This week is an event by any estimation for anyone that really cares about movies, marking the arrival of the first film in three years from one of the most beloved and recognizable filmmakers in the history of the medium, Steven Spielberg. “Bridge Of Spies,” his Cold War drama about an attorney (Tom Hanks) negotiating a spy swap with the Soviet Union, hits theaters on Friday, and per our review and others, it’s another winner.
Spielberg’s career, especially of late, is divided between pure entertainment pictures and more prestige-y dramas —you can read our complete retrospectives of both here and here. But even in his more serious, awards-friendly fare, Spielberg is often seen as a technical filmmaker first and an actor’s director second, perhaps because only one actor has ever won an Oscar for a performance in a Spielberg movie (and that was in his last film, “Lincoln”).
This is a rather unfair view, seeing that even from the beginning, nearly 45 years ago, Spielberg’s...
