With Schindler's List, Spielberg completely shattered the limits of what I thought film can do.

Rating: 10/10 (1 June 2000)

Schindler's List is by far the most powerful and profound movie going experience I've ever had. No other film I have seen even comes close to the kind of power generated by Schindler's List. Spielberg did things with the medium of film that I never dreamed were possible. Somehow he managed to raise the artform to a transcendant, supernatural level - something that no other film in history (at least that I have seen) has accomplished. Citizen Kane may have set the standard for film, but Schindler's List completely shattered it - breaking free of the realm of normal movie making. Viewing Schindler's List went far beyond a merely passive experience of viewing a poweful film - for the first and only time I can remember, I was living the experience in a way that is almost inexplicable to me. It was a truly awesome existential and spiritual experience. There are single scenes in Schindler's List that are more brilliant, profound and powerful than entire films I have seen. There are sequences and images that haunted me for years afterwards and still haunt me. To this day I get choked up and tearie-eyed when I recall certain scenes or images to memory. Apart from that, the film is brilliantly shot with the best black and white cinematography I have seen since Citizen Kane. The screenplay is remarkably subtle and the performances are first rate all around. Liam Neeson, who has amazing screen presence, was the perfect choice to play the character of Oskar Schindler - a man who is likeable and charasmatic, but ultimately mysterious. And Ralph Fiennes was mesmerizing as the evil and complex Amon Goeth character.
Although this film is by far the high point of all my movie going experiences, it is also the low point in that every other film that I have seen since (even really great ones) seems so mediocre and ordinary in comparison.