The Fabelmans

🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 *review starts @ 17:49

🎙️ EPISODE 661: 03.09.23 Part of 2022 Week! The Fabelmans was exactly what I thought it would be. What I knew about the movie going in not only played out to a T in actual practice, but turned out to be parallel, experientially, to watching the film itself. It's the Steven Spielberg origin story told in the precise Big Hollywood way one would expect Steven Spielberg to tell it. And therein lies the trick of his entire career, perhaps. How do you make something so compelling when there are literally no expectations to subvert? He's not alone in this application. There are a handful of others. Cameron comes to mind. The ship is going to sink. The shark is going to eat people. Steven Spielberg is going to become StevenSpielberg goddamit.

So it's with this caveat, or hurdle, it remains a minor miracle that his pictures are, for the most part, so captivating. I've found myself — more so than ever, for whatever reason — conditioned to want or need twists and turns to keep a film interesting. But here the setup/narrative is almost impossibly simple, right down to the stupid title. You're never surprised but still completely enthralled by what ends up being the very distillation of both why he got into this career and the very medium itself: said plainly, "the magic of moviemaking." At +1100, it remains a long shot to win Best Picture at this year's Oscars (airing this weekend!). Trailing the sizable favorite Everything Everywhere All At Once (-200), The Banshees of Inisherin (+225) and even Top Gun Maverick (+1000). But damn if I'm not gonna put a few bucks on The Fabelmans because if The Academy loves anything, it's movies ABOUT THE MOVIES. And it doesn't get more MOVIES than this.

It almost feels a tad silly to gush over the concept, but this magic is real. It's why I do this show and made this website, pouring 100s and 100s of hours into a project with negligible R.O.I. So while on face value it may seem too obvious or self-congratulatory, the end product is fantastic. It's probably not only one of Spielberg's best movies of the latter stage of his illustrious career, but one of his best PERIOD.

CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 661A - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 661C ⫸

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The Fabelmans is a 2022 American coming-of-age drama film directed by Steven Spielberg, who co-wrote and produced it with Tony Kushner. The film is a semi-autobiographical story loosely based on Spielberg's adolescence and first years as a filmmaker. It's told through an original story of the fictional Sammy Fabelman, a young aspiring filmmaker who explores how the power of films can help him see the truth about his dysfunctional family and those around him. It stars Gabriel LaBelle as Sammy, alongside Michelle Williams, Paul Dano, Seth Rogen, and Judd Hirsch in supporting roles. The film is dedicated to the memories of Spielberg's real-life parents, Leah Adler and Arnold Spielberg, who died in 2017 and 2020 respectively. It was released on September 10, 2022.