The Fabelmans: What do you think?

I think this wins Spielberg his third Best Director Oscar.

I’ve seen it already. The trailer spells out the entire film.

Completely formulaic. I’ll skip it.

Yeah, that’s a no from me, dawg.

It looks like a Hallmark Channel movie about magic and the triumph of hope and all that treacle.

These people love to mythologize themselves.

Who do they think they’re fooling these days?

All those WASPS cast as his parents.

[quote]These people

Hmmmm.

I don't know how sane people make it through Spielberg films.

It looks saccharine, but it also gave me goosebumps.

I couldn’t make it through the trailer. Awful in all the most predictable Spielberg ways.

The Academy loves Steven Spielberg.

Oscars galore!

It's considered the leading contender for Best Picture already, but having seen it a week ago, I have to say it doesn't deserve that award, or any other, really.

The movie's not bad. It's really well done and utterly watchable. But it leaves little impression, as the dramatic stakes are actually quite low.

It will be an embarrassment if this film runs the awards circuit. But the movie industry loves to be self-congratulatory, so I am prepared to watch it happen.

Well made but completely inessential. It gave me A Christmas Story vibes through a lot of it. Very syrupy and that “teens in the 50’s we’re wiiiiild!!” shit

I want to see it just to see David Lynch play John Ford. That meeting, at least as Spielberg tells it, is hilarious and powerful and Lynch is PERFECT casting.

The actor portraying young Spielberg in this is also in the American Gigolo series and plays the younger version of the lead character played by Jon Bernthal. In what world does someone grow up to look like both Spielberg and Berbthal, casting is way off in one of these projects.

I didn’t realize Spielberg wasn’t his birth name, or did his mother remarry someone named Fableman?

If any film director of the past half century deserves to self-mythologise his own life, Spielberg has fully earned that right.

But I'm really concerned about the disappearance of Paul Dano's jawline.

What a sad year for movies if this ends up winning Best Picture. I know he has the directing AA in the bag, but please something else for BP. Although, what instead? Babylon, as restitution for 2017?

Didn’t Barry Levinson already make this movie?

Hollywood owes Mr. Spielberg an apology for the failure of his West Side Story and is therefore doing everything it can to make this new Spielberg joint a smash hit.

Hollywood NEEDS Mr. Spielberg to remain on his pedestal and YOU WILL help them keep him there by buying tickets to this movie and raving about it to your friends.

West Side Story is a pretty great film, not an Oscar contender but a lot of fun. But the film that won last shows the film industry loves treacle. CODA was a nice film but didn’t deserve the Oscar at all.

I liked the trailer up until Seth Rogan popped up. Now I'm just wondering if he's any good in this.

Levinson does a much better job with this kind of material. The problem with Spielberg is that if you know his bio (unhappy kid growing-up in dull, soulless suburbia, etc.) you notice that most of his movies are about him. Someone like Levinson draws from life but goes a little deeper and has a bit more wit.

The suburbs were as bad as Schindler's List?

No, but Krakow was. Schindler's List is one the few where he departs from schtick and and you know he was tempted to make it saccharine in some way.

There's always some concrete dolt like R24.

R25, bite me.

As others have pointed out, this seems more like Hollywood auto-fellatio than anything else.

The stakes aren't that high: middle class Jewish kid in 50s/60s primarily Gentile suburbia is really into movies, convinces self/father that it's a real passion not just a random hobby

Will mostly appeal to Hollywood execs who majored in political science at Brown and then took development jobs at a studio but secretly harbored artistic ambitions and think "If only I'd asked for a movie camera for my bar mitzvah instead of a Game Boy."

I had completely forgotten about Coda, I admit this winning BP would be marginally better than that. Shame there's no exotic foreign gem to grab their attention this year, I love it when that happens and the Hollywood barons go home all butthurt.

I liked CODA. It won because it is a good film about a unique family situation to do with disability with a deaf cast. I don't mind that it was honored. It was ground-breaking in that sense.

R29, it was a lovely film, and I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t itself groundbreaking or different. That story has been told numerous times, among them Flashdance. Again, I really liked the film, but best picture? Nope.

If The FableMan’s is as good as Avalon, I’ll see it five times, too.

Does Seth Rogan play one of Spielberg.is uncles?

How does it end?

I assume he becomes a filmmaker.

Very, very tacky.

No one is going to watch this messy garbage.

More like Ordeal-berg.

ugh...more sappy crap from Spielberg, the king of sappy crap.

