Movie Reviews: Lincoln & Jack Reacher

Don't know if Lincoln will get Best Picture at the Academy Awards, but I will eat my hat if Daniel Day Lewis does not win for Best Actor.  From Christy Brown to Hawkeye to Bill the Butcher (not forgetting the crazy oilman in There Will Be Blood, DDL gets prime roles because he literally becomes and makes the character* and the line between acting and realism disappears.   He literally becomes Honest Abe and you forget you are watching an actor.

The movie is very good, focusing on the last few months of Lincoln's life and the 13th Amendment. The supporting cast of Tommy Lee Jone and Sally Field, et al are also powerful.  It is very much a history lesson and has the feel of a documentary but DDL makes it worthwhile.  Best parts are when he tells some long-winded anecdotes and also the three schemers sent out to win (by any means) support for the mendment.  A-

* DDL lives in Roxbury, CT and once when we were having dinner at the Charcoal Chef in Woodbury, DDL was there, sitting quietly at the back.  We were debating whether to approach and say hello.  However, remembering his penchant for remaining in character, we left him alone.  This was around the time of There Will Be Blood.  Good move - one of us could have been bludgeoned with a bowling pin...


Jack Reacher.  I have few comments on this other than Tom Cruise was in it and he drove a classic American muscle car (see the 1970 SS Chevelle below).  Decent action flick.  Those who read the books are livid with the casting of Cruise - apparently he is nothing like the literary protagonist. What, the hero in the book wasn't a 5 '6" religious nut? C.