o'russell's ABSCAM movie AMERICAN HUSTLE

http://www.gossipcop.com/american-hustle-first-trailer-movie-video/

every damn body is in it! idk about the title.

Christian Bale looks profoundly miscast in this, and if you're gonna blow a billion dollars on a Led Zeppelin song for your trailer, to get the full "the 70s as coke orgy" decadent effect, why use a song that didn't mesh like "Good Times Bad Times"

surprise NY Film Critics Circle award winner for best film of 2013

That truly is surprising, given the fact that Silver Linings Playbook was the worst O'Russell film by a considerable distance and seemed like a definitive turn towards low-stakes mawkishness. But a whole lotta people last year thought SLP was something way more special than a dire movie filled with decent actors, so who the hell even knows what to believe.

also claimed Best Supporting Actress for Lawrence and Best Screenplay

i said this on twitter but:

"uma thruman's feet : quentin tarantino :: Jennifer Lawrence's ass : David O. Russell"

http://media.tumblr.com/aef38f4fee99d6b88b4e2b1b63e623f0/tumblr_inline_mwb6jasArL1rqf7b3.gif

This looks like his version of Boogie Nights.

I'm not really seeing any explicit refs to the Abscam case in the promo materials. Just derived/fictionalized?

trailer deliberately giving absolutely nothing away? admirable!

The word "Abscam" gets a major laugh halfway through (dare I say, like something out of Argo).

well this is an option if you prefer a neo-Scorsese costume-party farce that just feels three hours long

also the NY Film Crix Circle is on crack

Yep, pretty much.

Christian Bale looks profoundly miscast in this,

This is the first film I've seen Robert de Niro in where one of the other actors happened to be doing a feature-length de Niro impression.

I'm not really seeing any explicit refs to the Abscam case in the promo materials. Just derived/fictionalized?

― eclectic husbandry (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, December 3, 2013 8:19 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's pretty obviously derived from the whole ABSCAM stuff, no?

the trailer looked pretty generic post-tarantino stuff but who knows?

i can't bear to see SLP. it appears to have a lot of things I dislike: lots of people screaming at each other (and winning academy awards for the trouble), actors playing mentally disturbed people (and winning academy awards for the trouble), meet-cute anti-clichés, manic pixie dream whatever, jennifer lawrence.

TBF i dislike JL b/c she seems like an airhead and made that "why wouldn't i, like, go see some stupid old black & white film or something?" comment for which the anagram SMH was invented. but she may be a brilliant actress for all i know.

she's a pretty good actress. you can tell shes untrained, for better or worse

Glad to see that these people have stopped trying to remake Goodfellas and are content remaking Casino instead.

by post-tarantino i meant post-scorsese but does it really matter?

I didn't watch any trailers n' shit so no one mentioned Abscam (cuz I run into v few ppl who REMEMBER it in the youngish filmcrit cliques), but yes it is based on that clusterfuck. The one "Abscam" mention in the film is designed to inoculate against any Arab-American League-ish protests; they even evade that it was an abbreviation of "Abdul scam". (There is close to zero politics in this film.)

This misfire's zaniness quotient and casting sorta reminded me of 1990's I Love You to Death by Lawrence Kasdan, except this one's an awards horse with $10 million in music clearances, and everything's hyperinflated and self-important. The decline of American movie culture continues.

(He also uses T*rantino's shot from the car trunk, but hell who cares)

Also, it rather misused "I Feel Love." (It accompanied a scene in a depressing bridge-and-tunnel disco, which should've hammered it home with something corny like, I dunno, David Shire's "Manhattan Skyline.")

Russell mighta had a chance of pulling off this material 15 years ago, w/ a third of the budget and Ben Stiller in the Cooper role.

And Lily Tomlin in Amy Adams' sideboob-exposing disco gowns.

american sideboob

David Denby sez it's a "series of astonishments": "We seem to have stepped into the magical sphere—Shakespeare rules over it and Ernst Lubitsch and Preston Sturges are denizens—where profound human foolishness becomes a form of grace."

"Russell has finally reached the kind of sustained heightened excitement that he has been working toward ever since he directed the satirical “Flirting with Disaster,” in 1996"

David Ed. also loved loved loved it, more or less calling it the second best movie of the last 10 years (after Her):

http://www.vulture.com/2013/12/david-edelsteins-10-best-movies-of-2013.html

In any other year of the last ten, David O. Russell’s ensemble comedy about the wayward—ridiculous, near-tragic—operation that was Abscam would be at the tippy-top top of this list. In any case, it’s marvelous, and so is the cast that includes Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper, and that mischievous and inspired comedienne Jennifer Lawrence.

I've been wanting another Flirting With Disaster for centuries but sheesh.

Davids Denby and Edelstein both on crack

Everybody is on one crack or another.

Except for some people.

Crack is one thing we were never starved for the South!

I'm trying to figure out which critical comparisons to past auteurs are the dumbest re this movie. Dargis reached for Raoul Walsh today.

(Lawrence could be a Judy Holliday in 8 years or so, tho.)

Glenn Kenny:

But isn’t hitting the pleasure center all that matters? That was pretty high on Kael’s priorities, “entertainment” value or more-than-entertainment-value or not. Again, I did not find the experience of watching American Hustle to be pleasure-free. Indeed, I’ve never heard or seen the intro to Chicago Transit Authority’s “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is” put to better use than in the Bale/Adams meet-cute scene. And Jennifer Lawrence really does do the trick, although Russell serves her ill with the movie’s second faux-karaoke scene. But while Lawrence is indeed a very good actress, the way the chattering classes fall all over her is getting kind of embarrassing; every profile of her reads like a wordy upmarket variation of a “Celebrities! They’re Just Like Us!” caption. She’s certainly a factor in the overpraising of American Hustle. But the real reason I believe Hustle is winning over so many is because it rather overtly flatters its audience. Its observations concerning corruption ultimately take a back seat to a cockeyed optimism and a consoling (conditional) tolerance of everyday venality. While the now-beloved Goodfellas, The Informant!, and The Wolf of Wall Street are all deeply pessimistic, distinctly un-ingratiating movies, American Hustle slobbers all over its viewers like an overeager puppy.

Was it Edelstein who says the movie out-Scorseses Scorsese? All I think of when I see the trailer is that Johnny Depp movie "Blow."

Armond goes crazy for it!

Russell resists going for the crowd-pleasing ecstasy that he instinctively earns. But the ecstasy is also earned. Probing deeply into his characters insecurity’s (Irving’s horrible toupee, Sydney’s self-hatred, Richie’s insecurity, Roslyn’s hunger), Russell neither patronizes nor condescends. The actors’ energetic exactitude makes one feel for them.–and recognize them. This is the best example of improvisatory artistry since Robert Altman’s masterpieces and a Hollywood classic like Leo McCarey’s largely improvised 1937 The Awful Truth.... American Hustle is GoodFellas, The Sopranos and Boogie Nights done right.

http://cityarts.info/2013/12/18/david-o-russells-stock-company/

Honestly, I want to like this movie as much as that.

there it is

otm re: Blow, but I think it's gotta be better than that

Rene Rodriguez: http://www.miami.com/039american-hustle039-r-article

Russell has great fun decking out his characters in garish ’70s clothes and hairdos (if there was an Oscar category for Best Hairstyling, American Hustle would be a shoo-in) and he places his camera entirely at the service of his actors, eschewing show-off style for close-ups and zooms that highlight the performances of his ensemble cast. Best of all, the movie pulls a massive con on the audience that you won’t see coming no matter how hard you look, (on second viewing, you’ll realize the film gives you loads of subtle clues). American Hustle is fizzy and glitzy, but not in a carnivalesque, Boogie Nights-way: Russell’s films are more grounded in reality than Hollywood glitter-parties. He just knows how to make the real world feel just a little more heightened than it really is. Like his con artists are prone to saying, American Hustle works from the feet up, and the fun is intoxicating.

Honestly, I wanted this movie to probe Bale's horrible toupee deeply.

Neal Gabler's NY Times Mag profile of DOR last week was hideous l.c.d. revisionism. 'Oh my movies up thru Huckabees don't really count, now they're about Oscars EMOTION..."

This was fun but I couldn't get past the miscasting of Lawrence; she's too fresh and babyfaced to be convincing. Actually, every star except Adams looked like part of an SNL skit about disco.