Actually thought this was a strong film, and while definitely sentimental, also full of some pretty tough moments. In particular, I think it's the best thing Kushner has written in a decade or so. The trailer makes it look way worse than it actually is.

I hate the Academy falling all over films about films. Cinema Paradiso is one of the most trite sentimental film I’ve ever watched.

Saw it yesterday. It is way too long. The dialogue for the kids - especially the scene in the hallway during prom - is too adult for 18 year olds. The acting is good and Michelle Williams does develop an interesting character, but there is nothing to grab onto with Paul Dano's character.

I think both of the kids that play young Sam are exceptional.

I would slightly recommend it to my friends but I fear that would hate me for having to sit in a theater that long.

R20, Hollywood did not keep audiences away.

Look at me!!! LOOK AT ME!!!!!

LEARN ABOUT ME!!!!

KNOOOOOOOOW ME!!!!!

"Empire of the Sun" was a great movie.

Especially the scenes where the Europeans are fleeing as the Japanese take over Shanghai

How long is this dreck?

Not very Christmassy.

r45 I went to a 4 PM showing and when we got outside it was after 7 PM HOWEVER there were easily 20 minutes of previews. They just wouldn't end.

At last, Jeannie Berlin has totally morphed into her mother, Elaine May.

R48, Is that a good thing?

Pro-movie-making movies (aka, self-referential) tend to please the Academy.

Interesting that "The Greatest Show On Earth" is a crucial image in both "The Fabelmans" and "Elvis" (the latter includes allusions also to "Strangers On a Train," "Vertigo," "Citizen Kane," and Luhrmann's own ouevre).

[quote]All those WASPS cast as his parents.

If we're being honest, it seems Hollywood Jewry has always had an obsession with the WASP/British aesthetic. I'm sure even a lot of Jewish people would admit it and not just scream "antisemitism" for stating the obvious.

Out-of-touch schlock. Who was asking for this in 2022?

He’s OVAH.

R46 They’re Jewish, why would it be?

Some old queen in Texas used to do tedious interviews (TV or direct you tube, I forget which---they were on you tube). He'd worked in Hollywood as a bit player, I think. Anyway, he said Winters was not a nice person.

Wrong thread, but I also find Spielberg tedious.

No more Michelle Williams. I've had sufficient.

I could never get into coming of age films. They always bore me even when they're well received.

How big is Michelle Williams' role? is she a lead or supporting in your opinion?

Michelle Williams is definitely Lead.

Next he’ll make a movie about how smart and pretty each and every Oscar voter is.

Michelle Williams, the poor dear, has a face like a truck driver.

No one will be surprised to know that Sam Mendes’ love letter to cinema Empire Of Light is reportedly a dud. It stars Olivia Colman as a schizophrenic cinema manager who doesn’t watch movies who has an affair with a handsome young black man 25-30 years her junior (!).

I'll definitely watch it when it's available for streaming, but the material looks familiar. It's a Bildungsroman filtered through Spielberg and Kushner in which everything looks pretty.

R46 and R53

Yeah, that's why theirs is the only house without Christmas lights in that WASP ghetto they live in. The Spielbergs were not only Jewish, they were fairly observant Jews who kept kosher. I think they cheated when the father was away on trips. I seem to remember a story about the mother making a lobster.

R51

I remember the TV series "Holocaust." All the main characters looked like good-looking Aryans. Of course, there are blond, blue-eyed Jews, but they made the characters so assimilated that it was hard to understand why their Aryan neighbors would turn on them. Compare Berlin Alexanderplatz by Fassbinder. It starts before the Nazis come to power but in an early scene, the protagonist, who's just been released from prison, encounters a family of religious Jews. They live in a seedier part of Berlin and they're kind to him. But they're also presented as foreign, "oriental." It provides a better idea of why many Germans could so easily treat these people as Other.

Oh, the humanity, r64.

I can't get over OP's preview image -- Dano looking like a gormless thumb and Williams looking like an idiot who did her own fringe, with category fraud written all over her thirsty face. Why is Spielberg so blah when it comes to casting?

Is t it obvious, r67?

Because he believes his own bullshit..

Spielberg is uninteresting. The boomer years have been mined endlessly and his cloying takes on the subject are bound to be sentimental and tedious.

Michelle Williams is now announcing her plans to study Judaism and raise her kids jewish. To paraphrase a DL expression, she needs that Oscar deeply!

Can we just give Michelle the Oscar immediately? She clearly wants it so badly.

