1977 - CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND - on the big screen

Obviously re-released as a tie in to Spielberg's current fim Disclosure, Close Encounters of the Third Kind is almost 50 years old.  The film was made when Spielberg was in his early 30's and is an assured piece of work for a filmmaker at the beginning of his career.  Spielberg had finished shooting Jaws and was still something of an unknown quantity in Hollywood although people in the know recognized him as a potential major talent.

 

Spielberg was under enormous pressure during the making of the film.  The budget escalated from the initial estimates of 3 million dollars to 20 million dollars.  The studio Columbia Pictures was on very shaky financial ground and was constantly pressuring him to reduce the budget and wrap up the filming.  One of his producers had a significant drug problem and was apparently behaving erratically during the production.  But Spielberg stayed the course and remained true to his vision of the final film.

 

Close Encounters of the Third Kind also benefited from some considerable behind the camera talent.  Vilmos Zsigmond was the very talented cinematographer Spielberg had worked with on his first feature The Sugerland Express.  John Williams composed the score.  Michael Kahn was the editor working with Spielberg for the first time and would go on to cut almost all of his other films.  Douglas Trumball who had worked with Stanley Kubrick was in charge of the pioneering special effects. 

 

 

I remember when the film was released the critical reception was for the most part good.  However some critics were looking for another shoot-em up Star Wars type of film but Spielberg was too much of a humanist to go down that road.  Spielberg even got one of France's greatest directors, Francois Truffaut to play the part of Claude Lacombe the French scientist in charge of the UFO project.  

 

 

In spite of some of some dated technology in the film (reel to reel tape recorders, paper maps, land line telephones), this film still plays very well and is certainly one of his best films.

Spielberg for the most part wrote the screenplay with the assistance of five other uncredited screenwriters.  The film exists in  three different running times, the 135 minute original release, the 132 minute special edition and the 137 minute director's cut.

2017 - THE POST, another late period Steven Spielberg film

The days of Spielberg making Indiana Jones adventure films  have been over for a while.  Towards the later part of his career he has been concentrating on more intimate chamber pieces.  As intimate as Spielberg can get anyway.  The Post is Spielberg's tribute to the nation's free press.  The heroic publisher and journalists of the Washington Post defy the White House and publish The Pentagon Papers which were a major criticism of the Vietnam war.  The only problem with this film is that the New York Times had already printed this story a while ago after three months of investigation.  The Washington Post for the most part was basically rewriting the story for their readers as they tried to play catch up.  But you would never know it from the point of view of this film.

The Post is actually kind of a boring film. It's hard to make reporters sitting at their desks typing stories interesting.  At times Spielberg races the camera around the newsroom to get some action into the film.  This was the approach Lewis Milestone took in his version of The Front Page, another newspaper story.  The only problem is Milestone's film came out in 1931, so we were hardly treading new ground here. It doesn't help matters that the photography is so dingy and dark (courtesy of Spielberg's regular cinematographer Janusz Kamiński) at times you can hardly see what's going on.  I kept worrying the actors were going to bump into the furniture it was so gloomy.

 

The Post has a good cast since it's a Spielberg film after all.  Tom Hanks is tough guy editor Ben Bradlee.  Bradlee was a legendary figure in the newspaper world and while Hanks is okay, his mister tough guy editor can't really compete with Jason Robards Jr.'s portrayal in All The Presidents Men.  Meryl Streep is the publisher Katherine Graham, a society matron who had the job of publisher thrust on her after her husband died.  Streep's performance is not very interesting.  It's just Meryl wearing a lot of ugly early 70's clothes and hairstyles as she gives her usual phone it in performance. 

 

The Post was kind of recognized as a film taking a shot at Donald Trump at the time of its release.  If this is true, Spielberg and the gang really didn't get this across.  Maybe an approach like the one Costa-Gavras took for his political thriller Z would have worked better, now that was an exciting film.

The film was written by Josh Singer and Liz Hannah, the running time is 116 minutes.

