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Release date: December 25, 2013
Starring: Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence
Directed by: David O. Russell
Premise: The story of a con artist and his partner in crime, who were forced to work with a federal agent to turn the tables on other cons, mobsters, and politicians - namely, the volatile mayor of impoverished Camden, New Jersey
Nice.
when they do a career retrospective on christian bale, it's gonna be really funny to see him go from skinny to fat over and over again.
it'll be like those before and after weight loss commercials.. but a million times with the same person.
is that what he's going for, i wonder? he's creating a lifelong gif with each film worth a few frames, in the end it just looks like he's breathing with fat/muscle.
I want him to try morbidly obese at some point. Maybe he'll go down the Brando route later in life.
no one? brb
oooh six theaters. why did this open nyc/la? weird. it must be some funky awards season move, because this is obviously a big release. next week goes wide
learned danny elfman was the composer! fun. he also did the unknown known this year. and, last year's promised land, which i haven't seen yet (lol), but gus van sant is an american treasure to me. why is promised land worth mentioning? because
hustle's d.p., Linus Sandgren, has a headscratching history of credits, then last year he popped with promised land, now american hustle and 2nd unit for catching fire. fuck yeah sandgren, excellent launch
going tonight. a panel of people will be there, i don't know who
It's a ton of fun. The mutual joy the cast and their director find in each other is palpable and vicarious.
enjoyed this way more than i expected to. i have new david o tingles. was impressed by the rowdy, boisterous cinema. adored the characters and their development. curious about my second viewing, if it'd work the same for me
enjoyed this quite a bit, but i feel like it gets "it's like goodfellas meets the sting!!!" tunnel vision. the times i felt most uninterested were attempts at matching the virtuoso and soundtrack savvy (it does have a great soundtrack, though) of the former and the heist procedural cleverness of the latter. the real draw are the characters and the performances. that said, i found myself wishing altman was still around to make a movie about these characters. but it's a joyous, optimistic american movie with depth of feeling, though much of that depth is left uncharted. definitely a good way to get the taste of anchorman 2 out of my mouth.
o russell gets the very best out of a STACKED cast. everyone is AWESOME. i actually think bradley cooper is the mvp which i did not expect going in. his character is such an animal but he's so effortless, and never the least bit showy.
the voiceover is a major misstep. it spells out lots of obvious character stuff in the first act. "he had a big belly but i found myself falling for him" "she was beautiful. i liked that." etc etc. i'm generally all for voiceover and in this case it's probably necessary for the incredibly elaborate plot, but it's noticeably less well-written than the rest of the movie. luckily it fades out after the first half hour or so, which doesn't help its case in the long run. why be inconsistent?
i was very thrown by its structure in a way that felt similar to the fighter (meaning i'll probably love this movie more on repeat views). there are so many threads over such a lengthy runtime, but they're all so delicious. american hustle is essentially a giant stew of unexpectedly harmonious flavours.
Picolas's review is spot on. (Although I guess I disagree about the plot being incredibly elaborate.)
Bradley Cooper blew my mind in this movie. No one else really meets him at the level he's working on. The way Amy Adams reads her lines (which is unfortunately how it feels at times) is very strange, but that might work for her character... I'm undecided. Jennifer Lawrence is funny but a little cartoonish for my tastes. Christian Bale's performance is... how to put this... good, but expected. Those may sound like complaints, but the ensemble was delightful to watch.
It definitely has David O. Russell flavor all over it. Lots of weirdly paced character scenes with jagged, meandering dialogue that's usually exciting, sometimes terrifying. It feels unpredictable all the way through.
Very fun but not always compelling. Performances were great with Renner being a fantastic surprise.
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The bit where Bradley Cooper's character does a coked-up impression of Louis CK's character...that was the exact point I stopped dismissing him as an actor and admitted that he was pretty good. Laughed out loud heartily in the cinema at that part.
I'm in the middle of interview and it is on-topic and detailed (how character was created, happy Bale, how set operates and so on).
Like David O. Russell's most recent work, somehow this seems to fall naturally out of him and have some oddly punk-rock sense of flair to it. I enjoyed it at the least. Most people forget that Renner is NOT Mr. Action star like his paycheck wants you to believe...check out "12 and Holding" if you want to see what I mean.
And the casting of Louis CK? Well that made the movie for me.
Bale is showing Cooper a fake Rembrandt and says: "who's the master? the artist or the conman?", or something along those lines. I kept thinking of PTA because of The Master and mainly because of Boogie Nights. He was also endlessly compared to Scorsese (more like accused of ripping him off) when Boogie Nights came out, yet he managed to make a masterpiece of his own, with a flavor of his own. An energetic classic for the ages. Of course he won no oscars. If he had made a timid imitation like this, the story would be different. For all the comparisons to Goodfellas and Scorsese, to me the real imitation is from PTA. His tenderness towards his characters, their need of love and approval, the use of music and the fluid camera, but none of the rage, the male awkwardness, the mad friendships or the feeling of rooted pain giving way to a transcendent experience for any of the characters. Even the deleted scene of Luis Guzmán in BN has more catharsis and emotional punch than this whole movie.
I never was such a big fan of David O. Russell's first films, but I laughed out loud like crazy with Flirting with Disaster, was very impressed with Three Kings (still his best) and admired a lot the craziness of I Heart Huckabees. Now, I don't know. Like with The Fighter and Silver Lining Playbooks, his approach has become too light for me. I enjoyed SLP for the most part, as good romantic comedies about family and beating all odds are hard to come by. But here I kept waiting for the film to start, for anyone to break the mold the film had made for them. Only Jeremy Renner's character seemed grounded in a reality beyond the artificial constrictions of the screenplay.
The "happy ending", at this point is kind of kick in the balls. I guess this film will win the Oscar. I said the same thing about Argo last year and then a few months later it won. It's that kind of film. You can watch it and then forget about it.
you can do that? woa. i watched it ~40 movies ago and haven't forgotten about it. i can do that
I can't forget about it because everyone's talking about it but I stopped caring about it pretty quickly. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 was on my mind longer than American Hustle. Both were fun.
Quote from: Lottery on January 20, 2014, 03:29:01 AM
I can't forget about it because everyone's talking about it but I stopped caring about it pretty quickly. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 was on my mind longer than American Hustle. Both were fun.
Do we have a thread for Cloudy with a chance of meatballs 2? Because that was an awesome surprise.
adorable