Support NeoGAF

[watershed]

Some background, I'm a big Spielberg fan. I'm interested in every film he makes and have seen almost all of them. I think he's one of the masters. Bold opinion, I know. But I watched Bridge of Spies when it first released in 2015 and I was bored by it. I thought it was a misfire of restraint and understatement where Lincoln was a home run with the same dynamics. I saw for sure that Mark Rylance did an amazing job but I found Tom Hanks a little too on the nose, too noble Americana incarnate. I thought the cinematography was predictable and sometimes borderline bad.

But today I watched it again for the first time on a whim and I saw a completely different movie. I also watched 2 Spielberg Q and As about the film with Martin Scorsese and Paul Thomas Anderson. Everything great about the film is so clear now. The way the movie starts on a reflection, the visual fun Spielberg has with certain shots, camera movements, and cuts. Tom Hanks' almost bulldog nature as the lawyer. The wide lens used throughout in the film for long master shots. The irony that Cohens brought to the script. Between the dialogue, the characters, and the casting, the film almost feels like Steven Spielberg made a Cohens film but with his visual language. Overall, now I can see how amazing this film is. It's not one of Spielberg's greatest films because his greatest hit higher highs, but Bridge of Spies is a masterclass in really good, controlled, mature, very specific filmmaking.

Has anyone else really turned their opinion on a movie like this? Do you see Bridge of Spies in the same way?


Oh, and horrendous posters for this movie across the board. My god they're awful.

 

[Skeletron]

Judging by the poster I'm guessing this movie is some kind of alternate history where the cold war was interrupted by a giant Godzilla-like Tom Hanks.

 

[Betty]

Redlettermedia said it was boring.

Hanks goes in to get a spy, the spy is dropped off at a bridge, it ends.

Sounded like a cure for narcolepsy.

 

[Matt]

It's a very good film.

 

[Window]

Not a masterpiece but agreed in that it's very very good.

I like this bit from the Reverseshot review:

These two films, for all their wild disparities in plot and genre, hold deeply to an ideal vision of “America”—which might be something contained in the Declaration of Independence, or the Constitution or written on the winds through years of interpretations and misinterpretations in art and politics of both. Like Lincoln, Bridge places value on conversation, negotiation, honor, decency, the ineffable power of giving one’s “word” to another. Spielberg aims to please, yes, but in the one-two punch that is Lincoln and Bridge of Spies, he’s also aiming for something grander. Always a uniter, never a divider (except perhaps in the case of A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, his most uncompromising work), he seems to have looked around at the beleaguered state of our Union and crafted two major works (though one should mention his earlier stab at Constitutional filmmaking, Amistad) with the express intent of bringing the American people back together, of motivating us to remember our core shared ideals. He’s cinema’s Thomas Paine, with a Hollywood-sized pamphlet.

 

[Truant]

What? Spielberg is alive? And working?

 

[Discotheque]

I enjoyed it quite a bit. Tom Hanks' performance in here felt like a nice throwback to old James Stewart films.

 

[Morat]

Great film. Mark Rylance is fantastic.

 

[Yabberwocky]

I've been really meaning to watch this after seeing Wolf Hall, Mark Rylance is a revelation.

 

[jelly]

I really enjoyed it, slow burner but still a good watch.

His life was really interesting. There was a documentary about him the other week on the BBC.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-39436207

If you ran into Frank Meehan strolling along the banks of the Clyde estuary near his home in Helensburgh, you wouldn't notice much that was remarkable about him. He looks like any other pensioner enjoying a peaceful retirement.

But, now in his 10th decade, Frank can look back on a life spent at the heart of some of the most dramatic moments in the 40-year nuclear stand-off between the Soviet Union and the West.
Frank grew up in Clydebank, a town about eight miles west of Glasgow, famous for shipbuilding.
But he spent four decades as a US diplomat living, almost exclusively, behind the Iron Curtain in Communist Eastern Europe.

As a teenager he survived the Clydebank Blitz, an aerial bombardment by the Luftwaffe during World War Two, which killed 500 and destroyed thousands of homes.

 

[MarkMclovin]

Couldn't finish it.

 

[Vault Dweller 111]

It's boring.

Rylance stole the Oscar from every other nominee.

 

[watershed]

It's boring.

Rylance stole the Oscar from every other nominee.

I would agree with the idea that Stallone's performance was every part as good as Rylance's but I don't think for a second that Rylance was worse. His performance in Bridge of Spies is the major highlight of a film with a lot of highlights.

 

[Turin Turambar]

Nah. Something so forgettable can't be a masterpiece.

 

[| Praxis |]

I enjoyed the film as well. Thought it was his best since Munich, although not as good as that.

 

[SCULLIBUNDO]

I enjoyed the film as well. Thought it was his best since Munich, although not as good as that.

Munich is Spielberg's real most recent masterpiece.

 

[| Praxis |]

Munich is Spielberg's real most recent masterpiece.

Agreed.

 

[HyperZone<3]

Lincoln and Munich are better late career Spielberg, but yeah, this film doesn't get enough love. It is pretty dang good.

The script has a bunch of witty little moments (thanks Coen bros.), the cinematography and craftsmenship is striking, and its a nice and grounded (and realistic) depiction of spycraft. A gem of a film.

 

[TheSecondSpitter]

Taking a look back at the Powers and Pryor for Abel trade -- Pryor who was the throw-in in the deal had the most promising career holding various academic posts. Powers' career was cut tragically short and Abel retired immediately.

 

[thenexus6]

I liked it, I didn't like the hammy stuff with Hanks on the train though

Spoiler

at the start / end where the woman gives him a disgusting look, then a approving thankful nod later. And like shots of kids running over fences having fun, apposed to earlier being shot down

 

[Monochromaticx]

I didn't enjoy it very much. I felt the film was forcing the idea that the Russian spy is a good guy and we should admire him. but by the end of the movie I still didn't give a damn about him.

 

[iPaul93]

Watched it a couple of years ago and thought it was just ok.

 

[Dynamite Shikoku]

It was pretty dull

 

[Zen Aku]

I highly enjoyed it.