Steven Spielberg has always had mad filmmaking skills. Nobody doubts that, I should hope. Jaws? The D-Day sequence in Saving Private Ryan? Big chunks of Lincoln? Probably many other sequences that I can’t think of now because I tend to hate Spielberg movies so much? All fantastically effective.

But Spielberg’s overall sensibility is so frustratingly dull and solemn and sentimental and corny, dragging down the possibilities of his talent, he’s always been the bane of my film-loving existence. Or at least, one of the main banes.

And The Fabelmans, currently playing in theaters, is Spielberg’s own autobiographical account of how he got that way. So it’s a massive, meta-Spielbergian tribute to himself, and for me, largely torture to watch.