Showing posts with label Lincoln. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lincoln. Show all posts

Monday, October 19, 2015

LINCOLN: Clothed in Immense Power

Every other day leading up to the release of his new movie Bridge of Spies, we will be dissecting a film in Steven Spielberg's oeuvre. I've picked ten movies spanning the length of Spielberg's career, five of which I have seen and five of which I haven't. The Spielberg retrospective gets all wrapped up with Lincoln, the director's most recent masterpiece.

Other Reviews in this Series: 
DuelClose Encounters of the Third Kind, 1941Empire of the Sun, AmistadA.I. Artificial Intelligence, Catch Me If You CanMunich

Other Spielberg Reviews: JawsJurassic ParkThe Lost World, Bridge of Spies


Director: Steven Spielberg
Writer: Tony Kushner
Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field, Tommy Lee Jones, David Strathairn, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, James Spader, Hal Holbrook, John Hawkes, Jackie Earle Haley, Bruce McGill, Tim Blake Nelson, Joseph Cross, Jared Harris, Lee Pace, David Costabile
Runtime: 150 mins.
2012

Lincoln is fascinating to watch. It has the distinction of being the only movie that has ever made me think, "Wow, politics are really interesting!" Spielberg takes two and a half hours of politicking, bureaucracy, and an overfamiliar historical figure, and he makes it all fresh and full of vibrant energy.

At this point, the very end of my ten movie Spielberg cycle, I'm getting kind of bored with saying the same laudatory things about the Berg over and over again, but I must repeat them because they cannot be overstated. Spielberg is the greatest filmmaker of our time, and as he tackles more and more ambitious projects, it becomes clear that he's only improving as the decades pass.