Ranking The Best Picture Nominees For The Oscars

3: Lincoln

As if out of spite for 2011 America not embracing his love of French boy-journalists and war horses, Steven Spielberg stacks the deck mightily in his latest film, directing Daniel Day-Lewis as one of America’s greatest presidents. Lincoln was the ‘92 Dream Team of 2012 movies the second it was announced, but that meant expectations were set to an appropriately high standard.

Yet the film is surprising, in that it’s actually surprising; what could have been a stuffy, hagiographic biopic is actually a dense, thought-provoking look at the politics that earned The Great Emancipator his title. While that might sound like even more of a snooze, Spielberg makes the passing of the 13^th amendment exciting, funny, and genuinely gripping, a 19^th century heist movie, that makes Abraham Lincoln every bit as smooth and clever as Daniel Ocean. That’s right, people: Spielberg found a way to make a sexy Lincoln movie.

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