In one scene, though, De Niro erases years of lazy and terrible acting.

Acting bouquets go to Renner.

Sympathy cards, I'd say. Adams and J.Law bury everyone else here.

You're right about the musical cues, even Lawrence in rubber gloves dancing to Wings

These movies are useful in reminding me what music I hated in high school.

thankfully "I Feel Love" appeared and the crowds parted.

Some of those excerpts are puzzling...It's too bad Goodfellas and Boogie Nights weren't done right.

I'll see this over the break. Can't say I'm optimistic. A local critic who's pretty good said it's a lot of people yelling at each other, something I generally can't stand.

Armond goes crazy for it!
Russell resists going for the crowd-pleasing ecstasy that he instinctively earns. But the ecstasy is also earned. Probing deeply into his characters insecurity’s (Irving’s horrible toupee, Sydney’s self-hatred, Richie’s insecurity, Roslyn’s hunger), Russell neither patronizes nor condescends. The actors’ energetic exactitude makes one feel for them.–and recognize them. This is the best example of improvisatory artistry since Robert Altman’s masterpieces and a Hollywood classic like Leo McCarey’s largely improvised 1937 The Awful Truth.... American Hustle is GoodFellas, The Sopranos and Boogie Nights done right.
http://cityarts.info/2013/12/18/david-o-russells-stock-company/
― eclectic husbandry (Dr Morbius), Thursday, December 19, 2013 12:39 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

looking forward to his total reversal once he realizes he's in the critical majority

it probably won't happen til march, though.

"The now-overrated American Hustle, which wasn't at all overrated when the NYFCC anointed it."

Labuza nails this one

Russell actually believes in the kind of faux-BS he sells in the movie, but only because he knows that BS sells both within the scope of his movie ("People believe what they want to believe" which is said somewhere like two dozen times) and most likely his intended audience.

Watching this film is both frustrating and fascinating. I'm trying to read a pulse, and the film seems dead for 10 straight minutes, only to oddly erupt for a brief minute before returning to the grave. Nobody seems to be sure what they are doing here, and Russell rarely ever establishes stakes or exactly how any of the film's seemingly elaborate plot is supposed to work. But Russell is more interested in interaction, in the how people act in situations. A great director would not necessarily have to split these, but Russell has always been interested in situations that Make No Fucking Sense (Iraq in Three Kings; the dance contest and subsequent bet in Silver Linings Playbook). If this is a caper movie however, the fact remains that its plot is so damn uninteresting and it spends 90% of its time of characters standing around in rooms looking like they have no clue what they are supposed to be doing, which is less a subversive statement than poor writing. It would also help if Russell's namedroping of stuff like Watergate or Nixon didn't feel like a "remember we're in the 1970s! lol" moment.

http://letterboxd.com/labuzamovies/film/american-hustle

This bit of Armond's review seems a bit odd: When Irving describes Sydney’s awesomeness, he says “Like me she had to reinvent herself” but “reinvent” is a 90s word, Stephen Holden coined it in a New York Times article describing and institutionalizing a Madonna tour. And Russell understands how “reinvention” expresses contemporary American ambition–and American Hustle’s 70s story of the controversial ABSCAM sting operation draws a bead on American instability.

The word wasn't coined in the 90s - first known use is around 1686. People had been talking about David Bowie reinventing himself for years.

I enjoyed the film: I thought it was lighter film in tone than some of the critics would have you think.

It's true the movie's dead about 10 minutes in the first third but damn if I can tell which ten minutes.

I thought Bale was amazing

I thought of all the acting was great: particularly Bale, Amy Adams, and Jeremy Renner.

yeah, if pretties playing dress-up to caricature working/jumped-up immigrant slobs is great acting, I guess.

I guess I noted the Armond "reinvent" thing on the Armond thread. He just makes shit up.

The word "reinvent" had been around for a long time, in stock phrases such as "reinvent the wheel". However, I'm not sure if it was very prevalent in the sense of "reinventing oneself". Google Ngram Viewer shows usage of the phrase "reinvent myself" starting around 1970 but not really taking off until the mid-80s:

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=reinvent+myself&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Creinvent%20myself%3B%2Cc0

Self-help author Herbert Arthur Otto appears to have been one of the earliest to use the phrase.

also the NY Film Crix Circle is on crack

― eclectic husbandry (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, December 4, 2013 10:59 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^^^^

the fuck was up with this dumb movie

when bradley cooper's triumphant comeuppance occurred i was like... wait... he was supposed to be the bad guy??

or the gangster at the end being all like "ayo bro, mr. ruggiero says you did him a solid, fuhgeddaboutit"

or christian bale mourning his amazing friendship with jeremy renner, which consisted of like.. one fun night on the town? not exactly donnie brasco there

Don't think the movie frames him as a bad guy, just a guy not as sharp as the competition.

no, but he had the denouement owed to a movie bad guy—our heroes get off scott-free and he's humiliated

xp Something he and the movie have in common.

i felt his character was somewhat... vague... despite his tics. didn't really buy his dog day afternoonish homelife.

though i did like the scene where he was on the phone with amy adams and they were both in curlers

Oh man, his mom was strained.

FBI = bad guy

(one of the few things Russell got right)

i... guess... the whole thing seemed rather confused tbh

how were the fbi the bad guys in abscam?

Russell makes the most of Coop's limited range and un-charm, and extraordinary hair.

dude felt way out of his depth

bradley cooper is limitless iirc

FBI entrapped "ordinary" crooked pols

hetero guys weirdly worship Cooper, idgi

The only thing I can say about Cooper is that I don't feel he's as handsome as widely reported but he does have charisma

Looking 'out of his depth' was pretty appropriate for his character and the storyline.

The older woman behind me at the awards screening was wowed by the Jerry Vale cameo (a direct steal from Scorsese, no?).

sorry, NOT Jerry Vale--- Jack Jones

same thing, really

yeah I thought Renner was the standout, and Elisabeth Röhm, who played his character's wife, was the strongest female performance

Amy Adams was good. I particularly liked the scenes where she was interacting with Cooper, and you can kind of see from her eyes and general expression that she's thinking 'how far can I string this guy along?'

Elisabeth Röhm, who played his character's wife, was the strongest female performance

egg nog all over keyboard

hahahaha

that 'emotional' scene where Renner tells Bale to leave his house = zero

Don't think the movie frames him as a bad guy, just a guy not as sharp as the competition.

Interesting for a movie set in the 70s that he was the only one shown using cocaine (at least I assume that's what he was huffing in one shot).

And why are we not talking about Louis C.K.'s performance as his supervisor?

Cuz I had to look at the credits to realize who it was?

(same thing happened in Blue Jasmine)

cmon, i've never seen his show and i knew who he was

It was a stretch for him to play Renner's wife.

Some decent performances, but I don't even want to acknowledge them cuz the movie was phbbbt and probably Oscar bound.

Decent performers is prob a more apt description than performances. Lawrence has energy, cooper has those blue high beams.

They should have just named the movie "Decent Performers."

Mike Leigh filtered through Scorsese

If Mike Leigh had directed this we would've seen 45 minutes at Renner's watching him interact with his wife and children -- and it woulda been the best in film.

Also, it rather misused "I Feel Love." (It accompanied a scene in a depressing bridge-and-tunnel disco, which should've hammered it home with something corny like, I dunno, David Shire's "Manhattan Skyline.")

fwiw not b+t, on the phone they said something about meeting on 54th st., so I assumed the intention was Studio 54.

louis ck was... ok

the joke of his character was pretty done to death, he could have just been in 1 or 2 scenes rly

i was having a hard time getting myself to want to see this (dreading that Bale performance tbh), and after seeing el lobo de wall street i feel like this is just gonna come off even worse

Haven't seen this or Wolf of Wall Street yet, but all the critics saying this movie out-Scorseses Scorsese, what have they been saying about the actual OTT Scorsese?

theres been a lot of pearl clutching from what i can tell

It has little in common with Scorsese except milieu.