I was excited about this until I saw the previews. It seems so formulaic.

R16 Sad

R69 I agree that the boomer years are overdone at this point. I understand that it was a fascinating time culturally but I almost feel that there is nothing more to say about that era. At least not in terms of suburban or urban upper middle class upbringings. Maybe if they must continue to fixate on that specific time, a film that explores the lives of the rural Americans or poor/ working class might be interesting. But I think it's time to move on.

R16 I think he's just using fabelman as the characters names, they are stand ins for the Spielberg's. He couldn't call it the Spielberg's without being accused of a having a giant ego.

If Williams wanted the Oscar so badly, she should/would have entered in Supporting Actress, where it was widely expected she'd walk away with it. Best Actress is much more competitive and her winning is much less certain.

You really can't get away with this kind of movie anymore. It's clearly Oscar bait (a poorly coifed Michelle Williams is here to collect her nominations... again ) and coming from Spielberg, it's just too self-indulgent and obvious.

Like most Spielberg movies "The Fabelmans" is beautifully shot and very engaging. Also like many Spielberg movies it veers toward maudlin, over-burnished and self-fascinated.

Finally in Act III, the story shakes itself free of some of its shackles and we get a fun and thoughtful "coming-of-age in mid 1960s California" story which is very engaging, and not as twinkling.

The cast is excellent, I think Michelle Williams deserves the praise she's been given, while poor Paul Dano's character doesn't make a lot of sense, but real life people are under no obligation to be as rational as movie characters, so he does a fine job regardless. The young man playing the Spielberg character is also wonderful and easy to enjoy. It is a story for white audiences for sure. While a bit too on-the-nose, especially with that title, it is enthusiastically told and looks splendid due to Janusz Kamiński's excellent camera work.

[quote]All those WASPS cast as his parents.

Ha! Yeah, they have to haul in old Jeannie Berlin as grandmother Hadassah to Jew it up a little, and boy does she ever!

Total props to casting Jeannie Berlin in anything, I love her.

He makes such shlock. I actually like much of West Side Story—but he just couldn’t help making the ending mawkish garbage. And that girl in the red dress in Schindler’s List… my God!

Jaws was good. And ET.

SSppeeeelburgghh$$$$$$$ggghhh.

I have had sufficient.

[quote]Total props to casting Jeannie Berlin in anything, I love her.

"Look Lenny, there's us in thirty years."

A very special episode of The Wonder Years.

I’m not interested in another 50s/60s coming of age story. But if I were a filmmaker it would probably speak to me. Spielberg has made a lot of money for Hollywood, why not let him have his passion project.

My synagogue disapproves of such obsessive, expensive and absolutely unnecessary navel gazing.

People in Israel are starving!

Rex Reed’s lukewarm review . . .

David Lynch has a cameo, which is the only reason I’ll see it.

R86

He still gave it three out of four stars.

Didn’t realize Rex was still with us!

Such a vanity project - exactly who is supposed to care about this? Some kind of overshared psychological exercise. Pshaw -

Steven Spielberg's mother actually had that kind of odd looking hair.

But did she have that odd sounding Hollywood Inspirational phrasing that is grounds for running away from home at the earliest possible opportunity?

Rex Reed

'If you want to make an ego-massaging movie about yourself that runs for two-and-a-half hours, you better have a damned good story to tell. But 'The Fabelmans' is only intermittently interesting.'

sounds right

Has Barbara Thorndyke weighed in?

How did it do at the box office?

World of Reel uses the word "bomb":

[quote] Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans” has bombed at the box-office. This coming after the filmmaker’s “West Side Story” garnered the same fate last year, which begs me to ask the question: if Spielberg can’t even bring people to a movie theatre anymore, then who can? I imagine Martin Scorsese, Wes Anderson, Christopher Nolan and Quentin Tarantino can still pull it off, but these four directors are now part of a dying breed.

[quote] What the post-pandemic theatrical era has done to adult dramas is absolutely brutal. There are so many factors that have contributed to the demise of critically-acclaimed films at the box office, one of which is older moviegoers learning how to stream and purchase films via the comfort of their own homes.

[quote] I'm still struck by how fast this change has happened. Movie theaters are turning primarily into, as Scorsese pointed out a few years back, theme park rides. What we’ve learned this year is that the younger crowd will still purchase a ticket for the token Marvel, Pixar, sequel packages, but that’s about it. You’ll have the odd “Elvis” phenomenon, but one look at this year’s 10 highest-grossing movies and they are all superhero movies and/or blockbuster sequels.

