It was a good movie don't get me wrong but there were a few parts about it that could have improved to make it better. Sometimes it was hard to understand Lincoln and you really had to focus to keep up with everything he is saying. But the acting was great and I really did learn a lot more about this whole time period just in this movie than ever in history class. And yes it does help to look up about the 13th Amendment before going to the movie. And I wish that after the movie that they wrote a few lines of what happened to most freed slaves after the amendment passed. But I can defnitely see some Oscars from this movie!