I thought this was sort of inert but still pretty good. Especially Adams, Lawrence and Renner. Bale doing his usual Acting and manic Cooper were a tad much, but didn't really hurt things.

couldn't stand Bale. As you point out, the more obvious and ridic the performance the taller the Oscar.

this isnt out in the uk yet but it looks like another corny 'lol the 70s' kinda movie. not sure anyone needs another one of those. bradley cooper isnt a bad actor (i can think of a lot worse at his level) and he has lots of hollywood charisma. i miss american psycho bale.

It's been out since the 20th in London. Anchorman 2 is the current 'lol the 70s' kinda movie, and whilst AH plays with this a bit - it does more than that.

A2 is set in the '80s all-news dawn era, I read

I think you're right. I saw and hated Anchorman 2 the day before I saw American Hustle and I didn't twig they were set in two alleged different eras. I guess my cultural signifiers are not finely enough attuned.

American Hustle reminded me more of a '70s film than just a film set in the '70s. A la "Saturday Night Fever," maybe. I really like how it leaked out various bits of the characters backgrounds as motivation. I though the central metaphor of the American dream as scam was pretty strong, too. Anyone can get ahead, but only if you cheat, and cheating is expected. Follow the rules, get the shaft or fall behind. The more honorable you are (Renner, CK) the harder you fall, not because you deserve it, but because you're simply too naive to understand how the world works. Which is what makes Renner's character so fascinating: he understands the world is corrupt (the Mafia), but he's idealistic and sees corruption as a means to an end, not an end unto itself. Bale's character sums it up with his faux Jesus aphorism: "Always take a favor over money."

Also, it's not that Cooper is bad in this, or Bale is trying too hard. It's that Adams and Renner and Lawrence are so good, imo. They make it look easy, especially Adams, who is incredible and carries the movie.

i started out really annoyed at the overtness of late 70's signifiers and the abundance of perfectly-choreographed tracking shots but then about 45mins in i let myself forget about scorsese and boogie nights and remembered that wild 70s/80s set/costume design and swooping tracking shots are some of my favorite things in the world, so i ended up really liking this

also JiC otm x2

agree that the disco scene was kind of a dud, they should have went all-out or left that scene out all together

if we'd finished the disco poll in 2011 we could have sent the finalists to DOR in time

That scene was screaming for a little Machine needle drop.

agree with morbs that the renner/bale breakup scene was the clunkiest in the whole film

the shot of bale standing alone in the middle of the rotating dry-cleaning racks was the most accidentally hilarious, need an animated gif asap

I Feel Love and Harold Melvin's Don't Leave Me This Way are pretty good, though they probably would've played the Thelma Huston version by then.

it's funny to think about how actors in 2013 making a '70s crime caper are like actors in the '70s making a '30s crime caper.

which kinda makes this The Sting.

which itself was super influenced by the 1890s nostalgia of the 1920s/30s

am hustle also felt like a tribute to 90s movies about the 70s - the dueling narrations was very casino

In the 1890s view of the 1970s, they would've still been listening to the Harold Melvin version.

in the 1980s view of the 1970s they should've been listening to The Communards

It probably helped that I saw this a day after Scorsese’s meltdown--far from seeming hysterical, it’s Bresson by compariso--but I liked this fine. Don’t think it’s better than Boogie Nights, but that’s a 10 for me, and this is a solid 7 or 8.

I’ll go back now and read everybody else’s comments (which I always only skim lightly until I get out to see a film). I did sense nobody was that impressed by Christian Bale. The most interesting performances for me were by him, Adams, and De Niro. I thought Bale really disappeared into the character and slogged along movingly. Adams is really good, and while I wouldn’t say that De Niro does anything different than he did in Casino or Goodfellas, with the extra 15 or 20 years, and the director’s good sense to keep him in reserve, he makes for an absolutely perfect Lee Strasberg.

I'd give the music a 7 or 8 too. Steely Dan and Chicago early on are great, then basically nothing for a good half-hour, then a lot. If you hate the director-as-DJ, you’ll appreciate the break and roll your eyes at the rest. Inspired: “10538 Overture.” Wasted: “I Saw the Light.” (What is the point of using something that can barely be heard? Was it a trade-off involving soundtrack licensing? I don’t get it.) Weird: “White Rabbit” in another language. Liked it, though.

De Niro's best work since Wag the Dog, agreed.

Underscored by seeing the trailer for his Stallone thing right beforehand. Good god.

Enjoyed this. Good female leads, obv. My gf noted that it failed the Bechdel test, but that it made that seem more like a problem with the test than with the movie.

It's really a relationship movie. Woody Allen with a Scorsese comb-over.

the women talked about nail polish; bechdel test passed.

I don't have much to add to what's already been said but Michael Peña was kind of wasted in this which is too bad because he's always great.

Overall it felt like a silly movie with some good to amazing acting.

Some other music I thought worked well: "Evil Ways," Bee Gees, Elton. "I Feel Love," too--obvious, yes, but at least it was loud and Russell let it play for a minute. Harold Melvin instead of Thelma Houston was strange--maybe licensing, because the hit version is so much more famous (much better, too, I think). "Delilah" was a) perfect for that group of people and in that context, but b) I don't think it's a very good song, so veracity notwithstanding I wished he'd gone with something else (has "It's Not Unusual" ever been in a movie? that's waiting there for anyone with the good sense to use it). "Live and Let Die" was...funny. And you get to hear the double preposition.

I don't get the resemblance to Boogie Nights aside from lol period and the marketing. It's slightly more obvious that the movie has nothing to say in this case.

As far as movies where celebs wear funky threads to AM gold go, anchorman 2 was not only funnier but arguably more politically conscious and definitely more self aware about utilizing cliches in the third act. Admittedly less likely to get trophies, MTV aside.

Will Ferrell way more engaging a clown than Christian bale

Will take Jennifer Lawrence over Christina Applegate as the ex who demands to be reckoned with, though. Preferred Meagan good to Amy Adams as the sexy coworker in the love triangle.

It felt like a mishmash of Boogie Nights/Scorsese/Tarantino. The party scene where Bale meets Adams, that was staged very similarly to the "Spill a Wine" scene in Boogie Nights (with Chicago subbing for Eric Burdon). The principals walking along in slow-motion underneath the credits is like the credit sequence in Reservoir Dogs (with Steely Dan subbing for George Baker). Anyone who has no patience for such stuff anymore won't be impressed. I have infinite patience with that kind of thing.

otm

the total way less than the sum of its parts, but so many great parts

i didn't see any.

The end?

and there was a scene shot from a car trunk, how thrilling

Croups you say tons of awful contrarian stuff but this: Preferred Meagan good to Amy Adams as the sexy coworker in the love triangle. takes the cake. Even if you prefer Anchorman 2, Meagan Good was awful in it, and Amy Adams was easily the best part of American Hustle.

wow i hadn't considered that, here's your cake back

It's slightly more obvious that the movie has nothing to say in this case.

Haven't given this much thought; I don't mean to be anti-intellectual, just being honest, but I only sometimes spend time on this if a film first engages me at the level of performances, direction, and story. And then I may or may not go forward from there. Some of my favourite films of the last 15 years--Zodiac, No Country for Old Men, Boogie Nights, The Virgin Suicides--I've got my own version of what they're trying to say. Sometimes--Rushmore comes to mind--I'm not sure that they have anything to say. That's fine--I don't need it. And when films like The Tree of Life or The Master come up short at the level of engagement, what they have to say won't make me like them better.

American Hustle is definitely trying to say something, but like tipsy says above, I responded more to the Bale-Adams relationship than any statements about identity, America (yikes), or whatever.

"if you want to send a message, use aol instant messenger" - samuel goldwyn

lol old people

That's funny--I was actually thinking about Nat Hentoff's famous Bob Dylan interview, slocki:

Well, anyway, second of all, you've got to respect other people's right to also have a message themselves. Myself, what I'm going to do is rent Town Hall and put about 30 Western Union boys on the bill. I mean, then there'll really be some messages. People will be able to come and hear more messages than they've ever heard before in their life.

Yeah I don't think it's even trying to be a political film. There's the overall sense that everyone's on the make or on the take, but that seems more like general human behavior than anything specific to a place or time. It's more about the web of relationships, loyalties, jealousies, and how all of those affect everyone's individual actions. Not that that's inherently profound -- it's a deliberately light movie, maybe deliberately slight too. But I was entertained.

http://variety.com/2013/film/awards/how-american-hustle-conned-the-critics-1200963635/

That’s why last year’s “Silver Linings Playbook” was such a delight:

stopped reading

Yeah, I never saw that one or the boxing one before that. I've only seen Three Kings, I Heart Huckabees and Flirting with Disaster. Never saw Spanking the Monkey, either, come to think of it. Maybe if I had seen Silver Linings and the boxing one I would have liked this one less?

