+ Best Historical Movie of the Year + Best Big Hit Movie of the Year + Best Biopic of the Year
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| Daniel Day-Lewis fully immersed and impressively resemblant of his iconic character on this poster in stately B/W for Steven Spielberg's Lincoln |
We follow the hardships of US president Abraham Lincoln in the last months of his second term, as the American Civil War finally comes to its end, and he manages to abolish slavery.
Lincoln is written by Tony Kushner (Munich (2005)), based in part on Doris Kearns Goodwin's (The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys: An American Saga (1987)) biographical book Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (2005)), and directed by Ohioan master filmmaker Steven Spielberg (Jurassic Park (1993)).
Daniel Day-Lewis (Nanou (1986)) is phenomenal as Lincoln, and so is Sally Field (Eye for an Eye (1996)) as Mrs. Lincoln. Spielberg's sweeping, historical biopic is exciting, because besides portraying one of the most interesting political periods in world history, it is also driven by a family drama with equally high stakes.
Spielberg has gathered an appropriately impressive ensemble of actors, of which the third who deserves highlighting is Tommy Lee Jones (Double Jeopardy (1999)), who stands out in one of his career's finest performances as a rebel Republican, who does what is necessary in order to be able to abolish slavery with his president.
Lincoln is full of wallops; it is a very handsome production with sublime photography (by Janusz Kaminski (Tall Tale (1995))) and a good score, although it isn't among composer John Williams' (Catch Me If You Can (2002)) very best. The chosen portion of a speech which concludes the film puzzles me a bit.
Still Lincoln is a grand and thrilling history lesson of great quality.
Related posts:
Steven Spielberg: The Post (2017) - Spielberg returns to mastery with a thrilling salute to the virtues of real, critical, brave journalism
2012 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED V]
War Horse (2011) - Spielberg visits WWI with problematic horse drama The Adventures of Tintin/The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn (2011) - Affinities for Tintin, earlier Spielberg and film will decide your experience of this 3D mo-cap adventure Super 8 (2011) - Abrams' nostalgic family crowdpleaser (producer)
Band of Brothers - TV mini-series (2001) - WWII-sacrifice and -comradeship portrayed with skill and integrity (producer)
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) - A robot fairy tale with both heart and mind
Amistad (1997) or, Must... Free... Slaves!
Empire of the Sun (1987) - Spielberg's grand production of boy-in-China-during-WWII is a misfire
Twilight Zone The Movie (1983) - Fear takes many forms in tragedy-struck anthology
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) - Spielberg's greatest accomplishment
1941 (1979) - Spielberg's bizarre 'comedy spectacular' sinks like a rock
Top 10: Best car chases in movies reviewed by Film Excess to date
Duel (1971) - Spielberg's truck terror is ideal afternoon fare
Watch a trailer for the film here
Cost: 65 mil. $
Box office: 275.2 mil. $
= Big hit (returned 4.23 times the cost)
[Lincoln premiered 8 October (New York) and runs 150 minutes. Spielberg expressed desire to make a Lincoln film using Goodwin's then unwritten book in 1999. Development began in 2001 with Liam Neeson getting attached to star in 2005. He left the project in 2010, and Spielberg offered Day-Lewis, who had first called the idea of him playing the character "preposterous", the part again, which he then accepted. Shooting took place in Virginia from October - December 2011. The film opened #15 to a 944k $ first weekend in 11 theaters in North America, - a colossal 85k $ average, - where it peaked the following week at #3, behind new release, major box office phenomenon The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 and holdover hit Skyfall. It spent another 5 weeks in the top 5 (#3-#4-#4-#3-#5) and grossed 182.2 mil. $ (66.2 % of the total gross) domestically. The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were the UK with 13.2 mil. $ (4.8 %) and France with 10.6 mil. $ (3.9 %). Roger Ebert gave the film a 4/4 star review, translating to a notch better than this one. The historical accuracy of the film is generally assessed to be high. It was nominated for 12 Oscars, winning for Best Actor (Day-Lewis) and Best Production Design. It lost Best Picture to Argo, Supporting Actor (Jones) to Christoph Waltz in Django Unchained, Supporting Actress (Field) to Anne Hathaway in Les Misérables, Director to Ang Lee for Life of Pi, Adapted Screenplay to Chris Terrio for Argo, Cinematography to Claudio Miranda for Life of Pi, Costume Design to Anna Karenina, Sound Mixing to Les Misérables, Editing to Argo, and Score to Mychael Danna for Life of Pi. It also won 1/7 Golden Globe nominations, 1/10 BAFTA noms, an AFI award, a David di Donatello nomination, a Grammy nomination, a National Board of Review award and countless other honors. Disney donated 37,100 copies of the film on DVD along with teaching guides to secondary schools across the US. Spielberg returned with Bridge of Spies (2015). Day-Lewis returned in Phantom Thread (2017). Lincoln is certified fresh at 89 % with an 8/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of Lincoln?
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