Spielberg films like Netflix and HBO never existed.

I can watch 13 hours of a drama like this for $9 a month.

And then another one.

Oh yeah, Tom Hanks...but then again, Woody Harrelson.

I've been manipulated too many times by Spielberg to bother w/ him anymore. It's like going back to live with an abuser. I don't care if he's "changed." He's still a manipulative SOB.

Spielberg makes kids movies. With the possible exception of Schindler, every movie he's ever made is crafted for an audience of eight-year-olds. Every plot "twist" is telegraphed like a Jimmy Snuka leap from the turnbuckle and the dialogue would hardly be out of place if you changed all the characters' names to Dick, Jane, Puff, and Spot. He's neither artist nor genius, but there's no question he can really squeeze the nickels out of the incurious masses. Ugh.

@1 - I don't quite get your thesis. Because there's television, there shouldn't be any more movies? What about engaging with narratives in a public setting? Hell, what about date nights, when you want to get out of the place where you do laundry and dishes and bills?

As a theater practitioner, I've certainly heard that we don't need plays anymore because there are movies; now, it seems that we no longer need movies because there's television; soon, I imagine we won't need television because there's the internet.

Or is there something specific about Spielberg's mode of storytelling that strikes you as better suited to Netflix?

You need to be clearer as to what your gripe is.

On the other hand, I'll see and raise you your Woody Harrelson, who's considerably more compelling to me than a Tom Hanks, though a Martin Donovan, a Ray Winstone, a Tom Hardy, or a Michael Fassbender are all considerably more interesting than either.

@3 - Spielberg is ultimately a masterful technician, which both the warm middle of the masses and the academy will tend to mistake for a great artist. Some consumers of art and entertainment judge "good" or "bad" on whether everyone stayed properly on-pitch, without concern for whether anything interesting happened within or between the notes. I actually think Schindler's List is as problematic as any of his films, in that regard; the ending it gives you is precisely the sort of (self-)congratulatory mawkishness you expect, complete with saccharine John Williams strings. It flows naturally from what came before, which is part of the problem: the lack of shading as to who the good guys or bad guys were denies us the true, adult terror of the Holocaust - that ordinary people were made complicit in an atrocity of astonishing scale.

Crystal Skulls aside, I actually think Spielberg is more in his element the less he tries to convince us that he's concerned with Very Important Things, the more he sticks to pulp. And for the love of [G/g]od(s), he needs to split with Williams now; I'm so tired of movie scores trying to tell me how I'm supposed to feel about what's going on.

@5..the music in bridge of spies is thomas newman. not quite as overwrought as williams, but still spielbergian ( kind of like wagnerian except with less wagner ).

@6 - Thanks for the tip! Still don't know if I'll see it, but makes for an interesting footnote.