Always (1989)

A remake of Victor Fleming's A Guy Named Joe (1943), Always is one of Spielberg's most interesting films while also being somewhat atypical for the director. The 1943 film starred Spencer Tracy as a WWII pilot who is killed in the line of duty, and after finding himself in heaven, is sent back to earth as a guardian angel to mentor a young pilot (Van Johnson) who just happens to be falling in love Dorrinda (Irene Dunne), the love of Tracy's life who has been left behind. Spielberg updates the story -- the fighter pilot is now an aerial firefighter (beautifully played by Richard Dreyfuss in a sensitive performance) -- but otherwise it remains decidedly and gloriously old-fashioned in every other respect.

Holly Hunter is wonderful as the spirited flight dispatcher in love with Dreyfuss, and John Goodman turns in a fine performance as Dreyfuss' best friend and flight instructor. Brad Johnson, as the young pilot whom Dreyfuss must guide in both work and love, brings the requisite good-natured qualities to the part, but he never establishes the chemistry with Hunter that Dreyfuss does, and as a result, their scenes together feel flat in comparison. Special mention should be made of Audrey Hepburn, in her final screen appearance, as the ethereal angel who sets Dreyfuss on his mission.

Always is unique in Spielberg's filmography. It seems to be an effort at creating a more self-consciously "adult"-oriented film without abandoning the sense of wonder and emotional power that marked his earlier hits such as E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (and only resorting to tour-de-force special effects when called for in key dramatic scenes). At the same time, it lacks the grand themes of his historical epics (Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan, Lincoln, etc.), which allows Spielberg to focus more on the characters than in the larger events surrounding them. As such, it represents a kind of middle ground in Spielberg's work, one not always entirely successful, but one that marks an admirable effort on the part of its director.

The Adventures of Tintin (2011)

I was introduced to the Belgian cartoonist Hergé's "Tintin" through the Canadian animated TV series from Nelvana, which aired on the Nickelodeon channel during the 1990s. With the engaging stories, characters and animation, it remained a favorite of mine, and I was delighted to see how well it held up when I re-visited it a few years ago, right around the time I learned that Steven Spielberg was making a big-screen adaptation of the character.

Happily, Spielberg's film (which I only just caught up with for the first time on streaming video, surely not the best way to experience this large-scale cinematic endeavor) remains true to the spirit of the comics and is a fun, exciting thrill-ride of a film as only he could make it. When you consider how easy it would be for this kind of thing to get out of control, to become drowned under a sea of special effects, it is tribute to Spielberg's incredible gifts as a filmmaker that he never loses sight of the story and characters that make the "Tintin" comics so engaging in the first place.

The Adventures of Tintin is certainly not one of Spielberg's more serious-minded pictures of the kind that win major Oscars, but it is a solid example of why he remains the greatest cinematic entertainer of our time.

Bridge of Spies (2015)

Spielberg is in top form with this Cold War-era political drama about a Brooklyn attorney (Tom Hanks) who is recruited by the CIA to negotiate the return of an imprisoned Soviet spy (Mark Rylance) in exchange for a captured American pilot. The plot itself is fairly predictable and familiar, which works against the dramatic potential of key scenes, but Spielberg's skillful handling of the material is typically assured, involved, and exceptionally well-paced, even if the writing (by Matt Charman and the Coen brothers) and performances are a bit too mannered at times. There really aren't any surprises here, but it's always worth seeing Spielberg at the top of his game.

1941 (1979)

A rare comic effort from Steven Spielberg, 1941 is also one of the director's rare misfires. A big, loud spectacle that recalls an earlier generation of comedy epics like It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World and The Great Race, 1941 unevenly combines the broad physical gags of those films with the equally broad satire of wartime paranoia in films such as The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! The premise involves a Japanese sub that surfaces off the coast of California shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, inspiring mass hysteria among the citizens.

The ensemble cast includes such names as Tim Matheson and Nancy Allen as the nominal romantic leads whose amorous escapades in a runaway airplane over Los Angeles precipitate a hysterical reaction from the military and townspeople, John Belushi as crazed fighter pilot Wild Bill Kelso, Dan Aykroyd as no-nonsense Sgt. Frank Tree, Ned Beatty as a meek family man whose backyard is commandeered as the site of anti-aircraft gun, Lorraine Gary as his long-suffering wife, Toshiro Mifune as the Japanese sub commander, Christopher Lee as the German officer, Murray Hamilton and Eddie Deezen as a couple of goofy civilians put on guard duty atop a Ferris wheel, Slim Pickens as the unsuspecting hick who discovers the Japanese sub, and in one of the film's most inspired bits of casting, Robert Stack as Major General Stilwell, who would rather take care of more important business like watching Disney's Dumbo than deal with distractions such as the pending invasion of Los Angeles and riots in the streets. As with his performance in the following year's Airplane!, Stack's stoical, straight man characterization is the perfect complement to the zany goings-on around him.

Unfortunately, none of the performers are ever really on-screen long enough, or given enough to do individually, to make much of an impression. Because of the structure of the script -- by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale (who also wrote the story along with John Milius) -- the zany situations piled on top of one another don't add up to much of anything, since the escalating comic chaos is never given much of a chance to build naturally. Instead, it's one forced, manic set-piece after another, with gratuitous slapstick violence that eventually just begins to drag the pace down and feel repetitive. The plane chase scenes through LA are undoubtedly impressively-staged, and are a remarkable achievement for their scale and execution. But as comedy, it quickly begins to feel like overkill.