2022 - THE FABELMANS, Steven Spielberg at 76

 At the age of 76, Spielberg is still making films and still quite prolific. The Fabelmans is different from his recent films.  It's clearly a very personal project since it is about his family and his embrace of film making.  Most critics and publicists have said it's based on his family, but Spielberg has gone on at great length about how this film is about his parents divorce.

For all of Spielberg's potent skill behind the camera I don't believe he really pulled his story off.  The film's box office was a disappointment.  Audiences just didn't seem to want to embrace his personal story.  Spielberg appeared to have a complicated relationship with his divorced parents.  In The Fabelmans he is clearly trying to present a positive portrayal of his mother and father even with all of their flaws.  The mother is the creative head of the family, she appears to be a frustrated artist unhappy about being a housewife and a mother.  But I feel the mother comes off as somewhat of a nut, probably not what Spielberg was aiming for.

As the Spielberg character Sammy moves into high school, he becomes even more proficient at making his little 16 and 8 mm films.  He falls in love with a very Christian girl which seems rather improbable for a high school film nerd.  He films his class on an outing to the beach and while editing makes the antisemitic blonde jock Logan the hero of the film.  Obviously demonstrating his ability to create a mythic hero.  Since Sammy has been shown to be harassed by the Jew hating Logan this seemed rather improbable and maybe a little offensive.

 

The film ends with Sammy's visit to the legendary Hollywood director John Ford played by David Lynch.  For most film nuts this is the high point of the film, Lynch does seem to capture the gruff and abusive nature of Ford.

 

But I think what really hurts this film is the running time.  2 hours and 31 minutes is a very long time for any film much less this one.  In fact I've heard a number of people remark that this film is very long and very boring.

The screenplay was by Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner.

1984 - INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM, viewed at a revival theater

 I saw this film when it was first released in 1984, nearly 40 years later I attended a revival showing of this film and I can say, I still don't like it. Everything about the film with the exception of the photography and John Williams score just does not work.  Spielberg was always the master at where to put the camera and when to edit a scene for maximum impact and that really didn't fail him here, but the story and screenplay are just terrible.

 Producer George Lucas along with his longtime collaborators Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz apparently had no idea how to construct a decent story with entertaining thrills and some interesting characters.  The film was apparently strung together from a bunch of leftover action scenes that didn't make it into Raiders Of The Lost Ark.  After the fun and lighthearted approach to the first film in the Indiana Jones series Lucas decided he wanted to go darker.  The result were a lot of scenes which were extremely violent and gross more so than the first film.  And this was supposedly a family film.

The characters were nothing to write home about as well.  Harrison Ford does what he can to prop the film up but Kate Capshaw who is the female lead in this film is pretty terrible, no fault of the actor. The script really let her down.  The film also has a cute little oriental kid nick named "Short Round" a character who originally showed up in Sam Fuller's The Steel Helmet.  The film spends a lot of time on his foolishness as Indiana Jone's sidekick.

 

If anyone comes out on top it's the veteran British cinematographer Douglas Slocombe.  Slocombe was one of Spielberg's most important collaborators for a while and in fact he is next to Spielberg in about every shot in the making of feature found on YouTube. This is a good looking film

The film was commercially successful but as a piece of commercial entertainment, a complete failure.

 The running time is 118 minutes.

1979 - 1941, attempt at a large scale comedy.

 Obviously the plan was to make a large scale comedy like It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World.  The film's critical failure probably had more to do with the screenplay then Spielberg's direction which in many scenes was quite inventive.

Spielberg by this point in his career could do no wrong, so two studios ponied up money for this very expensive film.  The large cast included John Belushi, Dan Ackroyd, Robert Stack, Ned Beatty, Tim Matheson and Toshiro Mifune to name a few.  Belushi and Matheson had been in Animal House so I suspect audiences were looking for that kind of irreverent humor.  But if anything Belushi's tiresome slob shtick had gotten very old by this point in his career. The same holds true with Dan Ackroyd.  

1941 was not the huge moneymaker that Spielberg and the studios intended but I believe it did make it's costs back.  The film is an old school production in many ways, with models and miniatures used in the special effects and action scenes.