The Fabelmans like Glass Onion is in limited release. It's playing in 638 theaters as compared to Strange World (4,174), Bones and All (2,727) and She, Said (2,023) and its per theater average $1,378 was higher than those films @ $1,190/$305/$213. Glass Onion in 696 theaters had the highest per screen average of $5,172 for Friday

The Fabelmans has a production cost of $40 million dollars. So at least double that cost to account for marketing and other expenses including payments to exhibiters showing the film.

In 17 days of limited release (638 theaters) it has grossed $3.4 million dollars with no international box office (yet)

In 12 days of limited release (696 theaters) Glass Onion has grossed $13.2 million dollars domestically.

The Fabelmans appears to be scheduled to be released internationally during December and January. Will it also have an expanded US release up from the 636 theaters in December? Not sure.

^ actually, The Fabelmans opened in 4 theaters and went into wider release last week

Fablemans Schnablemans! Give that Shiksa Goddess her statuette for playing a Jew and let’s move on.

The movie really loses a lot of steam when the family moves to California and the focus shifts from the kid and his family to his teenage romance and the fight with the bully. The girlfriend is sometimes funny, but she feels like she's from a totally different movie from everyone else, and the final scene between Sam and the bully really doesn't feel earned. It tries to introduce some nuance to a character who is both portrayed and played as very one-dimensional.

I wasn't that impressed by the Judd Hirsch scene, either. It was fine, nothing earth-shattering. The ending in Hollywood is one of Spielberg's best, though.

I’ll happily see this streaming but going to a cinema for it seems like homework. Ditto She Said.

The only films I have seen in a cinema in the past 6 months are Top Gun Maverick for my BF’s birthday and Mrs Harris Goes To Paris for my mother’s birthday. I miss going to the movies the way I did 15 years ago but I have a mortgage to pay for. It is no loner cheap entertainment for the masses.

Every theater in America should be $8 during the week and $10 on weekends.

They priced themselves out of business and every empty seat brings in zero dollars. It is pathetic that exhibitors seem to just be sitting around HOPING people decide to return to theatergoing without a single creative marketing idea to lure them back in. In the 1950s and earlier they used to give away plates!

R103 some of the problem is that people don't want to deal with their fellow Americans anymore. Too many crazy people misbehaving in public.

R103, the two biggest theatrical chains in America have subscription plans where, for about $25 per month, you can see three movies per week. If you max out an AMC Pass, it brings the cost down to around $2 per ticket. and even if you only see three movies per month, that makes the ticket average around $8. That's a recent innovation, and in an era where people subscribe to five different streaming services it's tailored to modern spending habits.

After all, we come to this place for magic. To laugh, to cry, to care....

R105 I used to love AMC Theaters, but I don’t want to go if it means I risk running into that stone-faced Aussie gash in the fourth row. Then I actually *will* laugh and then cry.

The bitch is an Oscar winner with a Picasso masterpiece for a head. Does she really have to cash in like this for a dying theater chain? It’s like watching Aniston shill for that abusive Arab airline, or Timothy Hutton cracking jokes about Tibet to sell Groupons. Get a real fucking job, people!

Saw it today and loved it. It didn’t feel overlong to me. Michelle Williams is wonderful and the teen Spielberg actor is just perfect. It felt like an experience and I laughed, cried, ate milk duds and left happy. Exactly what I wanted today. Also, I live in San Francisco, signed up for the free AMC membership, and pay 5 bucks on Tuesdays to see movies. Got the milk duds at Walgreens and walked to the theatre so, my investment was around $7.

"....the West Side Story debacle with Ansel Elgort...." What The FUCK are you talking about?

R108, Ansel Elgort has a thing for teenage girls, based on a lot of anonymous allegations on social media. Some feel overblown and right out of the victimhood playbook, and some are legitimately disgusting (sending dick pics to eighth graders). For most of these accusations he was barely out of his teens, but even the most charitable interpretation is that he's a major douchebag.

I prefer to think that the debacle is less what he did to teenage girls and more what he did to Donna Tartt.

R107, I didn't love The Fabelmans as much as you did, but I adore your description of your experience. I'm glad you had a good time.

And the kid who plays Spielberg is very good. He's really effective when the character gets to be funny, and we don't really think of Spielberg that way.

