[Steven Spielberg‘s latest film has already been heavily reviewed, discussed, spoiled and Twitter-poked. Nonetheless spoiler whiners are hereby warned.]
I caught Steven Spielberg‘s The Fabelmans (Universal, 11.11) last night, and like everyone else I was prepared to be mildly disappointed. Because the word on the street is that this 151-minute family film isn’t nearly as great as those suck-uppy Toronto critics said it was. A decent film in many respects, some have said, and highlighted by a few…make that three stand-out scenes, but calm down. So I was ready for a mixed-bag experience, and that’s exactly what I realized it was as I left the theatre around 9 pm.
It’s all right in some respects and very good in terms of those three scenes (Judd Hirsch soliloquy, Gabriel LaBelle‘s teenaged “Sammy” shooting WWII battle scenes in the Arizona desert with verve and ingenuity, Sammy meeting the cantankerous John Ford at the very end) but it’s no Oscar frontrunner, I can tell you that. At best it’s a soft frontrunner because there’s no big consensus film that appears ready to elbow The Fabelmans aside.
It’s basically an overlong, broadly-played family movie about a kid learning the basic filmmaking ropes while his parents edge toward divorce, and it really doesn’t feel natural — for my money it feels too “performed”. Especially in the matter of Michelle Williams‘ Mitzi Fabelman, Samy’s colorful, excitable, piano-playing mom.
Judd Hirsch’s big scene aside, the family saga is…I’m not saying it’s boring but I wouldn’t call it especially rousing either, and Spielberg doesn’t seem to realize this. And he definitely lets it go on too long.
You have to ask “what if The Fabelmans wasn’t a largely autobiographical tale about Spielberg’s childhood…what if it was just a story about some boomer kid who loved movies and wanted to make his own?”
The fact is that without the Spielberg factor, without us knowing that this is the kid who went on to make Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List…if this was just the story of a filmstruck kid, it wouldn’t have been made because it doesn’t have that much in the way of basic magnetism…it’s just the slow story of a marriage that slowly falls apart and about how the oldest son deals with it all.
The Fabelman saga (cowritten by Spielberg and Tony Kushner) is simply not that riveting, and yet it means so much to Spielberg that he doesn’t seem to realize it’s only intermittently engaging to Average Joes. If he had realized this, he would have made it shorter. It should have run two hours max, not two and a half.
I’m not calling it a wholly unsatisfying or a poorly made film, but it’s mostly a so-so experience.
The only parts that I really liked were those that focused on Spielberg shooting and showing stuff. The marital infidelity stuff (Williams cheating on Paul Dano with Seth Rogen‘s “Uncle Benny”) was frankly trying my patience. The anti-Semitic high-school bully scene in the hallway doesn’t really work. And in the 1952 section, Sammy’s parents can’t understand why Sammy crashed his toy train set? They’ve just recently taken him to see The Greatest Show on Earth and they can’t figure it out?
The only scene I really adored was Sammy meeting grumpy old John Ford (David Lynch). The moment when the Searchers music begins playing as Sammy is looking around at the posters on the wall…this is the greatest moment in the film. Ford endlessly lighting the cigar was too much but barking at Sammy about the horizon lines was great.
The fact is that during most of the film I was losing patience. I just didn’t care all that much. I kept asking myself “when is this film going to leave the ground and get airborne”? It finally does at the very end with Ford/Lynch,
Julia Butters, who plays Sammny’s younger sister, isn’t as good here as she was in Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon A Time in Hollywood because she’s obliged to perform in a Spielberg vehicle in a Spielbergy fashion.
And that weird Jesus-freak girlfriend Sammy falls in with in Northern California! She was like a farcical sitcom character, like somebody out of Happy Days.
The dreaded red wave simply didn’t materialize.
In race after race and to everyone’s surprise (including Bill Maher‘s), Democratic candidates held on, eeked out victories and even triumphed in some instances.
John Fetterman beat the Trump–supported Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania, and Georgia’s Raphael Warnock will probably wind up defeating Herschel “nutcase” Walker in a 12.6 runoff. It appeared this morning that Colorado Rep. Lauren “wackazoid” Boebert may lose her race. Also this morning Arizona’s Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari “wackjob” Lake, a Trump fave and a Big Lie proponent, appears headed for defeat.
