The Fabelmans (2022)

Carina, Deb, Ann, and I loved this coming-of-age story of a boy/young man, his love of movies, and his family despite its excessive length of 2 ½ hours. Michelle Williams and Paul Dano are exceptional as the parents, as is Gabriel LaBelle as teenage Sammy, based on director/co-writer Steven Spielberg's growing up in the mid-century. Nice to see Seth Rogen as Uncle Bennie in the large cast, as well as Judd Hirsch, Jeannie Berlin, and Robin Bartlett as the elder generation, and a cameo by David Lynch right at the end.

Spielberg's co-writer is Tony Kushner and the composer is John Williams, whose soundtrack can be streamed on Apple Music and elsewhere. They, along with wonderful cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, are frequent Spielberg collaborators.

The many trivia factoids include that the word spiel and fable both mean story. If you follow the above trivia link and haven't yet seen the movie, you should stop before reading the spoiler section.

As of this writing, the movie has won 22 awards and has 197 nominations, including Screen Actors Guild  ensemble and supporting male for Dano, as well as six nominations from AARP's Movies for Grownups.

Williams, who was robbed by SAG, was last blogged for All the Money in the World, after which she was terrific as dancer Gwen Verdon in the Fosse/Verdon miniseries. Dano was most recently in these pages for acting in Okja; Spielberg, Kushner, and Kaminski for West Side Story; Rogen for An American Pickle; Hirsch for The Meyerowitz Stories; Berlin for Café Society,;Bartlett for The Glass Castle; and Williams for the short Dear Basketball.

Lynch is an acclaimed director, known for the series Twin Peaks and Oscar-nominated for The Elephant Man (1980), Blue Velvet (1986), and Mulholland Dr, (2001).

Rotten Tomatoes' critics loved it too, averaging 92% to its audiences' 82.

We rented it on January 8. Sorry, Mr. Spielberg, but some of us really need the pause button, especially when a movie is this long!