90% Lincoln

All Critics (227) | Top Critics (43) | Fresh (204) | Rotten (23)

It's the most remarkable movie Steven Spielberg has made in quite a spell, and one of the things that makes it remarkable is how it fulfills those expectations by simultaneously ignoring and transcending them.

Lincoln paints a powerful and compelling portrait of the man who has become an icon. We don't need to see more of his life to understand how rare a figure he was - this window is more than sufficient.

Lincoln offers proof of what magic can happen when an actor falls in love with his character. Because as great as Day-Lewis has been in his many parts, he has never seemed quite so smitten.

The film masterfully captures the dual dilemmas facing the president in the final months of his life: how to bring the war between the states to an end, and how to eradicate slavery, once and for all.

Lincoln is a stirring reminder that politics can be noble. Might there be a lesson here for today's shrill D.C. discourse? 'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.

Day-Lewis' voice is thin and reedy, which jibes with historical accounts but subverts our expectations. His attitude makes listeners lean in, and so do we, magnetized by his kindly reserve.

Lincoln is a far more reckless, entertaining, unusual, but ultimately horribly uneven film than its pedigree may suggest.

This is easily Spielberg's best picture since Schindler's List. Having a two-term black president now in the White House can't hurt its chances, either.

A literally and metaphorically towering performance by Daniel Day Lewis as the 1.93cm Abraham Lincoln drives this historically riveting and personally impassioned ... riveting ... film

It is Daniel Day-Lewis' indelible portrait of the President, visionary, raconteur, husband and family man that stands at the forefront, as he resolutely realises his goal to abolish slavery

One never feels alive or inspired watching this history, merely intrigued, as if watching a film made for a museum exhibit.

The biggest compliment we can pay Joanna Johnston's costumes in Lincoln is that you hardly notice them. This is a far subtler film than you might expect.

A shamelessly hagiographic chronicling of the final months of the Great Emancipator's life.

It may indulge its subject a little too much but it highlights the road to a momentous occasion with an intimacy that gives emotional weight to political machinations

The actual vote on the Amendment proves surprisingly gripping, but elsewhere moments of piety and sentimentality undermine Day-Lewis's magnificent, credibly flesh-and-blood Lincoln.

It's an impeccably crafted history lesson that, unusually for a Spielberg film, tells us why its subject matter is important, instead of engaging with it on an emotional level.

Daniel Day-Lewis gives a towering performance in Steven Spielberg's bravest picture to date.

N?o ? um retrato multidimensional de um indiv?duo complexo, mas uma f?bula. Um letreiro de "Era uma vez..." em seu in?cio n?o ficaria deslocado.

Against the odds, Spielberg makes something genuinely exciting of the backstage wheedling.

A historic epic from Steven Spielberg carries a lot of baggage, but he surprises us with a remarkably contained approach to an iconic figure. What's most unexpected is that this is a political drama, not a biopic.

[Spielberg is] a man on a mission. And his not so secret weapon is Day-Lewis, an actor so charismatic it's hard to think clearly while he's on screen.

Perhaps this is a rose-tinted view of Lincoln - he comes across as more living saint than man - but as cinema, it is powerful, gripping and thoroughly entertaining.

Spielberg is always a professional, and the film is never less than well-crafted.

By stepping into history without fear, favour or any overfamiliar biopic folly, Lincoln, handsome, often thrilling, and movingly human, goes into history as a major movie achievement.

A rousing, rigorous and morally complex legal procedural more than a trad biopic. And all the better for it.

his is a warm, celebratory film, handsomely shot, with a subtle, sympathetic central performance from Day-Lewis, and tremendous support from Tommy Lee Jones ...

Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/lincoln_2011/

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