Movies: Bridge of Spies

I still haven't seen a movie released in 2016 - but if you look at the list of what's actually been released in January... well, there's nothing that I cared to see. Rob has been to see "The Revenant" and "Creed" - neither of which I had much interest in, but I don't think either one of those were actually released in January, either. I don't think every January has been as uninteresting as this one, movie-wise.

So, yeah, "Bridge of Spies.". This sounds like a John LeCarre movie and pretty much plays like one, but actually it's fact-based and apparently sticks reasonably close to what really happened. Tom Hanks plays lawyer James Donovan, who defended an accused Soviet spy in a trial in the '50s and later was pressed into becoming the negotiator for a prisoner exchange involving his former client for American U-2 pilot Gary Powers. (It's based on Donovan's own book Strangers on a Bridge, first released in 1964.)

This movie was released in October - I remember seeing trailers for it. I thought it sounded pretty good, and the reviews were good, but Rob was uninterested in it at the time. I'm not sure why he decided he was willing to go see it now, but it was good and I think he enjoyed it too. It's sort of old-fashioned but it's not at all boring. It may have helped that it was written by the Coen Brothers. (You take the Coen Brothers' twitchiness and Spielberg's stodginess in recent years, and it averages out to a well-made if sort of middle-of-the-road movie, I guess.)