I should re-watch Three Kings. Loved it at the time.

Hmm, wonder why Marky Mark didn't make it into this one? He's in three of the others. The director clearly inspires some loyalty.

I loved three kings when it came out, but between my reaction to everything he's done since and my experience reassessing other clas of 1999 films I'm afraid to look.

That’s why last year’s “Silver Linings Playbook” was such a delight:

stopped reading

― the objections to Drake from non-REAL HIPHOP people (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, December 28, 2013 2:03 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i didn't stop reading but i definitely stopped caring after that point

actually this bit induced vomiting:

A few years back, a video of Russell sparring with actress Lily Tomlin on the set of “I Heart Huckabees” hit the Web, in which Tomlin complained about how difficult it was to deliver a performance when the director kept changing his mind. The video left the impression that Russell was difficult to work with, while his oeuvre, beginning with the semi-autobiographical incest comedy “Spanking the Monkey” and the no-less-dysfunctional family portrait “Flirting With Disaster,” hinted that the director himself might be mentally unwell, the way certain impressionistic paintings — by Goya, Van Gogh or Munch — give viewers the sense of being trapped inside the head of a crazy person.

typical Variety insider bullshit. Who the fuck cares?

On the bright side, he didn't say "helmer" anywhere.

Hmm, wonder why Marky Mark didn't make it into this one? He's in three of the others. The director clearly inspires some loyalty.

― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, December 28, 2013 6:27 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

they had a falling out over Silver Linings Playbook, DOR wanted wahlberg to be in it for scale and MW was like fuck that, so he was replaced with bradley cooper (boooo), looks like they still havent made up - which is a pity bc they brought out the best in each other imo

otoh it frees MW to work with James Gray.

I can't really get past the fact that this 70s period piece has the word "Hustle" in its title, not to mention the word "American," and all those costume shop getups in all the promos.

Oh yeah why was Louis CK's boss doing a Christopher Walken voice the whole time? That was odd.

orig title was American Bullshit, which fits by me

Morbs OTM re: Bale doing DeNiro in a film where DeNiro appears. Great set and costume design, J Lawrence looked lush and acted circles around Amy Adams but this was an annoying bore.

which is a pity bc they brought out the best in each other imo

― Hungry4Ass, Saturday, December 28, 2013 8:48 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah this is a national tragedy

this movie is kinda bad tho

yes, Calum Marsh has the right idea:

"Comparing this even unfavorably to Scorsese is too high a compliment. This isn't second-rate Goodfellas; it's second-rate The Cooler."

wow this was crap. i've given up on david o. russell.

This was fucking awful. Felt less alone when Calum tweeted shortly after I watched it.

It is a really shitty movie, Bradshaw's 4 star review is a stinker. Made even worse by that annoying trait of fake bald characters - just hire a bald actor ffs.

Do you have a theory on costumes?

AH > Wolf as far as bloated expensive Hollywood pics about excess, but only marginally better.

I think they're both equally flawed and ultimately unrewarding. Scorsese's movie is undoubtedly the smarter of the two, but also the more hypocritical.

But seriously why was that guy talking like Christopher Walken?

Because he had a watch up his ass.

wolf of wall st was like 1mx better than this

In a pig's eye.

....covered with coke

Wolf made Hustle (which I liked, too) seem like someone's impressive debut. They've very different films though.

BTW, regarding Jordan's asshole behavior, I thought he and his crew, a la party frats, exemplified the axiom that the only people who think assholes are awesome are other assholes. This was a closed ecosystem of nothing but assholes.

this isn't about excess, this is about 'when you think about it, love is a con job', bale's character nearly explicitly says this in voiceover at the beginning of the movie - that's how dumb this movie is. maybe it's an improvement over 'when you think about, love makes you crazy' in the previous one, i don't know. i don't think there was any choice as inspired as scoring a manic episode to 'what is and what should never be' but deniro's better in american hustle and american hustle's not nearly as offensive on the whole - call it a wash, they're both garbage. if wolf felt like just the documentary parts of casino, this felt like just the sharon stone love triangle parts. it reminded me of almost famous in that it took what should be a gimme for an entertaining movie - going on tour w/ led zeppelin, abscam - and managed to bleach out all of the entertaining and interesting and ridiculous aspects of the story.

Russell obv wants to make Flirting With Disaster at larger and larger scales; that's what he's done with the last two movies. But he can't stop condescending to the audience: when AH began with closeup of Bale adjusting the hairpiece it was like 'lol seventies.' The "Live and Let Die" setpiece was misconceived too; none of the damn musical cues work.

lot of actors having fun acting in this one

crazy costumes and get a load of my hair o yeah well get a load of this accent you think that's something get a load of this gut good times

he's the Sturges of his generation

i think even more than being stupid or w/e it was just incoherent and disjointed, like i liked silver linings playbook and fwiw thought many people misconstrued it but yeah it was def pretty corny and basic, but it worked as a movie, like it had a cohesive rhythm and plot and everything people acted the acting and it made sense it had some jokes, this one was just a mess

amy adams boobs did look super incredible tho

maybe it was cause i ffwded through some scenes but i didnt realize til the big reveal that brad cooper thought she was english all along lol

btw she is v attractive

Nothing in SLP made sense! A funny-sad account of Coop with mental problems, a family drama, Lawrence getting slut-shamed, Coop and Lawrence doing Dirty Dancing: Duluth Afternoons. The tone was wobbly and no one had any idea what they were playing.

naw it was cool it worked

he wore that shopping bag lol

man i wish walhberg had played that role

Coop isn't even believable as a dude who would try to read Hemingway.

yeah i will say about silver linings playbook that if it hadn't been further evidence of russell having lost it and hadn't been ridiculously overrated (which is a stupid armond reason to resent something but there it is) i wouldn't hate it nearly as much, i might even admire it was a romcom that somewhat breaks its mold like crazy stupid love (crazy stupid love much better than silver linings playbook fwiw), who knows.

what coop would read hemingway

i like the idea of russell bringing his weird sheen to normal okay movies like the fighter or slp but this didnt even have that cool alternate universe vibe

yeah coop's a smart guy, it kinda acted against him here though he's good at playing assholes (like bradley whitford level good) so that helped.

I don't mind him in AH; it's his best work cuz he's good at playing dim w/out being smug.

limitless still the definitive coop movie

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVHAd3jwZy0

"Live and Let Die" was the best musical moment in the movie! It added some energy instead of just signifying blandly in the background.

Saw this today...it felt about seven hours long, every single part was terminally miscast, all the men had hairstyles so Saturday Night Live-does-the-'70s the director might as well have put titles on the screen reading "Haw haw, look at his fuckin' hair!!!", one music cue was never enough when five could be stuffed in, not one character had a discernible motivation except maybe De Niro's...I can't believe I lasted the whole thing. What a piece of crap.

he's the Sturges of his generation

― the objections to Drake from non-REAL HIPHOP people (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, December 31, 2013 1:54 PM (56 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

when is he going to make his great escape then

i got excited at the beginning of "live and let die" that he was gonna go the full magnolia and have the whole cast do a lip-sync montage. I mean, why not.

directors cut

also i'm never going to get used to jack huston having an entire face

he had a nice look amongst all the kitch

I don't see what the problem with this movie is. The American dream as long con. Maybe it's a little too on the nose, but every single character in this movie is constantly pretending to be someone or something else to get ahead. That's the underlying motivation of pretty much everyone. J. Law, Bale and Renner are the most true to who they are, but each has a fatal flaw. Renner means well, but goes corrupt to help his constituents. And Bale ... has fake hair. J. Law ... actually her character is pretty strong. She's not aspirational.

