The Fabelmans Review

The film's sharpest idea is that a camera is a device for not participating. Sammy discovers his mother's affair while editing a camping trip, and Spielberg stages the revelation as a private screening in a closet, which reframes the whole boyhood wonder routine as something considerably colder. He returns to it later when a bullied classmate is enraged at being made heroic on film, a scene that understands the manipulation inside Spielberg's own gift better than most criticism has.

Michelle Williams pitches Mitzi high and theatrical, which reads as false until it reads as a woman performing happiness for a family, and Paul Dano quietly gives the best performance in the picture as a decent man being left. Judd Hirsch arrives for one scene and takes the film hostage in the best way. Janusz Kaminski lights the suburbs like memory rather than reality. The middle section in Arizona sprawls, the school material is broad, and the closing cameo is a joke that ends the movie rather than a conclusion. When it is honest, it is the most self-critical thing he has made.