If there was ever a role that seemed to have been created just for Susan Sarandon, it’s that of Nora Baker in “White Palace” (1990). You see, the thing about Sarandon is that both you and she know there’s plenty of women more beautiful than her, but her attractiveness strikes at a visceral level that you can’t understand or resist. So having her play a redneck St. Louis waitress to James Spader’s uptight Jewish yuppie is a no-brainer. Unfortunately, this rom-com lacks in com and while it presents interesting questions about class and privilege, the answer is clumsy and derivative.
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“Lincoln” (2012) is a fascinating movie for what it is, and for what it is not. It is not a biopic of the legendary president, full of fireside reading, rail splitting and debates with Stephen A. Douglas. It is a look deep inside the Washington sausage-making process that we know as American representative democracy. Along the way, it tries to reveal who Abraham Lincoln was, both his personality and what he stood for. It does a good job of that, although I doubt his every waking moment was spent earnestly saying profound things. Maybe he was just awesome like that.
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