A little more on "Lincoln"

What I may not have gone over in my Lincoln review is the pacing of the film. I wanna speak my peace about this as well. Look, Lincoln is slow. It's deliberate. It's ponderous. Is it exciting or thrilling? Not exactly. But it's quiet, meticulous, thoughtful. I saw one detractor call the scenes with Lincoln to be hammy. I don't know why people insist DDL hams it up. Others have given it the "boring" and "dull" tag, which is fair.

But for me, slow isn't always boring. And what made DDL's performance work for me is that he never really went for the jugular. He never tried to "win" the scenes. He wasn't intense, vicious, scary. He was broken, battered. He was flawed. He had trouble in his personal life and his political life but he held things together.

I thought he was superb and I thought Spielberg handled everything wonderfully. It's a 150-minute movie and it takes its time, but I never found it to be lifeless or dull. I was captivated by Daniel Day-Lewis's performance so even the slow, quiet moments worked for me. I'd rather let a movie wash over me than sit there and say "impress me."

I don't know why I feel I need to go on the defensive. I just think it's a well-crafted, well-acted film and the pace never bothered me at all. It may bother you, that's fine. But, I just wanted to make that clarification.