 

The film appears to have had a profound change on Spielberg's career.  He entered into a period of good but somewhat safe crowd pleasers like Raiders of the Lost Ark.  1941 is an interesting film probably worth taking a look at but it's biggest problem is that it's just not funny.

The screenplay was by Robert Zemeckis, Robert Gale and John Milius, the running time in the extended version is 146 minutes which plays a little better than the theatrical cut of 118 minutes.

1981 - RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK , slick commercial Hollywood filmmaking at it's best

Obviously Steven Spielberg and George Lucas were the main creative figures behind this film.  However there were a number of top line professionals that made this film a success.

The cinematographer Douglas Slocombe had been working in films since the 1940's.  His very impressive list of films included, The Man in the White Suit, The Lavender Hill Mob, The Lion in Winter, the first three Indiana Jones films, and 2nd unit on Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  Apparently Slocombe barely used a light meter when he was shooting.

2nd unit director Mickey Moore had been staging action scenes in films like Patton, Gunfight of the OK Corral, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Man Who Would Be King, and the first three Indiana Jones films as well.  This guy worked into his 80's.

Spielberg's long time editor Michael Kahn had started out editing Hogan's Heroes and had worked on a number of blackploitation films which included Truck Turner, Black Belt Jones, and The Spook Who Sat by the Door.  He's still working with Spielberg at age 80.

115 minutes, written by Lawrence Kasdan.

1975 - JAWS on the big screen

Two thumbs up, four stars, ten stars you name it Jaws really holds up for a 30 plus year old film.

Saw this film at a midnight showing in a neighborhood revival house it was in a very good digital copy that hadn't sucked all the grain out of the film.   Jaws looked a lot like I remembered it and I saw it a few times when it came out that summer.

Spielberg was a young guy when he filmed Jaws, he clearly worked his ass off.  Everyone knows that the mechanical shark gave him nothing but trouble and most of the film was shot on the ocean which escalated the cost and pushed the film from a five week shoot to a five month ordeal.   Spielberg was lucky that he had a couple of producers who had faith in the film and stuck by him getting him the best Hollywood talent available.  A lot of the production people on the film deserve credit for the success of Jaws.

Peter Benchley's book had the gem of a good idea which was basically a giant shark that seemed to be almost supernatural eating its way through a bunch of vacationers.  However as a work of literature the book was actually kind of crummy.  Benchley wrote the first draft of the screenplay but Carl Gottlieb, Spielberg the actors and lots of uncredited writers apparently added the humor and fleshed out the characters.  This is the prototypical summer entertainment that focused on characterization along with the exciting action scenes. 

124 minutes.

2012 - LINCOLN, 1st in the Lincoln film trilogy

Finally a decent Spielberg film after crap like Tin Tin and Indiana Jones.  Spielberg supposedly spent 10 years off and on developing this film.  Tony Kushner was the 3rd writer on the project he delivered a script based on all the political maneuvering that went on to pass the 13th amendment.

In a film like this the acting runs the show and there is no question Daniel Day Lewis has given a very committed performance.  He got a lot of decent support from a number of actors.  David Strathairn as Secretary of State William Seward who's life and career you could make a film about. Seward was responsible for the purchase of Alaska from the Russians.

Sally Field,  has received some criticism as Mary Todd Lincoln.  I thought she was all right.   Mary Todd Lincoln was kind of crazy.  Tommy Lee Jones played Thaddeus Stevens a radical Republican legislator.  I didn't care for this character.  This is what happens when you give a larger then life actor a larger then life character, lots of hammy acting.

Also didn't care much for the photography of Janusz Kaminski who Spielberg works with these days, too many artistic shots of diffused sunlight shining through windows for me.  John Williams did the music as usual and he seems to have restrained himself, the film isn't swimming in music.

Final minor criticism, the film is a little long and the ending showing Lincoln dead in bed probably was unnecessary the film could have easily ended with Lincoln's impressive 2nd inaugural address a speech that is inscribed on his Memorial.

Everything in this film is about the writing and acting and it's on a very high level.

150 minutes.