The red wave narrative turned out to be bullshit, bullshit…a crock of steaming rightwing go-along media-concocted horseshit.
Republicans will probably have a slight House Majority at the end of the day, yes, but the bottom line is that in many states and territories voters rejected many MAGA crazies, and while it may take until early December to determine which side will control the Senate, it’s feasible that Dems might hold on to their thin majority.
I suspected that Ohio’s Trump-aligned U.S. Senate candidate J.D. Vance would prevail against Democratic candidate Tim Ryan, so I wasn’t floored when this happened. But so many wowser, fascinating things happened, and very few of them encouraging to the MAGA lions.
There’s no way you can’t call Donald Trump a diminished figure this morning.
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Rise up en masse like the gladiators in Capua, kill the Roman guards, strike terror in the hearts of your captors…and if they try to make you cower and shudder like you’ve been doing since ‘17 or thereabouts, tell them “sorry, buster but the ball game’s over…the sensibles are taking control and the woke wackos are on the run.”
Lila Neugebauer and Jennifer Lawrence‘s Causeway (Apple, theatrical + streaming), is an extremely solemn, snail-paced, drip-drip recovery drama.
Lawrence is Lynsey, a gay U.S. soldier who suffered brain damage during a recent tour in Afghanistan. I saw it last night, and although the running time is 92 minutes it felt like two hours, minimum.
Lawrence is believably plain, but the performance by costar Brian Tyree Henry struck me as actorish and inauthentic.
Supporting players Linda Emond, Jayne Houdyshell, Stephen McKinley Henderson and Fred Weller are good enough.
Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson and Marcus Jones have posted several Best Picture Oscar predictions. Some of their calls have merit; others are a joke. Their choices are pasted below.
Among the Thompson-Jones picks, HE has boldfaced the titles of films that are either actually good or are thought to be genuinely good, and which may seriously deserve Best Picture consideration.
In fact, before picking apart the Thompson-Jones calls, here are ten of HE’s Best Picture projections, mostly based upon the fact that the films are (or in some cases are presumed to be) actually good and/or held in high esteem, and therefore deserving of a BP nomination. These are not political predictions as much as judgment calls:
1. The Fabelmans
2. TÁR
3. Top Gun: Maverick
4. Avatar: The Way of Water
5. Babylon
6. Empire of Light
7. She Said
8. Armageddon Time
9. Bardo
10. Close
Thompson-Jones reactions: The letters UL (as in “unfortunately likely”) appear next to films that aren’t good enough but will probably be be nominated anyway. The letters NH (as in “not happening”) appear next to films that haven’t much of an emotional or political prayer. The words FORGET IT are placed next to titles which HE regards as absurd and/or ridiculous in this context.
Frontrunners:
The Banshees of Inisherin / UL
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever / FORGET IT
Elvis / UL
Everything Everywhere All at Once / / UL
The Fabelmans
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio / ANIMATION
TÁR
Top Gun: Maverick
The Woman King / FORGET IT
Women Talking / NH
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Whenever someone passes at too young an age or due to some tragic mishap or a stroke of bad luck, someone always says that the recently departed “loved life.” Which I would call a nice but imprecise sentiment. It’s so vague it’s almost meaningless.
HE’s definition of a lover of life would be the Kinks guy who loves living adjacent to Waterloo Station.
I’m actually a lover of the splendor and symphony of all great European train stations. Ditto the great cities and towns — Paris, Rome, Munich, Hanoi, Hoi An, Milan, Prague, Venice, Arcos de la Frontera, Caye Caulker, portions of Key West, the Berkshires, Monument Valley, Lauterbrunnen — and the tens of thousands of beautiful pastoral vistas all over. Ditto my cats, my granddaughter Sutton and her parents Jett and Cait and Sutton’s Uncle Dylan, black Volvo wagons, BMW rumblehogs, heavy leather jackets, Indian or Italian dishes, vinyl record albums, cookies & cream gelato, Italian suede lace-ups, etc.
The only negative that comes to mind amidst all this joy and nurture and rapture, the only aspect of life on planet earth that I consistently have problems with and which generally darkens my worldview are…well, people. Not everyone, of course. The majority are fine. I can just can’t with the three-toed sloths.
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