1993 in movies: Spielberg's MVP year

Seriously, let's talk about this year for Steven Spielberg. 

Is it the best year for any director, ever? Is there any way that it can't be looked on as such?

Having the number-one box office and the Best Picture winner of the same year is dominant. Directing Jurassic Park and Schindler's List, back-to-back (and even overlapping) is ... whatever beyond dominant is. I didn't appreciate what was happening at the time, but I remember the experience of seeing both movies and how each of them was transformative.

For this project, I watched both in the same day and in the order of release, which is logical but probably the only way to truly enjoy both of them to the fullest ("enjoy" is a weird word to use for Schindler's List, but I expect you know what I mean). I can't imagine Spielberg making them in the reverse order, either, as you can ramp up from one to the other but it would be a feat to go the other way.

I've been marveling lately at how good some early CGI stuff looks, and I think in Jurassic Park I figured out a big part of that: everyone was still so unsure of how CGI would work and how it would be received that close-ups were avoided, and everything looks much better from far away. The uncanny trap we're caught in now is that the effects are good enough to get close, but not yet good enough to convince us from that short distance - and I'm not sure it will ever fully get past that line. IN any case, what you can always count on from Spielberg, delivered in spades in Jurassic Park, is making it fun.

Now, on the other hand, I wouldn't ever pitch Schindler's List as a good time at the movies, but I forgot how it touched on so much: it has funny moments, it has sweetness, and it has all of the parts that makes a person what they are. In short, it's the filmmaking savvy of Spielberg that makes Schindler's List worthwhile because it's an outstanding movie, and not simply what a cynical mind might see as a morality play dressed up as a movie. 

To cap off an incredible year, it might just be the Best Picture of all Best Pictures.