1983 - TWILIGHT ZONE THE MOVIE, is pretty bad considering the talent

Four big names directors pay tribute to Rod Serling's anthology series and for the most part the segments can't touch any old black and white episode of the series.

John Landis directs, Time Out, the only original episode in the series.  This was the notorious episode that killed the actor Vic Morrow and 2 children.  It's a hit you over the head story about racism that is about as subtle as a steamroller.  Pretty bad.

Steven Spielberg directs Kick the Can and he directs poorly.  This slop about elderly people at a nursing home discovering their youth brought out the worst in the director, the sloppy overblown music, the too glowing photography, the sentimental garbage about old age and childhood, it’s just awful.  This is a director barely in control of his story, possibly the worst thing he has ever been associated with.

Joe Dante directs It's a Good Life and sort of redeems the film.  Dante is able to indulge his interest in cartoons and does make the segment his own.  The problem is that the original episode was a brilliant horror story and Dante chooses cartoonish silliness over horror.

The director of The Road Warrior George Miller, directs Nightmare at 20,000 Feet like it's a Mad Max movie but he has the same problem as Dante, he can't really capture the  horror of the original black and white episode, still probably the best of the short films.  John Lithgow's over the top hysterical performance is pretty fun but he can't top the original actor William Shatner.

 Considering how influential The Twilight Zone still is, this is a pretty poor tribute.

101 minutes, written by John Landis, George Clayton Johnson, Richard Matheson and Melissa Mathison.

1974 - THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS, early good Spielberg film.

Spielberg's road epic about a couple of dim witted white trash Texans who take a state trooper hostage is unlike anything he ever made since.  The film is full of humor and car chases all well handled.

Goldie Hawn a real acquired taste as an actor is perfectly cast as the stupid wife married to her equally clueless husband.  Ben Johnson one of John Ford's actors, is the Texas lawman in pursuit of them.  This is a rare Spielberg film where as much attention to characterization is given as are the meticulously staged action scenes.

In a way this film is an aberration in Spielberg's career.  His next film was Jaws and he's been chasing that three ring circus ever since.

The excellence of The Sugarland Express also owes a great deal to Vilzmos Zsigmond the cinematographer.  Zsigmond was one of the most important filmmakers of the 1970's.  He was responsible for the photography on Deliverance, The Deer Hunter, Heaven's Gate, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and McCabe and Mrs Miller

110 minutes, written by Hal Barwood and Matthew Robbins.

2008 - INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL not good not bad not anything

Expectations were so high for this film it was bound to disappoint.  Watching the latest Indiana Jones film three years after the film was released it looks more like an over produced B movie from Universal studios than an adventure epic.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a letdown mostly because it just replays stuff from the previous films.  Almost every scene in the film is a direct quote from the first and second films.  You get the icky bug stuff, the big fight with a real tough guy stuff, the mystical stuff, the face melting stuff etc.  Even the space aliens at the end look like the outer space visitors from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Frankly all this quoting from the old films gets kind of tiresome.  Sean Connery passed on this film so they killed his character off.  Denholm Elliot who played Professor Marcus had passed away so there is a reference to his dying.  At least the Bond series waiting until their 20th film to pat themselves on the back with this kind of self styled ass kissing.

The action scenes are in the usual Spielberg style which is looking pretty dated these days especially when you overlay a typical John Williams score on top of them.  

The main problem with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is that it looks old fashioned and kind of out of it.  It's  been close to 30 years since the first film came out.  Movie audiences have moved on from this kind of film.  Indiana Jones needed to reinvent itself like the James Bond and Batman films have. 

The film is also way too long.

122 minutes

2011 - THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN is the on going decline of Steven Spielberg

Another disappointment from Steven Spielberg who seems to be further spiraling down the hole of artistic nothingness from film to film.

The Adventures of Tintin has nothing to do with Herge or Tintin.  Gone are the clever plots and comic book humor of the colorful books.  Instead what we have here is just another Indiana Jones film (and a crummy one at that) with characters that just happened to be named Tintin and Captain Haddock.

