Spielberg has a tin ear for history. “Amistad” was a colossal artistic and commercial failure. And though it’s unpopular to say, absent the magnificent first twenty minutes of “Saving Private Ryan,” that film stinks up France.
“Lincoln” is a hit with the critics, but once the castor oil fans dutifully see it opening weekend, along with a bunch of school kids forced to watch it so they can write their “themes,” no one will pay to see it.
BTW, it did officially “open” — in eleven hand-picked theaters — and sold out. Big deal.
Watch it drop like the stock market when it plays in the multiplex in the mall.