And I never saw it as a real love triangle. The romantic allegiances stay pretty steady. Bale wants a divorce from Lawrence, but wants to keep the kid, and he gets both. Adams wants to run off with Bale, and she does. Cooper's the only one who thinks he's getting something he's not going to get - Adams - but her flirtation with him was never more than part of the long con. She goes method with her romantic deception.

every single character in this movie is constantly pretending to be someone or something else to get ahead. That's the underlying motivation of pretty much everyone. J. Law, Bale and Renner are the most true to who they are, but each has a fatal flaw. Renner means well, but goes corrupt to help his constituents. And Bale ... has fake hair.

that's the trouble: that's all they're allowed to be

Surprised at the vitriol in this thread. I thought the film was sort of slapdash but also a whole lot of fun.

Yeah I was going to say it's not a great movie but it's not the disaster you backlashing reactionaries are painting it as.

Again, maybe if I'd seen "The Fighter" or "SLP" I'd hate this, too. This was my first taste of nu-Russell.

i didn't think it was a "disaster" just really fucking mediocre.

"The Fighter" is fine too.

and yeah, there's gonna be a backlash when a middlebrow anchorman 2 is getting pumped for best picture

i honestly just couldnt believe how bad it was no backlash

I guess I'm surprised not just because I liked the movie but because it seems like the kind of film that ILXors would like.

Took me a second to comprehend that Anchorman 2 is not the one with Oscar buzz. I was, like, who thinks Anchorman 2 is even middlebrow? What the fuck is ... oh, I get it, American Hustle is the middlebrow Anchorman 2, because of the clothes!

Only foreknowledge of the results is keeping me from starting a Hustle vs. WoWS poll.

This post maybe closest to my own reaction:

the total way less than the sum of its parts, but so many great parts

― |$̲̅(̲̅ιοο̲̅)̲̅$̲̅| (gr8080), Saturday, December 28, 2013 10:09 AM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

American Hustle is the middlebrow Anchorman 2, because of the clothes!

along with the clothes and the well-stocked '70s jukebox it's also about a dude trying to make it big while dealing with a love triangle and a coterie of wacky pals, also some vague sense that all this wide-lapeled buffoonery set the stage for the unethical antics of today. only one movie plays it for laughs and the other is a wan Tribute To Movies That Got Trophies Before. both are kind of wandering, admittedly.

not really sure what the great parts were, aside from some acting bits

russell certainly gets a fine stock of actors, but considering he lets them dress-up and wild out and doesn't get in their way as long as they can take his abuse why wouldn't they

i get why people defend movies they really loved and enjoyed from the haters, but i don't get the "oh it was no big deal but fine enough, haters!" stance. like, if it wasn't that great, and blatantly in the vein of movies that have been great, why not let people shit on it?

It sounds like part of the problem is that you didn't think American Hustle was playing for laughs. Which is weird.

yeah i wished this was a disaster, this was just mediocre garbage. think something like dick works better as a counterpoint though i get the timeliness w/ anchorman 2 comparison.

It sounds like part of the problem is that you didn't think American Hustle was playing for laughs. Which is weird.

forgive the shorthand - it was definitely a comedy, just a more pretentious one.

Odds I'll watch this again are sky low.

yeah balls obv a lot of diff parallels can be made and hopefully nobody's so literal as to need their hands held past "b-but anchorman 2 has a wedding in it and american hustle doesn't how can you compare" but i do think it's funny that we have two different "GET A LOAD OF MY PORNSTACHE" ad campaigns at the moment and earns a little contrast and compare

I don't care if anyone trashes American Hustle; I was just saying I was surprised, is all.

ur not allowed sry

I totally get why someone could not like this. But I don't see how someone could think Renner, Adams and Lawrence were anything but great, and they alone are reason enough to recommend the movie. I'd throw De Niro in, too, but he's barely in this.

adams is capable actress and def got to do some great accent-juggling and neckline work but there was something kind of blase about her (did anyone really buy the stripper bit?) esp when lawrence was going on all cylinders. renner and cooper also played to strengths but i'd like to see these guys in a movie that wasn't a crazy-long third rate boogie nights.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qX-YFIuXn2Y

The Ellington talk at the beginning was the lone bright spot for me, but things like that usually cause me to overrate movies. Not in this case, since the "Jeep's Blues" sequence was followed by the film equivalent of some cover band doing Goodfellas at the bar in the strip mall.

I guess if I had to watch The Fighter now I'd like it more too but Melissa Leo working overtime on her accent is a test run for J-Law.

he's the Sturges of his generation

@erickohn
Would audiences pay attention to Preston Sturges movies today? AMERICAN HUSTLE is the only 2013 release that echoes some of his strengths.

What about We're The Millers

</ armond>

@awhite
IDENTITY THIEF is the only 2013 release that echoes some of his strengths.

The Ellington talk at the beginning was the lone bright spot for me

The mention of Ellington having died "this year" was chronologically off, though. He died in 1974, but only a couple of scenes later (before she even debuts her English accent), Amy Adams is complaining about Jimmy Carter.

Yeah, I noticed that too, but I figured there was a flash-forward somewhere that I missed.

I also thought "He died this year" was a little too on-the-nose: "BECAUSE IT'S 1974. YOU KNOW, THIS YEAR. THIS 1974 YEAR THAT WE ARE NOW IN NOW." A simple "He died last month" would've sufficed.

Both characters would've probably known without even mentioning it at all.

they were just making sex talk you guys are so horrible at sex talk, jazz names and dates

You could stand to work on your punctuation.

You. could. stand. to. work. on. your. punctuation.

I see what you worked to the bone there.

JIZZ TALK

looks like they still havent made up - which is a pity bc they brought out the best in each other imo

Marky Mark says they're cool now in the newest weekly Hollywood Reporter cover story.

maybe it was cause i ffwded through some scenes but i didnt realize til the big reveal that brad cooper thought she was english all along lol

OTM... I mean, I guess her accent was supposed to be shaky but she seemed to only half-commit to the fake-character half the time. She always seems insanely miscast to me (never bought her Fighter character; definitely didn't buy her as an ex-stripper in this (what was the v.o. about her stripping days? Something pretty silly, I seem to remember. "At least it's honest work" or something?))

Laughed out loud at the preposterous Bradley Cooper home life, from the fiancée to the distraught mama.

I think it's pretty wrong to define her character as an ex-stripper. That's just one of many things she did to get ahead, and no doubt thrown in there to justify/show how far she is willing to go to manipulate Cooper. She also worked at Cosmo, among other things. Bale worked his way up, too, from glass to dry cleaning to faux art dealer to fake loan agent. It would have been hilarious if every single character was an ex-stripper, too, though.

The Saturday Night Fever of Cooper's home life was totally OTT, but I did think the fiancee stuff was funny. That she's there and clearly set up by his mom but he couldn't care less and is setting up his night out right in front of her.

I mean, Adams' character was an ex-stripper. I really just mean I will always struggle to buy Adams as anybody with that kind of past, no matter the character, but admittedly that's down to my not being crazy about her as an actress. She just seems so formally trained to me, and I can never shake it when those really technical-seeming performers play sexy (the one I always think of is Anne Hathaway in 'Havoc'). Personal thing, I guess.

I did genuinely laugh when Cooper screams in frustration when Adams' character refuses him sex when he shows up at her house. Like Russell was tempted to go the whole hog and do a "whyyyyyyyyy" crane shot on Cooper.

Saw this last night. gr8080 otm --

the total way less than the sum of its parts, but so many great parts
― |$̲̅(̲̅ιοο̲̅)̲̅$̲̅| (gr8080), Saturday, December 28, 2013 10:09 AM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

<I>The mention of Ellington having died "this year" was chronologically off, though. He died in 1974, but only a couple of scenes later (before she even debuts her English accent), Amy Adams is complaining about Jimmy Carter.

― jaymc, Tuesday, December 31, 2013 3:22 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink</I>

Roslyn's reference to The Power of Intention was even more off...didnt that book come out in the last decade? Or did I mishear?

you misheard. reference was to Norman Vincent Peale, The Power of Positive Thinking (1952)

I just googled "american hustle power of intention" and if I misheard I wasn't alone

yeah she mentions the wayne dyer book specifically

man this was some middlebrow ish.

colleen camp was in this, as the cat lady apparently. didn't recognize her. thought it was kidna funny when i saw her in the credits b/c she could've played either j-law's or adams' characters at different points in time

I mean, Adams' character was an ex-stripper. I really just mean I will always struggle to buy Adams as anybody with that kind of past, no matter the character, but admittedly that's down to my not being crazy about her as an actress. She just seems so formally trained to me, and I can never shake it when those really technical-seeming performers play sexy (the one I always think of is Anne Hathaway in 'Havoc'). Personal thing, I guess.

