, a Nazi party businessman who uses imprisoned Polish Jews as labor in his cookware company. As the war worsens and the threat of death grows, Schindler and his accountant, Itzhak Stern, cook the books to ensure that his workers and their families are kept safe from the Nazi death camps. It’s not a pleasant story, obviously, but it’s beautifully shot and strongly acted (with Oscar-nominated performances from Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes). And Spielberg, who’d been nominated several times before, finally won his Best Director Oscar, and the film took home Best Picture.
Billy and Will discuss the strengths and weaknesses (it’s not a perfect film) of “Schindler’s List.” And in a slightly lighter vein, Will talks about “Weathering With You,” an excellent anime movie about love, loss and global warming.
