bluetoast

Yeah she has an interesting story about this, she goes over it in the Hollywood Reporter roundtable discussion.

cungar

I think he has a very good chance of winning. What makes this one of his worst performances? I'm not sure how he could have been better.

IIG

I felt the performance was a little forced. Now don't get me wrong, I thought it was very good and deserves recognition, but I don't think DDL ever became Lincoln. He was Christie Brown, Bill The Butcher, and Daniel Plainview. No questions asked, he was totally possessed as those characters. Here, I felt he was playing Lincoln, albeit successfully for the most part. With Lincoln being such a huge figure in the world's consciousness, it always was going to be a much more difficult job to disappear on screen for him. Still, I just think he fell a bit short.

Goat3001

Daniel Day Lewis is an acting machine. He was amazing here as usual. He really carried the film. Acting across the board was impressive. Tommy Lee Jones, Sally Field, Joseph Gordon Levitt and all the minor characters were all on their game.

Other than that though, the movie wasn't as great as it could have been. Lincoln is the most compelling figure in American history. There is so much to what he has done in his tenure. The scope of this film was too small, focused pretty much only on the passing of the 13th amendment. I admit that if I read a plot synopsis before the movie, I wouldn't have expected much more than that, but I didn't.

Everything once the amendment was passed was rushed. Horribly rushed. The first 2 hours 10 minutes is about passing the amendment. The last twenty minutes is the south surrendering and Lincolns assassination. What could have been a big emotional end to the movie fell short.

The positive though is that something as seemingly mundane as getting votes to pass the 13th amendment was in fact very entertaining. The movie is very well written. Though I guess is the problem with telling a story that everyone knows, there was a big lack of suspense during the scene where they were voting. We knew how it was going to go.

Great seeing Walter Goggins. I just finished up the Shield a few months ago so it was nice to Shane.

I gave it 4 stars. The acting was great and what was shown was very well done as well. It could have been a 5 star movie had they spent more time with the end of the war and the assassination.

johnnysd

wow I thought he was incredibly restrained, and gave about as perfect a performance as you could.

PopcornTreeCt

I really wanted to hate this movie but DDL's performance sold me. Sally Field was god awful and brought the movie to a stand still. Tommy Lee Jones was good but far from Oscar worthy. Spielberg was in his typical emotionally manipulative mode but despite all that it was a decent movie.

Strevlac

This movie is a masterwork and one of Spielberg's very best films. And what a screenplay. Forget best of the year, this is the best screenplay of the last several years...maybe even decade.

Very rarely do I go to a movie and walk out without being able to think of a way it could have been better. Everything about this film is uniformly excellent. The writing, performances, directing and camerawork. In an era when movies are simply thrown together with wild abandon, here is a film where every word in the script, every line reading, every camera move, every cut, every light on the set has been given careful consideration and assembled with the greatest care. It's just a joy to watch.

auto

Saw this today and really enjoyed it. Could have done without the first and last fifteen minutes but other than that top notch.

Osiris3657

This film didn't work for me. I do think DDL was amazing as Lincoln and the acting by the cast in general was fantastic...but my god, could they have made the script any less interesting? I understand that the passing of the 13th Amendment was the most important thing Lincoln did in his career, but that doesn't mean it should be the subject of a movie (which is supposed to entertain).

I would have more thoroughly enjoyed a movie spanning Lincoln's entire life from childhood to his death (hitting on the various highlights of it) rather than focus solely on the politics of passing the amendment.

Grade: C+

Shannon Nutt

I'm a political and history "junkie" and simply loved this movie - my wife, on the other hand, who really doesn't know much about Lincoln outside what one learns in school was bored to tears. So I definitely think the more knowledge you have going in, the more you appreciate what Spielberg has done here. It's not "THE" Lincoln story, it's "A" Lincoln story...I think by choosing just one section of his life (the last section), the movie really allows you to spend time with characters in a way that a rushed 3-hour biopic would not. Because of this, I think DDL as Lincoln feels more "real" than any prior portrayal. I think this might be Speilberg's best historical film, and I say that with a huge appreciation of Schindler's List.

Throwing Copper

Great acting, but most of it bored me big time. I also would've liked a movie on Lincoln's life, including childhood.

I don't think one month of his life was the way to go.

