L.A. 2017 (1971) - A movie I’ve wanted to see for a loooong time. Steven Spielberg’s first feature length movie, technically an episode of a show called The Name of the Game, though it works as a standalone movie. That doesn’t mean, though, that it works as a good movie. It’s a pretty basic dystopian future story (well, it’s set in the past now!), that’s hindered by its very obviously low budget. Spielberg’s constrained here, obviously still trying to figure out how to do good work in an environment that just churns out content as fast as possible. D+
Something Evil (1972) - Another Spielberg TV movie, his follow up to what’s probably the best ever TV movie, 1971’s Duel. Which makes this something of a disappointment, as it’s mostly a run of the mill haunted house/satanic possession movie. Once again, Spiels has his hands tied with a weak script and budget/time constraints, but he still gets a few good moments in there. At the very least, it’s pretty watchable. C
Savage (1973) - Spielberg’s final TV film, and another hard one to find. It’s a fairly interesting story about an investigative TV reporter (Martin Landau, always reliable) doing some detective work on a suspected politically motivated murder. Problem is, the movie was actually conceived as a series pilot (though not picked up), and it feels like it (for example, not nearly enough about Savage and the TV side of things, surely saved for later episodes). C
Spielberg (2017) - Been itching to watch this since it came out, finally found the perfect time. A fantastic round up of his life and career. Loved that they didn’t worry about letting it play long, so you actually get some good perspectives on a number of his films. Also surprisingly emotional. I’m glad they did my favorite filmmaker justice with this. A-