? Walter Galt, Wednesday, January 1, 2014 10:20 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark

i know exactly what you mean, especially about hathaway - she's serious about her craft but you're always conscious of the fact that she's Playing (x). adams comes off as a similar type but she also seems more grown up and relaxed and can credibly inhabit a wider range of roles, including this one (she was great)

anyway glenn kenny otm about this, its a sloppy borderline-incompetent mess... i will say that the perfs are all strong, i even liked Bale when he wasnt talking (he overplays the accent but he's effective anyway). never liked b-coop more, adams and jlaw are forces of nature obv. shea whigham as robert evans one of the movies secret MVPs. louis ck didnt need to be in it

i am in love with amy adams #namaste

the accents were very bad in this movie

louis ck i thought was most believable as a man of that time and culture

totes. bale's accent was yucko

I noticed Camp's name in the credits too--not only did I miss her, I think I missed the character. Who was the cat lady?

she wired the money

Geez, that didn't click in at all. She goes back to Apocalypse Now.

I recognized Camp but couldn't remember her full name - "hey, it's the character actress with an alliterative C name!"

they list it in the credits

ol' catlady camp

Two weekw after watching it I'll still claim this was a better time than Wolf but it suffers from expectations created by filmcrits who know shit about Sturges, are so exhausted by year's end that they'll overrate qny mild Hollywood trash, or need to leave the house.

o shut up

this was so fun

"glenn kenny otm about this, its a sloppy borderline-incompetent mess..."

and Wolf goes over that borderline.

"adams and jlaw are forces of nature cleavage obv"

The great Nature vs. Cleavage debate.

i won't deny that this has its goofy pleasures (cleavage and al) but it's too cartoonish and broadly drawn (and possibility just plain stupid) to avoid being a severe case of diminishing returns. the year-end awards for this will be pretty embarrassing in a few years time, i imagine.

i find the contention that it's sloppy, borderline-incompetent kind of weird. it's not aiming high and probably less aware of that than it ought to be, but for two and a half hours of dialogue with a flimsy plot this succeeded in holding my interest p well

Yeah I didn't have any particular sense of slop or mess -- in the characters' lives, sure, but the narrative structure and edit flow were fine. (Some of my favorite movies are messy, so it's not something that necessarily bothers me. But it's not how this seemed to me.)

I think the middle-brow tag is more fair, but that's what makes it likable. It's a crowd pleaser, but I don't think it panders.

i find the contention that it's sloppy, borderline-incompetent kind of weird. it's not aiming high and probably less aware of that than it ought to be, but for two and a half hours of dialogue with a flimsy plot this succeeded in holding my interest p well

― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Saturday, January 4, 2014 10:21 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

sloppy doesnt preclude holding your interest. i was entertained at points too. i'll let GK take the wheel http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2013/12/2013-in-review-qed.html

From the Kenny link (Steven Soderbergh): "But at a certain point, it’s not useful anymore. I stopped reading reviews of my own films after Traffic, and I find it hard to read any critics now because they are just so easily fooled. From a directorial standpoint, you can’t throw one by me. I know if you know what you’re doing, and, ‘Wow, critics’--their reading of filmmaking is very superficial."

I don't think I'd read my reviews either if I were as successful and established as Soderbergh--nothing really to be gained. But that really is a self-serving (and pretty silly, to me) statement as it applies to the best film critics, or the best critics in any field.

wow critics dont appreciate all these cool color filters and affecting descent into drug abuse and prostitution stories i put in my movie so uncool tl;dr

haha traffic is terrible soderbergh faced

Bbazinga

I dunno, kinda big of Soderbergh to admit how "easily fooled" critics were by Traffic

hahaha

Croup otm

soderbergh frames it in a self-serving way ("fooled" and "superficial") but i do think there's a worthwhile distinction to be made between what a successful film looks like to a critic and what it looks like to a filmmaker--and that furthermore that one side can see things that the other can't. AH is textbook movie catnip for a certain kind of middlebrow critic--it practically falls over itself to please a semi-knowing audience from the showy performances to the faux-intellectualizing ("who's the real master?") to the music cues.

I'm sure Soderberg thinks Kafka succeeded in looking like what he watned.

the most interesting parts of this movie were the rather tonally strange manic and OTT parts--like when Cooper is fucking with Louis CK in that celebration scene. there's a few others (usually involving Cooper as well) that I can't remember anymore.

Soderbergh never got over the critical drubbing of 9012Live.

iirc he hates how kafka turned out

the most interesting parts of this movie were the rather tonally strange manic and OTT parts--like when Cooper is fucking with Louis CK in that celebration scene. there's a few others (usually involving Cooper as well) that I can't remember anymore.

― ryan, Saturday, January 4, 2014 1:24 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

yeah agreed. i kinda loved Cooper in this actually

i also appreciated the science oven joke

if DOR really wanted to highlight the chintzy vibes he should've selected something off Victim of Love instead of goddamn "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road."

Can't really think of music being a DOR strength in general, except maybe Lee Greenwood in Three Kings -- but that was an obvious call.

cooper's freakout over lawrence not wanting to fuck him was amazing. i also v much enjoyed the scene with him and ck pulling guns on each other. i can't claim ck was doing anything amazing but i think he was well-deployed.

who is this glenn kenny anyway

s1ocki otm too btw

like i agree that this movie is pandering and lazy but i still won't take the step to incoherent and sloppy

i feel like pandering & lazy are worse things to say about it

i didnt even mean it as shorthand for 'this is bad' its just that while watching it i kept wondering if russell even had any clue what effect he was going for, it felt literally slapped together and a little clueless from a filmmaking perspective

it seems like at the beginning it's doing the thing of Everyone In This Movie Is Horrible but by the end russell's decided he likes most of them. i don't know -- i want to not admit that that's incoherent, i think it's a more specific failure than that

i feel like we're mainly disagreeing about vocabulary tho tbh

soderbergh frames it in a self-serving way ("fooled" and "superficial") but i do think there's a worthwhile distinction to be made between what a successful film looks like to a critic and what it looks like to a filmmaker

I think this is very true, and should be obvious. I know that studying audio engineering and learning how recording sessions really work totally and permanently altered the way I listen, and made it really easy for me to spot a critic who has no idea how records are actually made.

For a likable movie, I thought this was pretty minor. Ever since DOR has made mental health activism one of his issues, I keep noticing stretches of dialog that sound like they come directly out of pop psychoanalysis. Trimming out the music breaks in this would have made this much more tolerable.

In the early 80s, Louis Malle was working on an Abscam movie with Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi but it was cancelled after Belushi's death. Now that would have been a movie...

the point of a movie isnt to be technically accomplished, just like the the point of an album isnt to have great mastering or w/e, the intended audiences of both are primarily non technical people, if your wonderfully edited film doesnt result in a overall good movie that can be appreciated by people who dont know anything about editing theres really no point, unless youre specifically making movies for the handful of people who know about editing i guess, so a critic who has no idea how records are actually made is actually the perfect person to review a film

and of course the pro/am type reviewers who have some knowledge of how the sausage is made without any real experience or insight are really the worst of all

if DOR really wanted to highlight the chintzy vibes he should've selected something off Victim of Love instead of goddamn "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road."

― the objections to Drake from non-REAL HIPHOP people (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, January 4, 2014 1:32 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I felt like the music choices were either obvious, clumsy, or both, except for "Jeep's Blues" and ELO's "Long Black Road" which knocked me on my ass because I'd never heard it before and I had no idea ELO could rock like that, so I'm probably overrating that as a choice.

No, I'm definitely overrating it's inclusion: I've completely forgotten which scene that accompanied.

That ELO song is brand new! (It plays during the end credits, and earlier on when they are preparing to see Deniro's "attorney".) The way it looks on IMDB (so salt grains ready), the way one of the other ELO tracks is credited makes it appear they had to use on of Lynne's new rerecords as well.

Also: Alfred OTM. Would have preferred much better crate digging. I kept re-composing the s/t in my head while viewing, which ultimately would be my biggest criticism of the film.

