, 2022 was a big year for movies depicting the symbiotic wonder and terror of cinema, from the broken dreams ofto, finally, the bittersweet obsession of Steven Spielberg’s, which became an unofficial ambassador of this Dark Magic of the Movies mini-boom when it turned out to be the only one to net a Best Picture nomination. But 30 years ago, Spielberg’s sometime collaborator Joe Dante was already reckoning with the dark impulses behind a childhood love of cinema with.
Many of Dante’s previous movies involved monsters, kids on an adventure, or kids on an adventure fighting monsters, though he skewed more satirical and less sentimental than, say,, a similarly Spielberg-produced Warner Bros.