Not a bad movie by any means, but certainly an unremarkable one.

Rating: 7/10 (31 January 2016)

Well, my watch of this years Best Picture nominees has begun, and I've gotten things started with Bridge of Spies. The synopsis, from IMDb, goes a bit like this:
"During the Cold War, an American lawyer is recruited to defend an arrested Soviet spy in court, and then help the CIA facilitate an exchange of the spy for the Soviet captured American U2 spy plane pilot, Francis Gary Powers."
Starting on the positive end of things, there's absolutely no denying that this movie is full to the brim of wildly talented people, doing work that matches that level of talent. Directed by Steven Spielberg, who knows how to direct a movie, and written by Matt Charman and the Coen brothers. You have a creative team behind this movie who knows what they're doing, and the skill they possess is present in the movie. On top of that, you have the ever-fantastic Tom Hanks leading a very capable cast of actors. Including Amy Ryan and Mark Rylance.
With all of this, and nominations for Best Original Screenplay, Sound Mixing, Production Design, Original Score, Actor in a Supporting Role (Mark Rylance), and Best Picture, it wouldn't be a stretch to have high hopes for this movie. At least on paper.
What's really unfortunate is that the movie is just bland. For clarity, I want you to understand, it's not BORING, or BAD, it's just unremarkable. The people who worked on this movie are capable, and have proved being capable, of very interesting and amazing film making. This is not an example of anyone's best work, especially when you look at the company that Bridge keeps in the Best Picture category.
I had similar issues with the movie The Imitation Game. The presentation is fantastic, the movie is well made on a technical level, and hell, it's even a good movie. It's just not a groundbreaking piece of film, which is allegedly the purpose of the Academy Awards. The stories are interesting, though departures from the real story to be sure, but the movie as a whole doesn't offer a whole lot.
We aren't dealing with a bad movie, hell it's even a good movie. That said, when you put a movie into the category of BEST of the year, a different level of criticism should be used.
It's worth noting, as an aside, that the total number of speaking characters in this movie who are not cisgendered, white, straight men, who offer any kind of significant plot progression sits at zero for this movie. Something to think about.