I reviewed two very different films for Spectrum Culture this week. First, I tackled a new release, writing a review of the new film from Valérie Donzelli, which was France’s official entry to the Best Foreign Film category at this year’s Oscars. Like everyone else, I’m certain that A Separation is going to win the trophy, and I trust the critical consensus that deems the film the worthiest of the honor. But the other nominees must have been damn good to keep this effort from the final nomination list.

The other film I covered couldn’t have been more different. We’re now well into the Oeuvre series covering the films of Samuel Fuller, one by one. At the beginning, all of the writers are invited to submit a list of the five films we personally want to cover and then a schedule is cobbled together from that. When I saw that Fuller directed an obscure movie at the tail-end of the nineteen-sixties that starred Burt Reynolds and went by the title Shark! (among others), well I knew I had one of the movies that I’d be writing on. I figured that there was a good chance it would be, at worst, an entertaining disaster. I had that half right.