With a witty, grandiose screenplay and a camera that cleanly navigates political battlefields, Steven Spielberg uses the final months of Abraham Lincoln’s life to examine the messy game of American politics, carefully observing his tactical orchestration of congress to pass the slavery-ending 13th Amendment.
The inverted journeys of self-control and surrender that lonely drifter Freddie Quell and cult leader Lancaster Dodd travel along go beyond excellent screenwriting, but also affirm The Master’s extraordinary formal achievement, as Paul Thomas Anderson layers every single interaction with patterns that elusively float these soulmates through a post-war America lost in its identity.
Such is Kathryn Bigelow’s fine control over action-driven sequences that even as Zero Dark Thirty delivers on its raw thrills, she also manages to coordinate them remarkably tightly in her narrative’s driving pursuit of justice, following the CIA’s lengthy hunt for Osama Bin Laden over ten gruelling years.
Visually, Skyfall is on a whole other level to every James Bond film that came before, as Sam Mendes’ impeccable craftsmanship delivers on set piece after set piece, sending Daniel Craig’s version of 007 down a sensitive path to confront painful childhood memories.
