Classic movie geek and former cohost of ThirtyTwentyTen podcast. She/They.
Diana Goodman 👓🎥
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The treacly reputation might be from the music. John Williams’ scores (for all but Bridge of Spies) are often overselling grandeur or sentimentality. I actually think Lincoln could’ve worked without one. But who’s going to tell him to tone it down?! He’s John Goddamn Williams.
I think we don’t appreciate how mature they actually are. I rewatched Lincoln today and it is not a story with easy answers. All options suck.
Any other version of this story would be the most pompous TV movie your hungover 8th grade teacher ever showed you.
I see two directorial influences: They’re William Wyler films until suddenly David Lean shows up and smacks you around.
It’s all films about how doing the right thing is nearly impossible, and you’re probably going to get screwed either way.
Diana Goodman 👓🎥
Diana Goodman 👓🎥
Diana Goodman 👓🎥
I feel like people shrug most of these films off. They’re too earnest or too Dad coded. Treacly, middlebrow Oscar bait.
But they’re ALL about the same big theme: Is justice possible? Does it exist? CAN it exist?
#filmsky is full of Spielberg talk right now, so I want to talk up an underappreciated genre in his filmography: his based on a true story dramas - Empire of the Sun, Amistad, Schindler’s List, Munich, Lincoln, Bridge of Spies and The Post.
*I’m omitting Catch Me If You Can because it’s about the small and personal, not the big and universal. And divorce. Mostly divorce.
They’re mainly men talking in dark rooms punctuated with scenes of violence to remind us of the stakes.
And those sequences are masterpieces: The Berlin Wall going up, the fall of Shanghai, the Middle Passage are goddamn terrifying, made more terrifying by how normal everything was a minute ago.
Previously renamed theaters are for Spike Lee (Brooklyn), John Hughes (Chicago), Ivan Reitman (lower Manhattan), Bong Joon-ho (Austin, TX), and Pam Grier (Littleton, CO, for some reason.)
Admittedly, most of the people I’d name a theater for are dead, but tell me you wouldn’t want to see a midnight screening at the Elizabeth Taylor.
Alamo Drafthouse out here living the dream, naming stuff after cool people.
variety.com/2026/film/ne...