I think Paul Dano is more deserving of a Best Supporting Actor nomination than Judd Hirsch. Hirsch never really stood out to me the way Dano did. Dano is the quiet heart of the film.

R111 I liked Hirsch but the reviews for him have been so glowing I expected more. But he was fine. I normally can’t stand Seth Rogan but the scene with the camera towards the end really touched me. I agree, Dano was great and had some beautiful moments.

Dano was definitely the best of the male supporting cast (I still maintain that Williams is a supporting character, based on those long stretches in California where she doesn't appear). Even when I like Dano in movies I usually have some reservations, but he brought a lot of unexpected warmth to his character, so I hope he gets awards attention this year over Hirsch (who is fun, entertaining, yet inessential).

R113 Judd is an overlooked treasure. He took fourth banana on his own sitcom, and played an integral role in my award-winning performance. I was a first-time actor who beat him out for an Oscar, which is oddly on-theme for the guy.

Wait, are you guys talking about Judd Hirsch? Is he still alive? As Hal Linden?

I enjoyed the movie a lot. At first glance I was convinced that the two bullies were supposed to be closeted gay lovers.

The thing going against the Paul Dano character is that he is a patsy and overburdened by virtue. His character is so adrift and left unresolved. Dano plays the at times unplayable role well, but it didn't feel right.

Do they explain why Speilberg did an obvious autobiographical movie yet calls it "The Fablemans"?

R51, An "obsession"? Maybe "British" sells!

R118, See my signature at r50. 🙂

R119 So you’re saying it’s lies! All lies! And he whitewashing his past?

[quote]Timothy Hutton cracking jokes about Tibet to sell Groupons.

Is that really a commercial?

Buck would never have won an Oscar by category fraud.

Well, it’s no Jeanne Dielman.

I’m suing.

It might become Spielberg's lowest grossing movie at the box office, and that includes The Sugarland Express almost fifty years ago. That movie made $7 million back in 1974, while The Fabelmans is around $5, with only ten more days before it goes to streaming.

No one expected it to be a blockbuster, but I expected it to do a lot better than that. Belfast still did $9 million domestic and almost $50 accounting for international box office, and that figure seems completely out of reach for the movie.

Is there a little girl in a red coat to follow in this movie?

R121 You're welcome!

And R122 It's still one more Oscar than you ever won, ya mean old drunk!

These are the types of movies that people these days expect to watch from home.

Schmaltzy or whatever, Steven Spielberg is still one of the great masters of American cinema.

It’s a beautiful gem of a movie with some genuinely touching performances. Of course it flopped.

I went with friends to see it on Thanksgiving weekend. There were maybe a dozen people in rather empty theater. My friend is a movie-lover and he adores Spielberg, so of course he loved it. I tried not to be too critical. But this is not a "must-see" movie. It's kind of self-indulgent for Spielberg to write and direct a movie about himself.

I guess you would say it's a "slice of life" kind of movie. There is some dramatic tension, but for most of the movie I was asking myself, "where is this going?" Is it about how his parents were mismatched? Is it about how a boy became a filmmaker? Is it about being bullied in school? It has no plot.

It might win some awards -- for Michelle Williams in particular. But this is not Spielberg's best work. And it will not recoup its production costs, so consider it to be another one of his late career box office bombs.

Saw it yesterday, over all I liked it, but did anyone notice that Michele Williams was using some of her affections that she developed to play Gwen Verdon? As if there was a certain way midcentury lady performers spoke and used their hands?

Did they allows Jews into the boy scouts in the 1950’s and 1960’s, isn’t there some statement about being a good Christian and morally clean? Was there like Jewish Boy Scouts and that’s why they had red kerchiefs?

R133 Yes, of course they allowed Jews in the Boy Scouts. Spielberg was very active in Scouts as a young man.

The neckerchief color varies, depending on the scout's age and status in the organization. They did not force the Jews to wear a special color. You're thinking of the Hitler Youth, which was a slightly more militant version of the Scouting movement.

I don't understand why he encountered so much anti-Semitism in his new neighborhood after moving but none whatsoever prior to the move.

And were bagels just there, available on nearby San Francisco suburban streets in the early 60s?

Judd Hirsch was so hammily terrible in this film that if he gets an Oscar nomination, it will immediately go down as one of the worst in that category ever.

I wanted to like Michelle Williams, because I think she is consistently terrific, but she was not very good in this until towards the end, and even then she was just okay.

The movie is a big bore. Spielberg hasn't made a compelling film since Munich.

