Gift Guide: Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies #familymovienight

Disclosure: I was sent a DVD to facilitate my review. The views expressed in this post are my own. Affiliate links are included in this post.

I love a good thriller. An edge-of-your-seat nail biter. A movie that keeps you guessing. Bridge of Spies is that kind of movie.

Family Movie Night for One

We watch a lot of movies. We love our Family Movie Nights in the Musings from Me household! Recently I was sent a movie for review that I watched ALL BY MYSELF. No Family Movie Night that week. I started watching the movie with my husband, but we both fell asleep. Busy week of work and activities after a week of snow days. We were exhausted.

With my kids and husband back to school after six straight snow days, a Family Movie Night did not seem doable. The kids had homework. My husband had makeup chaperone duties. I was bogged down in work. So I did the next best thing, I had a Family Movie Night for One!

Steven Spielberg Tackles the Cold War

I was doing a few administrative tasks one morning. Checking emails. Replying to pitches. Promoting posts. My concentration on completing these tasks was not where it should be. I was zoning in and out. Tasks needed to get done and I wasn’t doing them. My mind was wandering. I needed to do something to hone my concentration. I went to my go-to “get work done” tool…I watched a movie.

Bridge of Spies was as good a movie as I thought it would be. A tight thriller about the Cold War. Filmed in the style of docu-dramas like Apollo 13 and JFK, Bridge of Spies took me through a part of American history that I am not overly familiar with. I did not attend middle school and high school in America. My knowledge of U.S. history and politics is solely drawn from the U.S. citizenship test, an American Studies class in college, and the History Channel.

Tom Hanks was excellent in Bridge of Spies as U.S. lawyer, James Donovan, tasked with prosecuting suspected Russian spy, Rudolph Abel. What everyone wants is for the prosecution of Abel to be a slam dunk. He’s a spy…convict him. But Donovan is a talented litigator who insists that Abel needs a fair trial. Against the objections of the trial judge, prosecutors, and the government, Abel is ably defended by Donovan. Though sentenced to life in prison, Abel’s release becomes a possibility when U.S. airman Gary Powers is captured during a U-2 mission that goes awry. Donovan is tasked again with securing the freedom of Powers and a U.S. college student in exchange for Abel.

What You Need To Know About Bridge of Spies

• Nominated for six Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Actor in a Supporting Role, and more, Bridge of Spies is a collaboration from Disney and Dreamworks.
• Directed by acclaimed Academy Award© winning Director Steven Spielberg (Saving Private Ryan and Schindler’s List), Bridge of Spies is a dramatic thriller set against the backdrop of the Cold War.
• Bridge of Spies tells the story of James Donovan (Tom Hanks), a Brooklyn lawyer who finds himself thrust into the center of the Cold War when the CIA sends him on a near impossible mission to negotiate the release of a captured American U-2 pilot.
• Bridge of Spies is available on Blu-ray™ Combo Pack and Digital HD.
• A small but powerful cast of actors, the Bridge of Spies cast includes Tom Hanks (Saving Mr. Banks, Philadelphia and Forrest Gump) as James Donovan, Mark Rylance (Wolf Hall, The Other Boleyn Girl) as Rudolf Abel, Amy Ryan (Birdman, Goosebumps) as Mary Donovan, Sebastian Koch (TV’s “Homeland,” The Danish Girl) as Wolfgang Vogel, Alan Alda as Thomas Watters (The Aviator, Crimes and Misdemeanors), Austin Stowell (Whiplash, TNT’s “Public Morals”), Mikhail Gorevoy (Die Another Day,BBC’s “Space Race”) as Ivan Schischkin, and Will Rogers (A Good Marriage, The Bay) as Frederic Pryor.