Consuming Passions

“The Fabelmans” and “Bones and All.”

- By Anthony Lane

In Steven Spielberg’s semi-disguised autobiography, the protagonist worships film.

A Roman Catholic kid of my acquaintance, on his first trip to the cinema, paused to genuflect in the aisle before taking his seat. A perfectly understandable mistake. The same kind of awe consumes Sammy Fabelman (Mateo Zoryon Francis-DeFord), a young Jewish boy, as he yields to the ineffable mystery of the big screen, at the start of Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans.” No bending of the knee, but Sammy has never seen a film before, and his eyes widen, in delicious dread, at the sight of a train crash in “The Greatest Show on Earth.” For him, I reckon, that could be the title of every movie ever made.