Cinemavenger

   The funniest, nastiest movie reviews anywhere.

Bridge of Spies

To all the high school and college kids out there who've been brainwashed by Hiltons, Kardashians and reality TV in general to believe that you can be a no-talent, lazy, worthless, assbag of a human and magically get rich and famous, fuck you you fucking fucks.

If you want anything in this world, you've got to go out and take it.  You've got to pay your dues.  Look at America's favorite uncle, Tom "No T" Hanks.  He didn't just wake up one day to the phone ringing off the hook with offers to star in Toy Story and Captain Phillips.  He had to play a transvestite on a network TV show with a tit pun for a title for years before anyone gave him and his stuffed bra a second look.

"Saint" Steven Spielberg's just the same - well, minus the cross-dressing, most likely.  He directed his first feature film when he was 18 years old, and it took 11 more years before his breakthrough hit (and thalassophobia-inducing nightmare for an entire generation), Jaws, catapulted him into the directorial stratosphere. 

Of course, talent aside you still have to be lucky enough to catch an Adrien Brody's nose-sized break to make it big.  And even if you do, you'll eventually get old and tired and lame.  You'll know your best years are behind you, but you'll still keep swinging away hoping for one last home run.  You sad bastard.

Spielberg's career is a fucking mathematical proof of this truth.  Raiders of the Lost Ark and E.T. have given way to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Bridge of Spies.  And I'm willing to bet that his upcoming video-game-centered Ready Player One will have people pining for 1941.

Mining the Cold War for some fluffy feel-good, Bridge of Spies has Hanks Atticus Finch it up as the insurance lawyer who defended notorious Soviet spy Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance "Alot") then brokered a prisoner exchange of Able for downed U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers (Austin Stowell "Sample") and detained graduate student Frederic Pryor (Will "Really?" Rogers).  Hanks' James Donovan is all Constitution this and Due Process that, and he's so earnest he should star in his own movie about going someplace.

Speaking of the Cold War, isn't it sort of a sombrero-holder scratcher that no one worries about a global nuclear holocaust anymore?  I mean, there are still enough nukes in Russian and American hands to flash-fry the world 100 times over, but where that used to be kind of a big deal to most folks, now everybody just shrugs it off.  One day it was duck-and-cover and "Kill a Commie for Mommy," and the next people were like, "Nuclear war?  Whatevs." 

For a raw yet eloquent expression of this quandary, check out the less-than-a-minute-long song "Forgotten Not Gone."  Here's the link:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QgIdnFi8qc

Or, if you're into hardcore trilateral shuttle diplomacy and fedoras - lots and lots of fedoras, I guess go see Bridge of Spies.