I also thoroughly agree with this writer's analysis of Michelle Williams, who has been "acting!" ever since she left DAWSON'S CREEK. Has always come off for me as a bubblegum actress trying to pretend she's some kind of "artist".
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/2023/ ... r-recover/
Take The Fabelmans. From one perspective, it’s another technically impressive achievement that has led some critics to describe it as the director’s finest work to date. Drawing heavily on Spielberg’s younger life growing up in Sixties California, and exploring everything from his burgeoning interest in filmmaking to his complex relationships with his pianist mother and computer engineer father, it’s intelligent, beautifully made and, as ever with Spielberg, impeccably cast, especially in the role of Sammy Fabelman, his teenage alter ego, as played by Gabriel LaBelle.
Yet it’s also self-indulgent, punishingly overlong at a running time of two and a half hours, and given to melodramatic excesses, not least in the casting of Michelle Williams as Sammy’s frustrated mother, who gives the kind of performance that polarises audiences. Some will find it brave and affecting, while others will view it as over-the-top, self-conscious ‘Acting’. She, too, has been nominated for an Oscar; big performances often gain this kind of recognition.
In either case, the nominations that the film has received will be too late to help its commercial fortunes. On a relatively modest budget of $40 million, the film has flopped heavily, making a mere $21.7 million at the box office to date. Given its strongly American-centric perspective, it is unlikely to be a particular commercial success internationally, and so joins Spielberg’s last film West Side Story ($76 million total gross, $100 million budget) as a flop.
A shocking level of disrespect for a director of Spielberg's stature. 