I feel the same way about Catch Me If You Can as I do about The Departed. They're very good movies by all time great directors, but they're in the second tier of their respective filmmakers' filmography. But even if we counted it, that's still 11 movies ago. As for the successes that you mention, I didn't mean box office.
Feel free to call The Post or Bridge Of Spies "great". All that means is we'll have to use a different word to describe ET, Raiders, Jurassic Park, or Saving Private Ryan, because I'm sure as hell not putting them in the same category.
Look, some of you are replying as if I'm slagging him off, or saying he's average now. He's still way above average. But those trailers were straight trash, and the book itself is shallow nonsense. However good this turns out to be, the apprehension leading up to it was fairly justified.