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spielberg in the 80s

• raiders of the lost ark
• e.t.
• indiana jones and the temple of doom
• indiana jones and the last crusade

spielberg in the 90s

• jurassic park
• schindler's list
• the lost world: jurassic park
• saving private ryan

spielberg in the 00s

• a.i.: artificial intelligence
• minority report
• catch me if you can
• the terminal
• war of the worlds
• munich
• indiana jones and the kingdom of the crystal skull

spielberg in the 10s

• the adventures of tintin: the secret of the unicorn
• war horse

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If my days as a student filmmaker taught me anything, it's that there's nothing wrong with not over-reaching. The danger with attempting to achieve too much is failing to achieve anything at all. Setting yourself an achievable goal and dedicating yourself to its best possible execution is no shame or cop-out.

Catch Me If You Can is Steven Spielberg's first genuinely workable film since Schindler's List. The nine-year gulf between those two films has been littered with vast, often perplexing, experiments in bold theme (Amistad), epic scale (Saving Private Ryan), and obtuse artistic weight (A.I.: Artificial Intelligence). So while Catch is by no means a great film, the fact that it is created with such even, measured craftsmanship is good enough for me. It's fun, and it's fun to watch, and it at no time ever goes out of its way to be arty, grandiose, or worst of all, Important.

There's nothing particularly innovative or audacious about Catch Me If You Can; the material is simple and accessible, but with heavy artistic ambitions out of the way, Spielberg relaxes and simply tells a good story, very well.

Catch features a gem of a script and two stellar performances from actors whose screen personae should overwhelm a film this small, and yet don't. Both DiCaprio and Hanks disappear utterly into their portrayals of Frank and Carl, making them one of the most enjoyable onscreen pairings of the year. I'd gladly line up to see Catch Me If You Can, Part II: Mexican Road Trip.

The aforementioned script is clever and well-structured without going over the top. As with several Spielberg flicks of late, it does have a protracted epilogue that seems just a hair too long, but that's picking nits. There are some lovely bits of dialogue and character moments, and the quality of the writing hearkens back to cinematic years gone by. The only significant error seems to be the fact that Brenda disappears from the end of the movie. I don't know if Frank ended up marrying her, but this should have been addressed, even understanding the length of time he would have been missing from her life.

The film really soars when Frank is doing what Frank does best - the multitude of con games, fraud schemes, and career impersonations that became his credo. The lags, then, come with the family material, although Christopher Walken turns in one of the most nuanced performances of his career. Remember when he was an actor, and not the scary guy who can read "Goodnight Moon" and make children cry?

Steven Spielberg disappears so completely in this film that it's genuinely difficult, at times, to remember he's even shooting it. There's no boistrous camera dynamism, and scenes are assembled classically with little trickery. I'm genuinely impressed with the lighthearted tone he's carried off here (remember, his last "comedy" was 1941, the biggest failure of his career) and hope he'll attempt similar material in the future.

Of course, the vast and inescapable stylistic gulf between this and his normal oeuvre, though successful here, does beg the time-honoured question: when is Steven Spielberg going to get back to making Steven Spielberg movies?