Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans is a deeply personal, semi-autobiographical film that feels like watching a master filmmaker flip through the pages of his own childhood scrapbook complete with all the wonder, heartache, and celluloid dreams that shaped him. It’s a coming-of-age story, a family drama, and a tribute to the power of cinema, all woven together with the director’s signature blend of spectacle and intimacy.

Gabriel LaBelle shines as Sammy Fabelman, Spielberg’s teenage stand-in, whose passion for filmmaking becomes both an escape and a weapon as his family unravels. Michelle Williams delivers a career-best performance as Mitzi, his artistic but emotionally fragile mother, while Paul Dano brings quiet dignity to Burt, his pragmatic engineer father. The tension between them between art and logic, passion and stability mirrors the push-and-pull that defines Spielberg’s own filmography.

What makes The Fabelmans so special is how it balances nostalgia with unflinching honesty. The scenes where young Sammy stages elaborate 8mm war movies or discovers how editing can reshape reality are pure movie magic. But the film doesn’t shy away from pain a devastating family secret, the cruelty of high school antisemitism, the moment Sammy realizes the camera doesn’t just capture truth, it sometimes exposes it.

Janusz Kami?ski’s cinematography glows with warmth, making even suburban mundanity feel mythic, while John Williams’ score possibly his last for Spielberg swells with bittersweet tenderness. If the film stumbles, it’s in its final act, where a cameo-heavy Hollywood epilogue feels tonally disjointed from the raw emotion that precedes it.

But these are small quibbles. The Fabelmans is Spielberg at his most vulnerable a film that asks why we fall in love with stories, and whether that love is worth the price it demands. By the end, you’ll believe in movies all over again.