Spielberg's direction feels unsure and even uncomfortable working with the broad comedy material, which was certainly never his forte in any case. It's difficult to pinpoint just where his direction goes wrong here, but perhaps it is simply too heavy-handed, which works against the lightning-paced cartoon antics called for by the script and even dilutes the effectiveness of the satire due to the total lack of subtlety. John Landis, or the team of Jim Abrahams and David and Jerry Zucker, would have been ideal choices for this material, since they could have perhaps reigned in some of the more extravagant excesses that tend to swamp the comedy (even the non-stop parade of sight gags in Airplane! are handled in such a way that the viewer is rewarded for paying attention to the kinds of small jokes which are virtually non-existent here).

As one of our greatest filmmakers, even a lesser Spielberg effort like 1941 is still of interest, if only for an example of the director working outside his comfort zone, exploring new material and trying something different. Even if the result is ultimately a failure, it is an interesting failure.

The Sugarland Express (1974)

This early Spielberg film is a rollicking, fast-paced road picture about a Texas couple who kidnap a policeman and force him to drive them across the state to reunite with their child, who has been taken out of their custody by the state. Goldie Hawn and William Atherton make the most of their rather one-dimensional characters, though at times it seems as though they are appearing in two different movies (with Hawn too frequently playing her part in broad caricature, while Atherton seems to be trying to get at something darker and more intense with his performance). Michael Sacks is effective enough if rather bland as the young officer forced to drive the pair across the state against his will, though his transformation at the end, sympathizing with the outlaws and betraying his duties to the law by alerting his abductors to a potential police ambush, is handled too abruptly and without any real explanation as to why he (or the audience) should care so much about these two. Ben Johnson gives the film's strongest performance, as the weary old lawman leading the difficult pursuit to bring the couple to justice.

Overall, it's a skillfully-made debut theatrical feature from Spielberg, who proves himself especially effective in his handling of the large-scale, high-speed car chases (recalling his celebrated work on DUEL a few years earlier), though the pacing frequently lags between these set pieces, bogged down by heavy-handed commentary on gun violence, police corruption, and the nature of celebrity in America. It's not that these points aren't relevant to the events in the film, but Spielberg's handling of them is too self-conscious and telegraphed to be really effective. Coming between his brilliant early work on DUEL, and his first full-fledged masterpiece, JAWS, the following year, THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS perhaps can't help but feel like a minor effort in Spielberg's filmography.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

One of Spielberg's finest films, encompassing many of his favorite themes. It's one of the few major Hollywood films to deal intelligently (though still, at times, perhaps a bit too sensationally) with the possibilities of extraterrestrial life and alien abduction, and Spielberg wisely focuses on how a chance UFO sighting forever changes a simple Indiana family man's perception of the universe and his place within it. Richard Dreyfuss delivers one of his finest performances as Roy Neary, whose obsession with the UFO he has witnessed and his subsequent efforts to make contact with the aliens erodes his family and personal life, filling him instead with a singular purpose.

Although it is not primarily a special effects picture, much credit has to go to photographic effects supervisor Douglas Trumbull, who achieves some really magnificent imagery here. The spaceship is an incredible piece of artistry and design, and Trumbull's effects inspire the requisite amount of awe and wonder, without which the film would fall apart.

It is Spielberg's emphasis on the human condition that make the biggest impression, however. The scenes of Dreyfuss' mundane home life reveals the banality of the existence he has been living, making his character's curiosity about "what's out there" all the more profound. Spielberg does a remarkable job capturing that sense of wonder that keeps people watching the skies. Indeed, the film's rather protracted conclusion reveals perhaps too much detail, removing some of the mystery that comes from things left unseen. Perhaps that's why the ending -- in which the alien beings and the fate of their abductees are revealed -- seems a bit anticlimactic. As well-done as it undoubtedly is, it's simply too literal, and thus a bit of a let-down from the preceding events of the film.

However, the ending does force the viewer to ask themselves if they would leave behind their family, their home, and indeed, their very beliefs, in exchange for the experience of making contact with extraterrestrials and traveling with them to places unknown -- questions we may find ourselves pondering on clear nights under the vast expanse of shining stars, and wondering what's out there.

Early Spielberg

AMBLIN' is generally regarded as Steven Spielberg's first professional directorial effort. The short film was produced by an independent producer, and Spielberg used the film as a "calling card" short. What's interesting about AMBLIN' in terms of Spielberg's body of work is that - for as much as it's held up as an example of his early genius for filmmaking - it is so atypical. The story involves a young man traveling through the American Southwest who hooks up with a young woman, also traveling the highways and biways of the deserts in search of freedom.

Visually, the film is gorgeous, shot by Allen Daviau, with whom Spielberg would collaborate again in the future. Daviau's cinematography captures the ambience of the Southwest desert with a palpable intensity. (On a side note, circulating copies of the film tend to be very poor transfers that fall far short of doing justice to Daviau's cinematography, but one can look past the flaws in the transfer to see what he was doing).

The problem is, for all the stunning visuals, the story is actually rather shallow, and feels artificial in some respects. AMBLIN' is a film that is ostensibly rooted in the counterculture of the late 1960s, and yet it does not feel like it was made by a director with any particular convictions about the political or cultural climate of the period. When the film hinges on this subject matter, its lack of anything particularly profound to say about it becomes a problem. The available clips from Spielberg's earliest childhood film productions, and his ambitious 1964 effort FIRELIGHT, seem to foreshadow his mature work much more directly than AMBLIN' does.

That said, AMBLIN' is an admirable effort, if an impersonal one. It demonstrated with certainty that Spielberg could direct a Hollywood-style production, and served to propel him in to new opportunities for studio directing work.