When I looked up the ELO song I found that it's only available as a bonus track on an import of Zoom.

As for the rest of the choices, they mostly served to remind me how utterly masterful Robbie Robertson's work on Casino was.

AH is textbook movie catnip for a certain kind of middlebrow critic--it practically falls over itself to please a semi-knowing audience from the showy performances to the faux-intellectualizing ("who's the real master?") to the music cues.

Maybe. But you could reword that and say the same about Tree of Life.

best thing i can say is that it made me (finally) appreciate Cooper, a dude who's career has p much baffled me up til now.

i liked this, idk its obv not a slick con movie and i think criticising it for sloppiness of plot is missing the point a lil;

morbs otm abt bale doing deniros mannerisms etc for a lot of this but i think he or renner is prob the best performance; coop, adams and lawrence mostly did not impress me but also were perfectly acceptable & had some good moments - adams scream to end the scene in the studio 54 toilet was cool and odd; j law is good comic relief and nicely vibrates her eyeballs in that restaurant scene w/ the miami mob dude

the fed who someone upthread said was doing a walken voice was great & reminded me of jp from grandmas boy

he looked like young pacino and was doing walken voice, it was p weird

he played castor troy's younger bro in face off

can't stand Bale's Method heavings anymore so lauding Adams and Rener and to a lesser extent Coop is fine w/me.

i really loved the camerawork in this, lots of great tracking shots

haha the restless camerawork really annoyed me for some reason, i think the improv nature of the film must've left the camera operators holding their dicks a lot or something, some of the choices seemed so random

Bale's portrayal was so silly that it made the whole movie verge on comedy. Meanwhile, Adams is acting her heart out, seemingly obvious. The other guy is such a dead ringer for Lindsay Buckingham that I kept wondering the whole time when someone will make a Fleetwood Mac movie.

*seemingly oblivious

oh no u didn't

haha it's true: the perm, the permatan, the coked-up seriousness

I was thinkin the same

it made it verge on comedy u say

Verge? It *is* a comedy.

this was excellent on p much every level

bale's deniro, fbi chief's walken, w/e, totally a comedy but adams grounded it when needed. lovely.

pretty much everybody mugged their way through this aside from amy adams which is fine depending on how enjoyable you find it, which in my case was a lot, apart from - surprisingly for me - jlaw. maybe she's better when she plays it straight.

i would have loved to see more of the love triangle movie this was occasionally trying to be instead of the sting thriller it was, even if just to spread out the pace a little. it felt like 5 major plot points fly by in the last 10 minutes after so many nice, luxuriously lingering scenes earlier on. we go from cooper being almost the main character to being a glowering silent loser in the background in a split second.

Agreed on last point, except imo the mistake was putting him so front and centre to begin with

i thought he was great! he's our paul reiser, except crazier. though i did think his virile man-breathing onto amy adams was extremely disturbing throughout

does Coop have curlier fake hair?

yeah TH i thought he was excellent too, but the movie didnt need to lose focus on the main couple imo, it went a touch haywire for a while when it would maybe have been the better for sticking with bale/adams

Don't you know, Russell films hundreds of hours of footage and then edits it into a movie, like Malick. Buzz before this movie was on Ryan Reynolds, but he didn't even make it into the final cut.

rrip

DeNiro was convincing, loved the dark lenses on those glasses

Richard Harrow was distracting

ia that some of the musical choices were a little too otm

like "I feel love" at the disco - that is zemeckis-level obvsness

tarantino does a great job with this; he doesn't necessarily pick obscure songs all the time but he puts them in contexts where their lack of upfront applicability makes it seem fresh regardless

Ha - I watched this and then Behind the Candelabra a couple of days later, and both have disco scenes set to "I Feel Love."

louis ck said the end of the ice fishing story is his brother took a dump on the ice

was dying @ cooper's LCK impression. very giffable.

uh I'm watching Joe Scarborough practically lick Coo's palms on "Morning Joe."

this was pretty boring. couldn't really get engaged with it enough to even begin caring what the theme was. everyone saying that it was tonally sloppy are OTM, i had no idea what the point of a ton of scenes were. like was j law going "i know who you are" to amy adams supposed to be as hilarious as i found it? i would've loved a whole movie at the same crazed pitch as the cooper/adams accent reveal scene and the cooper/louis ck fight but i guess that david o russell is gone forever :(.

this is a classic 30 seconds tho
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqDxl5z4V3o&feature=youtu.be

I suspect Coop's cry of anguish would birth several thousand giffs

I didn't for a sec believe Adams would slam a picture frame on his head -- it's a "zany" bit that makes no sense. The editing doesn't hep.

*help

was dying @ cooper's LCK impression

this was where i said 'ok, theyre putting the dvd extras in the film'

i couldn't tell if slamming the frame was out of character or not cuz her character seemed like a total cipher to me anyway. like why did she scream in the toilet stall? her anguish at deceiving b coop? if so then the ending doesn't make any sense.

I dunno, there's a chance she's a little attracted to him. But the frame I thought made perfect sense, considering he was basically gearing up to rape her. Is the frame to the face any more out of character than Bale pulling a gun to get him to let her go?

I rewatched the clip: it's the editing.

themes/tone idk i watched the movie it was good imo

i couldn't tell if slamming the frame was out of character or not cuz her character seemed like a total cipher to me anyway. like why did she scream in the toilet stall? her anguish at deceiving b coop? if so then the ending doesn't make any sense.

― slam dunk, Wednesday, January 8, 2014 4:42 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

nobodys motivation is discernable

oscars, duh

i mean you got like five, six, viable candidates for nominations in your own movie alone, you gotta go for it

the accent "reveal" was soooo so crazy. i haven't read any reviews of this besides what people are saying on this thread but i can't be the only one that thought wait, she was doing a british accent this whole time?

i mean amy adams is the best thing about this movie by far but it's simply incredible to me that in that no one stepped in and said, uh she sounds exactly the same before and after she "stops" doing her "accent" guys

this has probably been said a lot, okay fine

still

There are parts where the accent goes in and out, mostly when she doesn't actually need to fool anyone (i.e., in scenes with Bale), but to me, it did sound distinct from her normal speaking voice.

i just didnt get the point of her continuing it once she had a personal relationship w/ bradley cooper -- like, he busted them for being con artists, did the fbi not figure out her real identity at that point??

no they had to move on to the next scene pretty quickly at that point iirc

xpost Really, you didn't notice she was doing an accent most of the time? To go with her fake identity as, you know, British? Which was part of the plot?

didn't use it in Bale scenes (after confessing), did use it on everyone else. i didnt pay much attention to its quality, busy being annoyed by so much else.

It was plain as day that her character was unsuccessfully affecting an accent. Which most of the other characters were too dim to realize.

didn't seem so much an english accent as a julie christie impersonation, seemed the one front where adams was being as goofy/'fun' as her costars, elsewhere her serious actress mode in contrast to goofball hams around her reminded me of demi moore in striptease. i guess she didn't get her girls as far out.

like, he busted them for being con artists, did the fbi not figure out her real identity at that point?

^fuckin this

Coop too busy figuring out ways to outfox Louis CK to check her background

people want to believe, guys

i think i am guilty of the middlebrow response to this movie outlined by ryan above

why was alessandro nivola doing walken, though? what happened, i am confused.

why not tho!

i don't know why it bothered me so much tbh. it was distracting!

amy adams is a gem. i saw this and her in short succession and she is a delight in both.

my sister has made a science oven joke to me once daily since i saw this movie

i am still kind of broken up about jeremy renner's character, also.

science oven very high quality gag

i found it very moving when renner was trying to figure out if Arabs are black so as to get the sheikh on board with revitalizing Camden.

so earnest!

the clips make this film look sort of charming and likeable. Maybe I'll see it after all.

I can't really not see a movie in which characters apparently fall in love over duke ellington

Really, you didn't notice she was doing an accent most of the time? To go with her fake identity as, you know, British? Which was part of the plot?

i noticed an occasional light dusting of britishness that alighted on what she said, as if she had emigrated as a teenager, but it was barely noticeable and mainly came across to me as one of those "mid-atlantic" accents that american movie stars affected until the 1960s, certainly nothing worthy of provoking the WTF?? moment that the movie apparently thinks it has set up

i've suddenly realized that i might be less sensitive to british accents since i've lived here for 8 years... :o

Its kinda that her accent is rubbish, but tbh i assumed it would fool yanks alright so it worked in the movie.

