Moose And The Movies

The Sugarland Express, 1974, directed by Steven Spielberg, Universal Studios 4K blu-ray (2024), 2 stars. A swing and a miss for Steven Spielberg in his first theatrical film. I really disliked this movie, found it really frustrating. I was pretty much checked out about two-thirds of the way in, just waiting for it to end. The movie looked great, as all Spielberg's movies do. We got a couple or three decent action set pieces. But other than that, The Sugarland Express just sat there spinning its wheels. The Sugarland Express, based on a true story, has Goldie Hawn breaking her husband out of jail to help her reclaim their young daughter from the foster system. The couple carjack and kidnap a state trooper, lead dozens of squad cars on a slow-speed chase across Texas and become folk heroes in the process. It's an exciting premise to start. But the movie never seems to gain any real momentum before it devolves into over-the-top silliness. I think a big problem is that Spielberg re...

Duel, 1971, directed by Steven Spielberg, Universal Studios 4K blu-ray (2023), 3.5 stars. For a guy so well-known for making big, stupendous, seismic spectacles, Steven Spielberg sure knew how to deliver a small, straightforward, simple but thrilling horror film. Duel, technically, was Spielberg's feature-film debut. It started out as a quickly made, micro-budget TV movie that produced some pretty good numbers for ABC in viewership ratings. It did so well that Universal Studios had Spielberg shoot a few more scenes to pad out its 73-minute runtime for an international theatrical release. And that, dear readers, was how Steven Spielberg's movie career started. I just watched the theatrical release, re-edited and remastered with the added scenes into widescreen aspect ratio. I really didn't expect much from this movie. I thought it would be a glorified dumbed-down TV movie with mini-cliffhanger commercial-break fadeouts every 12 or 15 minutes. Man, was I wrong. Duel is a bang...