Robert Zemeckis’ “Used Cars” opens with a slow, patient push-in on a man tinkering around under the dashboard of a used car, eventually achieving the goal of rolling back its odometer. He’s whistling “Hail to the Chief” as he works; the opening title music that follows is a rousing rendition of “Stars and Stripes Forever.” The messaging here is not subtle: America, circa 1980, is a used car lot. Appropriately enough, at the year’s end, it would elect a used car salesman President.

Continue reading ‘Used Cars’ At 40: How The Cynical Black Comedy Became A Preview Of The Reagan Era at The Playlist.

Few directors have been as concerned with the little moments as Steven Spielberg. Of course, the filmmaker — certainly the world’s most famous director, and a strong contender for America’s greatest — is concerned with the big picture, too. But few since Lubitsch have had such a facility for the beat, the set piece, the gag, the reversal, the sequence that you replay in your head long after you’ve walked out of the theater.

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