If you look at Spielberg's list of films, since the failure of 1941, he has been playing it safe with completely middle brow entertainments.  With the exception of Schindler's List  would anyone really consider The Terminal or Catch Me If You Can as films that contribute to the greater artistic culture?

Even when Spielberg reaches a little higher in films like Saving Private Ryan, A.I. and Minority Report, his middle brow taste and sensibilities defeat his ambitions.

Spielberg knows how to make a movie.  He knows where to place the camera and make the edit but if you look at his technique he's still shooting films the same way he made Amblin',  slick but empty entertainments.

Spielberg with  Peter Jackson

The Adventures of Tintin is particularly annoying because Spielberg has smothered it in weird camera angles, ADD action scenes and wrapped it all in overblown computer enhanced backgrounds.

It's as if he is afraid to tell a story for fear of seeming like an old fogy who can't compete with the hyperactive Michael Bay and Zack Snyder director types.

107 minutes, written by Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish.

1968 - AMBLIN' early Spielberg film is kind of an ordeal to sit through

Steven Spielberg's early short film about a couple of hitchhikers in the desert.  The story what there is of it is entirely silent. 

Spielberg says he has great affection for Amblin' and why wouldn't he.  The film was seen by executives at Universal Studios and on the basis of it he was offered a job directing television shows for the studio.  The rest as they say is etc.

This isn't just any early short film by a future big name director.  It was shot in 35 millimeter and had Allen Daviau the cinematographer who would go on to film E.T. and The Color Purple for Spielberg.  It's a highly polished piece of movie making.  This is also a very slick piece of product, without an honest moment in the entire film.

Amblin' is the beginning of Spielberg the director as provider of commercial junk like, Hook, Jurassic Park:  The Lost World, Always, The Terminal and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. 

For every Schindler's List, the public is expected to sit through something like The Terminal or Amblin'.

26 minutes, written by Steven Spielberg.

1997 - THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK

I'm sure Universal Studios tossed a whole lot of money at Steve Spielberg to get him to film this sequel.  He probably never had a choice other than saying yes.

The whole gang is back, Spielberg, the writer David Koepp, John Williams, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough and the computer generated dinosaurs.

As the famous movie reviewer Joe Bob Briggs liked to say "if you are going to make a sequel make a sequel, make the exact same movie as the first one."

For a summer popcorn flick a lot of people sure get eaten by dinosaurs, human life is very cheap in this movie.  This contrasts amusingly with the deliberate portrayal by Spielberg to make the dinosaurs lovable.

Towards the end of The Lost World: Jurassic Park one of these computer dinosaurs runs amok in San Diego.  This is where Spielberg's real heart lies, paying tribute to hack Godzilla director Ishiro Honda.

It's easy to hate this film since it's basically crap, but the reality was they were going to make a sequel to Jurassic Park one way or another.

129 minutes.

2002 - CATCH ME IF YOU CAN, slick Hollywood

The problem with being Steven Spielberg is that he is always supposed to direct major masterpieces.  Catch Me If You Can, is not a masterpiece and will never be a masterpiece.  It is a very slick piece of Hollywood entertainment.

The film has big stars in the leading roles, Hanks and DiCaprio, it also has actors like Christopher Walken, Jennifer Garner, Martin Sheen, Nathalie Baye and sexless Amy Adams. The cinematography is Spielberg's go to guy these days Janusz Kaminski who shoots everything in a warm nostalgic glow maybe a little too nostalgic.  The art direction and production design is impressive, the film has a real authentic 1960's look to it.  John Williams composed a nice minimalist score for a change instead of the usual bombastic soundtrack that Spielberg seems to like in his films.

Catch Me If You Can is easy to watch, it has the smooth professional style of a filmmaker who really knows how to assemble a film.  Spielberg piles on his usual mush about the boy whose father didn't love him, a road he's gone down many times before in better films.  When  Catch Me If You Can is  over it doesn't seemed to have added up to much of anything very interesting or important.  

As usual with one of these "based on a true story" films the story is barely true.  For a smaller Spielberg film it's longer than it has any right to be.

141 minutes, screenplay by Jeff Nathanson.