JimRochester

The acting, the sets and costumes: A+
The ,movie itself: B

Too long, too dry. Glad I saw it for what it represents but not something I would seek toi see again

Saw Harvey Keitel, didn't see Hackman

Supermallet

I agree with all of this. The movie has focus problems, but DDL, TLJ, and Spader make up for it. I'd go a little further and say that Sally Fields' performance actively dragged down the quality of the film. I was also disappointed at John Williams' score, but that's no surprise to anyone who knows me.

Mondo Kane

Same for me too. Lionel Barrymore was resurrected!

maingon

I had the same experience. I really liked it, though my girlfriend was bored. She fell asleep but then again once the 13th amendment was passed and the stuff with Tommy Lee Jones character she had tears in her eyes.

I do think the last 20 minutes were tacked on though. Especially his assassination. They should of ended it when Lincoln was walking down the hall and the one black guy was watching him. that would of been a perfect moment.

RichC2

Samuel L Jackson seems to agree. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/1...n_2389728.html

Ginwen

I would have been completely bored by that movie. This one I thought was pretty good, other than the fact that it should have ended a bit sooner.

cungar

Maybe it's been mentioned but I think people would have accepted this rather short time framed movie better if it had been called something other than Lincoln.

RichC2

I like "Jungle Fever" as a title myself.

foofighters7

Firstly, I didn't hate this film.

I'll just say that before I assault it.

Tedious, lackluster direction, poorly edited, and a confusing title.

Ok, if you're going to a make a film about the abolishing of slavery, great! Don't freaking call it 'Lincoln'.

If it dealt with Lincoln as a man, GREAT! If it dealt with abolishing slavery, great! No matter what they wanted to focus on, do it better!

At least it wasn't overly sentimental. 'War Horse' was a disaster so at least this was at least fair.

Doing away with slavery is such a monumental epoch in the history of the world, so I was hoping for a bit more.

Mattflix

B+

The Good:

DDL is probably the best actor alive. He brings to life what would be a caricature in anybody else's hands. Tommy Lee Jones gives one of his best performances

I'm glad the movie DIDN'T focus on Lincoln's entire life. I have a major issue with biopics in general because they all tend to become the same repeated movie: open with a childhood scene and establish some sort of trauma, show the subject establishing his fame, then the childhood trauma threatens to overcome and turn the subject into a jerk (because there'd be no suspense otherwise), end with a fade to black that says subject accomplished X and died on Y date. Lincoln taking this approach was far more successful for me.

The Bad:

Sally Field was terrible. I can't beleive she's being nominated for an Oscar for this. Watching her, I consiously felt like I was watching somebody acting. And her weak performance especially stood out next because DDL was right next to her.

There's no good reason to make this movie, it's too obvious and the final message of "racism is bad" is completely generic. A filmmaker as powerful and skilled as Spielberg should be making more obscure stories that make you think. Instead we get a moral that we've been getting since gradeschool. Important of course, but it's preaching to the choir so it's not making me think.

Also if racism is bad, how about making the black characters real people? Instead every single black person (with one exception in the end) is locked in a permanent state of "Spielberg Face." But how else could you tell this story? The flaws come from the reverence to Lincoln's legend because they're taking it so seriously.

bluetoast

Pretty sure the lesson wasn't "racism is bad", it was the story of them telling how the amendment got passed, as well as the fact that illegal things had to be done to make it so. Hell, only a few people in favor of the amendment cared about blacks having equal rights (Stevens), others just wanted slavery abolished and drew the line there.

ScorseseLovesU

This film seemed like it was designed as spank material for Spielberg to stroke his enormous ego to climax. Daniel Day-Lewis was stellar, but he was far better than the film he was in. His characters always seem to be iconic, and they were incorporated seamlessly into films like "There Will Be Blood," "Gangs of New York." Here, it felt like his character was transplanted into a film with much weaker, less interesting characters. I don't understand the award nominations for Sally Field; I thought her performance was melodramatic and just over the top. There used to be a passion in Spielberg's films that has been sorely missing for quite a few years. The last great films of his that I can recall are "Minority Report" and "A.I."

bunkaroo

Just saw this over the weekend. Really bland and forgettable IMO. DDL was good in his role but it's wasted on a paint by numbers script. Maybe people fascinated with the political system of the time will get into it. I came close to turning it off a couple times.

RichC2

The point of a movie can be many things, in this case it was a historical recreation which will be very entertaining for some and immensely boring to others.

It's pretty easy to tell which side each person landed on. This one will be shown in schools, and a whole generation of kids will hate it.