10 Spectacularly Wrong Movie Reviews

2. Schindler's List=A Theme Park

Who would criticise Schindler's List? It would be an even greater sacrilege than dumping on The Goonies. It's the one inarguably brilliant film that Steven Spielberg has made. We'd argue he's made a bunch but, well, there's plenty of people arguing otherwise. Schindler's List, meanwhile, is a rightfully sacred cow, an intensely personal yet sweepingly epic true story of the eponymous doctor (played by Liam Neeson), who managed to get hundreds of Jewish people out of the German concentration camps during World War II. It's a pretty grim film - as, duh, a film about the Holocaust would and should be - but ultimately a hopeful one, a story of human triumph over horrible, terrible adversity and, well, mass genocide. It's never trite, however, with Spielberg sticking to the facts rather than going full saccharine.

"A theme park ride masquerading as master's thesis" is how Luke Y Thompson of the New Times described it. Yeah. That's a pretty damning indictment and a snappy line, but does it actually mean anything? Non-committal shrug from us. Jeremy Heilman went even further, labeling Schindler's List "a misguided failure that aims to please where it should instead be challenging and confronting", disappointed that the film doesn't go for any more complex morality than "Nazis bad, everyone else good". In which case we don't think he should ever watch Inglourious Basterds. He's really missing out, mind.