Bridge of Spies (Steven Spielberg, 2015)

7.5/10
Another "fine" movie, slightly more "fine" than The Danish Girl and with a more interesting, knottier story, but still not exactly a classic. Tom Hanks plays this kind of role in his sleep - the affable everyman in a situation where he's out of his depth. Not that I think Russian spies would have been well-received in America during the Cold War, but the movie's insistence on treating Hanks' character as the only sane man in the country (even his own wife can't understand why her husband - a lawyer - would defend a spy) is grating. Other than that, everybody does their jobs well and I probably won't remember much of the movie in a few months' time.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Steven Spielberg, 1977)

7/10
I never saw this one before so I recorded it off TV, it was good. Classic Spielberg really. Richard Dreyfuss was great and I really liked how Spielberg made it a family affair (in the beginning at least). He has (had? He doesn't do it so much anymore) such a knack for making even movies about aliens or sharks tie back to family relationships and whatnot. Nothing much to complain about, I enjoyed it.

Lincoln (Steven Spielberg, 2012)

7/10
The biggest thing about Lincoln, for me, is that it confirms that Spielberg has not in fact completely lost his marbles after last year's unbearable War Horse. Lincoln is, by contrast...well, mature.
I don't really have a horse (eesh) in this race - biopics don't generally appeal to me, and history and politics are not my two main fields of interest. Nor do I have much of an affinity for Spielberg. I was mostly interested in the movie to see Daniel Day-Lewis' performance, which was excellent of course (but still behind Phoenix and Lavant, for me). Sally Fields was great as well. Tommy Lee Jones was a little bit predictable in a curmudgeonly role, but he did fine. Everything was fine, really, to the point of feeling mechanical - there were very few surprises and, in the end, if you had to picture a Lincoln biopic starring Day-Lewis directed by Spielberg, didn't you predict it would turn out exactly like this? The emotion it roused in me was pretty faint - I didn't feel the tension or the catharsis when what you knew would happen, happened. Fine, fine, fine; that was my main impression.

War Horse (Steven Spielberg, 2011)

4/10
I won a couple of passes to an advance screening of Spielberg's latest, and I'm happy to not have paid for it. The story follows that of a horse born on the precipice of World War I - from being raised by a teenage farmhand named Albie, through his entry into the war via the British army, and subsequent owners, protectors and guardians that include two young German defectors, a French girl and her grandfather, a sympathetic horseman in the German army, and others. The film is of epic scope and epic length, but its simple story can't support of the weight of this blockbuster that was built around it. It failed to strike any emotional note whatsoever with me, and was just a big bore. The battle scenes felt slapdash and way too sanitized and the emotions were one-note and hammered home with an ending you could predict upon seeing the commercials. Spielberg also fails to imbue the horse itself with any true sense of personality or character, although characters in the movie all fall in love with it minutes after crossing its path, so I guess we were supposed to as well. Some nice-looking photography aside, there was little to enjoy here.

Duel (Steven Spielberg, 1971)

8.5/10
Steven Spielberg's first film, a made-for-TV affair involving a man (David Weaver) on the open road being harassed by a monstrous, intimidating gas truck. Weaver plays David Mann, a white-collar everyman (in case the last name didn't drive it home already) driving a red Plymouth Valiant, who passes the truck...and then spends the rest of the afternoon locked in a duel to the death with it. We never know the trucker's identity, and why he's so hellbent on tormenting (indeed, killing) Mann, which only adds to the fear and suspense. There are a couple of great set pieces that take place off the road, including a stop in at a diner where the trucker is assumed to be among the patrons (and where Mann really starts to lose his marbles), a confrontation involving a stalled school bus full of children, and an attempt to call the police from a roadside gas station that ends in chaos. A certain suspension of belief is required to immerse one's self in the duel (the script attempts to explain, via Mann's inner monologue, that Mann's car could "never" outrun the truck as it appears to be souped-up in some manner...but considering the sheer size of the truck this is clearly stretching it).
A lot of the elements from this movie made its way into Jaws, so it was cool to see Spielberg working them out here, on the open road no less. The ending is also incredible and, of course, deliciously CGI-free. I shudder to think how it would be handled nowadays.