Lincoln (2012)
A terrible movie with an incredible performance at the center of it.
Daniel Day Lewis is a genius, it's unfortunate that everything else, short of the cinematography, is a full echelon or two away from him.
The rest of the cast is just bad or flat. No one, short of Jared Harris as Grant, comes close to creating something interesting with their roles. "Hey look! It's Dale from Breaking Bad, it's Tommy Lee Jones in a wig and a couple of nut sacks under his eyes, is that James ******* Spader?!?!"
The story itself is also just completely uninteresting.
The main crux is a battle in the House over the passage of the 13th amendment but it just doesn't connect AT ALL. Mediocre actors play reps who's moral compass and struggle on this very important issue is conveyed with no more than a "I just **** myself" face.
There is one scene in the film that is so poorly filmed that it seemed pulled from a modern day sitcom where Jones, as Thaddeus Stevens, comes back from the ratification to hand the bill to his wife, a black woman who reads it to him as they both lay in bed in their pjs. It seemed like something out of Curb Your Enthusiasm, and the ending? Having Lincoln appear from the flickering flame of the oil lamp on his death bed? Like something out of an insurance commercial.
A complete biopic, even if in two parts, would have been in order OR just put this on HBO. I have a fever and MORE DDL as Lincoln is the prescription. Lincoln Lawyer, Lincoln v Douglas, the Gettysburg speech, secession, the war.....those are the touchstones that needed to be shown.
You don't make a movie about Jordan and show him playing baseball and ignore the 66 against the Celtics and the battles against the Pistons and Knicks.
An oscar for DDL if it's not Phoenix's. (Haven't seen The Master yet.)
6/10.