I want to give this a try but then I see Michelle Williams in that stupid haircut and I just can't. I could never stand her but her face in that hair makes me want to slap my dog.

From what I've heard, this is a Spielberg attempt at Cinema Paradiso, and a failed one at that.

It's almost seems like The Goldbergs, but not as funny

it's an even bigger flop than West Side Story. After 30 days in release, it's only grossed a little over $7M.

Did Spielberg's mother really have hair like that?

Will this create the inevitable TV spin off TV show?

R142, she did.

How the Fabelmans compare to the Spielbergs.

Spielberg’s days are numbered. He’ll have to move into television.

And even then, r137, "Munich" offered nothing, besides full-frontal female and male nudity, that "Sword of Gideon" (starring Steven Bauer) did not do, and arguably better.

I’m a Feldman, damnit.

[quote]The Fabelmans: What do you think?

Schmaltzy, maudlin, sugar-coated shit.

I did not like it at all. As others have said, way too long and boring. It could have been told more effectively. If I had been watching at home, I would have not finished it. There are some wonderful scenes (Williams dancing in the camping site) and the young actor was wonderful. But, I am a little surprised at the great reviews it has garnered. Also, the film that is shown at prom will be fodder for graduate students for many years to come.

Just saw it and I agree with some of the opinions above but I thought Michelle Williams’ performance was an absolute crock of shit. Her “Look at me, I’m ACTING!” schtick was unbearable at times and I thought she was pretty damn amazing as Gwen Verdon. The boy is very good and Paul Dano was very touching. Judd Hirsch does indeed have a show stopping turn (I think it’s Oscar worthy) and I loved Chloe East, who plays the California girl who’s into Jesus and stuff.

I found it meandering, self-indulgent and unfocused. Apparently Spielberg and Kushner wrote it together during the early months of the pandemic -- but neither of them seems to have worked out a compelling structure/through-line. It's sentimental and more than a little misogynistic to boot -- comparable to CATCH ME IF YOU CAN in that way (hapless but ennobled Dad . . . unreliable, whorish Mom . . . other female characters shallow/silly/undercharacterized). And Michelle Williams gives a truly grotesque performance — mannered beyond belief.

R76 she was entered as Supporting and they denied it so she had to be entered as Lead.

R98 The Fabelmans didn’t spend $40 million on ads. Again, this wasn’t a blockbuster.

R101 because the California scenes are supposed to feel like a completely different movie because they now take place in California vs Arizona. The people there are very different, the vibes are different, the styles were different.

[quote] The trailer spells out the entire film.

This is a huge problem with movies these days. I went to the theater to see a movie a few weeks ago, and there was a trailer for a comedy about a bear in a national park that gets all jacked up on cocaine. Every fucking punchline in the entire movie was in the trailer.

I watched it today, and thoroughly enjoyed it. It was a lot better than I expected. Michelle Williams was great but she was uneven. She was putting on the quintessential Jew accent but it was very strong at times and she barely had one other times. She was all over the place.

I liked it. As always with these films: overlong. These films - about this era- always reminds me how badly women were treated. It turns out Speilberg’s mother was the most talented of them all - and had to give it up & treat it like a hobby.

Did they give a part to Spielberg's porn actress daughter ?

[quote]Did they give a part to Spielberg's porn actress daughter ?

Are you Russian, R159?

Michelle Williams is certainly a lead. The story is as much about her as it is Sam.

I almost always dislike Paul Dano in everything he’s in, but I loved him here. He was lovely and added a lot of heart to the film.

The actor playing teenage/young adult Sam is adorable. He’s a cutie. Very tiny guy.

Not WASPy enough.

Finally saw this. A big fat meh. Spielberg does his usual shtick of bludgeoning the audience with maudlin bullshit. This time he uses Michelle Williams channeling Liza as a battering ram. Very oscar baity, but no real there there.

Thank you, R164! I'm frankly bewildered by the critical adulation, more or less echoed in this thread.

This movie blew donkey balls.

As limp as it is, it will still amass Oscar nominations.

R164 Jewish Christmas? Did you enjoy the Chinese food if not the movie?

[r168] The Chinese food sucked too! Total loser of a night except for the fine company

i enjoyed it.

I'd lick Oakes Fegley's shitter!

I'd change Judd Hirsch's Depends!

There’s a really bad continuity goof in the dinner table scene late in the film. In the wide shot Sammy’s gf has a knife in her right hand and in the direct cut she’s suddenly holding a glass in her right hand.