The Fabelmans (2022) Review

Time: 151 Minutes
Age Rating: Offensive language
Cast:
Gabriel LaBelle as Samuel “Sammy” Fabelman
Michelle Williams as Mitzi Schildkraut-Fabelman
Paul Dano as Burt Fabelman
Seth Rogen as Bennie Loewy
Judd Hirsch as Boris Schildkraut
Director: Steven Spielberg

Young Sammy Fabelman falls in love with movies after his parents take him to see “The Greatest Show on Earth.” Armed with a camera, Sammy starts to make his own films at home, much to the delight of his supportive mother.

The Fabelmans is Steven Spielberg’s latest film; I knew of it starring Paul Dano and Michelle Williams, and it would be a semi autobiography about his own life growing up. Even though it was Spielberg and he delivers consistently solid movies, I didn’t know how I would be finding this one. Coming of age stories for the most part don’t do anything for me, and I was a little over “love letters to cinema”, which the film looked like it was going for. The Fabelmans however ended up as one of my favourite movies of 2022.

The script from Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner is clever and well written. As to be expected, The Fabelmans is clearly deeply personal to Spielberg and feels like a reflection on his life, very heartfelt and with a real vulnerability to it. Effectively, its part family drama and part coming of age story. As expected going in, it is a love letter to movies, with protagonist Sammy Fabelman having a childhood which centred around falling in love with cinema and filmmaking. The movie portrays the inspiring nature and passion of filmmaking, as well as the pursuit of fulfilling one’s dreams. The Fabelmans does more than just showing “the power of cinema”, by highlighting the cost and sacrifice that comes with pursuing that dream. Spielberg recreates his childhood memories and presents the personal struggles within a dysfunctional family life. The movie serves as a love letter to his family, as he looks back on his childhood with bittersweet nostalgia. In fact, the movie is at its strongest when it is focussing on the family dynamics. The whole movie also feels very authentic; it easily could’ve been self-indulgent or an ego trip, given that Spielberg is making a movie about himself being interested to become a filmmaker when he was younger. However, it is genuine and compelling throughout. There’s a lot of depth to it, and its earnest and touching. It jumps between various tones, there are plenty of moments of levity, and overall, it felt like a very complete story. Honestly, there’s a lot to like here even if you’ve never heard of Steven Spielberg or aren’t as passionate about cinema. However, I can definitely see aspiring filmmakers connecting with a lot of the movie.

The actors are all amazing in their parts. Gabriel LaBelle plays the lead role of Sammy Fabelman and he’s fantastic and believable. While Sammy is clearly modelled on a much younger Steven Spielberg, he is a great character. We are emotionally invested in his journey, and LaBelle holds his own against the older actors. Michelle Williams and Paul Dano play his parents and are equally stellar, delivering some of the best performances of their careers. Seth Rogen is great and memorable in a supporting role, and Judd Hirsch is good in a smaller role. Other supporting actors like Julia Butters and Chloe East are also good, while David Lynch is incredibly memorable in a cameo appearance.

Unsurprisingly, Steven Spielberg’s direction is as strong as ever. Everything from Janusz Kaminski’s stunning cinematography to the editing and John Williams’s solid score was top notch, and I think its safe to call The Fabelmans one of the best crafted films of 2022.

The Fabelmans is an intimate, personal, and earnest film and love letter to cinema and family. It is directed to perfection by Steven Spielberg and has excellent performances from everyone, especially Gabriel LaBelle, Michelle Williams and Paul Dano. It’s one of 2022’s best, and one of Spielberg’s best.

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Independence Day: Resurgence (2016) Review

Time: 120 Minutes
Age Rating: Violence
Cast:
Liam Hemsworth as Jake Morrison
Jeff Goldblum as David Levinson
Jessie Usher as Dylan Dubrow-Hiller
Bill Pullman as Thomas J. Whitmore
Maika Monroe as Patricia Whitmore
Sela Ward as Elizabeth Lanford
William Fichtner as Joshua Adams
Judd Hirsch as Julius Levinson
Brent Spiner as Dr. Brakish Okun
Patrick St. Esprit as Reese Tanner
Vivica A. Fox as Jasmine Dubrow-Hiller
Angelababy as Rain Lao
Director: Roland Emmerich

As the Fourth of July nears, satellite engineer David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum) investigates a 3,000-mile-wide mother ship that’s approaching Earth. 20 years earlier, nations across the world started to use recovered extra-terrestrial technology to develop an immense defence program. When the alien invaders attack with unprecedented force, the U.S. president, teams of scientists and brave fighter pilots spring into action to save the planet from a seemingly invincible enemy.

I liked Independence Day, I don’t love it as much as others do but it was an enjoyable film nonetheless. I wasn’t really excited when the sequel was announced, it felt too late, if this film was to be created, it should have been done 10 years ago. None of the trailers particularly hyped me. After seeing it, I can say now that Independence Day Resurgence is not really good. The story is messy with subplots and bad humour as well as questionable visual effects. It’s not horrendous, but I still don’t think this movie is worth watching.

The most surprising thing about this movie is how long it felt. It was actually only two hours long but it felt so much longer. The pacing is to blame for the most part, the first act jumps all over the place to introduce all the characters (and I’ll get to them later) and it moves at a very slow pace. Even in the last act, I felt completely bored. This is probably because unlike the first film, the sequel doesn’t have any charisma, it’s not exciting and just feels oddly generic. There are also so many pointless subplots that go absolutely nowhere. I think I should bring up the humour, there’s so many jokes thrown into this movie, and it’s quite obvious when they try to be funny. None of the jokes except one actually lands in the movie, the rest are cringe. Oh and I should mention that this movie has an obvious set up to a sequel that will never happen.

The actors are fine for the most part but are only good as the material that are provided to them, which is to say, not great. It’s enjoyable seeing some of the original cast, particularly, Jeff Goldblum, who’s hands down the best part of the movie. However there are just way too many characters in this movie, at one point the focus shifts to some random kids who have no relevance, it’s very jarring and confusing. The film didn’t need so many characters, the first film certainly didn’t need it. Also some of the characters are given way too much screen time certain characters like Brent Spiner’s returning character and a guy named Floyd… the latter being particularly annoying.

Oddly enough the special effects in the first film work better than in here. While the effects here aren’t the absolute worst, they do look very fake looking at times, sometimes Star Wars prequel levels of visual quality, especially when it came to the ships. But even some of the non-action scenes, the visuals looked weird, there was just way too much CGI on screen, sometimes it looked like a video game cut scene. In terms of the camera work, its fine, you can actually see what’s going on.

Independence Day: Resurgence isn’t one of the worst films I’ve seen but is definitely flawed. The film felt too long, the dialogue was bad, the pointless subplots are endless, the effects were too fake looking, it’s not a good movie at all, borderline bad. Overall I think that it’s just a mediocre movie, I didn’t hate it. If you didn’t like the original, you probably won’t like this movie, and if you do like the original, it could go either way, however I have a feeling you won’t like it either. I didn’t expect much from this movie and yet I got less than I thought I would get.