I never thought her accent reveal was supposed to be some big moment, because we, the viewer, knew she had been affecting an accent if we had been paying the minimum bit of attention. Like when she switches her accent to British in the flashback (she starts the movie acting "British") and says she created a British character because patsies were more likely to believe some pseudo-royal had access to money. Because LOL pre-internet, etc. She's not scamming Bale, who obviously knew the British accent was affected because it was part of their scam; she does not have the accent when they meet Ellington-cute. I'm kind of baffled by some of you folks, because the movie makes this all explicit. Like, it comes right out and literally says it, in voiceover, iirc. Of all the things people could complain about ... this is like complaining that Bale's hair looked fake. Well, yeah.

like, he busted them for being con artists, did the fbi not figure out her real identity at that point?

I really don't want to be Captain Defendthisfilm, but of all the things it got wrong or not all right, this kind of "sloppiness" is not something I got from it. Like, as soon as she reveals her American-ness to Coop, she says how she forged her past identity, down to passport and bio and everything. It clearly wasn't that hard to fool Cooper, because nowhere is it even implied he's a good FBI agent. That's the point. He's an aspirational live at home loser who has been going semi-rogue in an effort to get ahead. Louis CK is the professional one who keeps telling him to slow down. When they encounter DeNiro, an actual smart/dangerous person, even Bale says they're all out of their league, because he is smart. The con artists prey on the weak and stupid. Cooper's character is both.

Bit of a snooze, this. It reminded me slightly of The Master with the long improv-y scenes where its just the actors bouncing off one another, and in no great hurry to move the story along. That and the fact that Amy Adams was the best thing about it.

Thanks for that Josh. I agree none of that was hidden from the audience... was having trouble with a lot of the criticisms in here.

Though I do agree the bathroom stall scream was silly.

Has no one else screamed while perched on the loo?

It's my modus operandi

It's my modus pooperandi.

seriously, i was the only one who had forgotten she was supposed to have a british accent?? ah i guess maybe i'm just that far gone

i figured she was screaming in the toilet because coke

i figured it was one a those serrated turds

i thought maybe coop had curled all his pubes the wrong way up and it was giving her a wrongun

She really likes how "Don't Leave Me This Way" explodes into its chorus.

She's mad the song is climaxing while she's on the toilet.

This could be the "What did Bill Murray whisper in her ear?" scene of the year.

She's mad the song she is climaxing while she's on the toilet.

― Alfre, Lord Woodard (Eric H.), Thursday, January 9, 2014 2:58 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

fixed

she was climaxing on the toilet

fu

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-R6FV3pZALlg/UrJsbL4HI2I/AAAAAAAAAjk/fnp6hsVNh9Y/s1600/tumblr_mqt2n7MUHG1rrkahjo1_400.gif

Delayed reaction.

we go from cooper being almost the main character to being a glowering silent loser in the background in a split second.

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Sunday, January 5, 2014 8:52 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is super otm

i could not figure what this movie's opinion was of his character... when he gets his big comeuppance i was like... oh... he was the... bad guy??

Of course he is! Look at his hair.

i have curly hair alfred

http://i.minus.com/ibQuVJtaJTNsJ.gif

Did you curl it yourself

i still think this is his best piece of staging

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SG43wa7Alo

we go from cooper being almost the main character to being a glowering silent loser in the background in a split second.

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Sunday, January 5, 2014 8:52 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is super otm

i could not figure what this movie's opinion was of his character... when he gets his big comeuppance i was like... oh... he was the... bad guy??

in this way I felt like the movie was super traditional--feds are suspicious, lowlifes are sympathetic. I didn't think this was a sudden switch. The relationship between renner and bale takes up the focus for a while and serves to make bale's character sympathetic by association.

Thought cooper's character seems unsympathetic from the moment he watches Adams in lockup at the beginning. Though cooper is really funny in it.

Hes a horrible bastard to everyone at every junction imo

yeah he's gross. funnygross.

Cooper does ok by those guys tho. Its because his smile is v v pretty or so im informed

i could not figure what this movie's opinion was of his character... when he gets his big comeuppance i was like... oh... he was the... bad guy??

He isn't the bad guy. He's just a guy who's not that bright and in way over his head and is obviously going to end up being the loser in all of this.

I thought Cooper was great in this. Just the way he expressed his glee every time the mafia was mentioned made me laugh every time.

Cooper just plays a loser ruining things for everyone. He crashes the Bale/Adams party, and the rest of the movie is an elaborate way for them to extricate themselves from his mess. It's not that complicated.

i dunno i think i'm still confused, can you mansplain it a little more for me?

Maybe she was extricating herself from a mess in the stall.

I read the scream as an exasperated "fuuuuuck this long con is killing me i don't think i can keep this up"

http://chrishannamtl.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/american-hustle-bradley-cooper.jpg%3Fw%3D960

*SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!*

What does mansplain mean?

Oh, wait, is it because I responded with some sort of absolutely certainty? Then OK, sorry about that, but like I said, I didn't think this movie was that complicated, and we are writing in a thread where people didn't realize a major character was pretending to be British.

i saw this movie with my parents and learned that my dad briefly considered curling/perming his hair in the late 70's but never pulled the trigger

josh you nitwit it's because slock1 and i, and maybe others, thought this movie rushed through its resolution so quickly we got tonal whiplash and not enough time to satisfyingly register to the big changes going on; rather than address that you mansplained the plot to us and said it "wasn't complicated", which was never at issue

btw the "people" that "didn't realize a major character was pretending to be british" was me, and if you'd paid the slightest attention to what i wrote you'd see that i realized it perfectly well but thought amy adams executed it so perfunctorily that it was quite easy to forget she was even doing it at all, rendering the big "reveal" scene faintly ridiculous

and now i feel faintly ridiculous for even reacting like this

i did enjoy cooper in this. he's really in control of his douchey instrument. he was a great asshole in 'place beyond the pines' too.

Don't feel ridiculous, we should all feel ridiculous for giving a movie this slight so much attention or thought.

jennifer lawrence's hair was incredible, but that's about it

i noticed an occasional light dusting of britishness that alighted on what she said, as if she had emigrated as a teenager, but it was barely noticeable and mainly came across to me as one of those "mid-atlantic" accents that american movie stars affected until the 1960s, certainly nothing worthy of provoking the WTF?? moment that the movie apparently thinks it has set up

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Thursday, January 9, 2014 4:56 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ha yes she sounded like cary grant

Tracer Hand it did seem as if you had interpreted the accent reveal scene to be a surprise to the audience as well as Bradley initially.

Agreed with a lot of criticism from this thread, but I find it very easy to ignore the many flaws, ride along and have a lot of fun. Many films disappointed me this year, I just didn't feel like fighting with this one.

in the same way i wasnt sure why i was supposed to be happy for christian bale and amy adams to have such a triumphant happy ending considering they were pretty scummy characters

its not like i object to "scummy characters" but this movie all of the sudden frames them in a very traditional bad guy vs good guy way that just feels totally fraudulent

especially since she and that carpet called C-Bale have no sexual chemistry

but guys they loved each other

The movie's worst scenes undoubtedly involve Bale getting on his knees in front of Renner.

gr80 i wanna see you in a perm, honeybunch

holding Bale in one arm and Renner in the other

watch out guys, the Doctor is loaded and he's aiming for bear

missed opportunity for winter gay thread title right there

Cant wait to hear the obama line on man-on-man splaining

the accent thing caught me a little off-guard too, I noticed her character going in and out of the accent a lot but hadn't realized that she didn't reveal herself to Cooper yet b/c I wasn't sure why she wouldn't. I disagree that she sounded the same with and without the accent though, the distinction seemed pretty clear to me, but the plot moved so fast that I didn't really think about why she was keeping it up when it was just the 3 of them

s1ocki is highly otm in this thread

David Thomson reviews it.

Sturges comparison in the first sentence :|

I need him like the abscam needs the Turkey.

not read this thread but i saw this today and maybe i was in a shitty mood, or the film is just a bit shitty, but took me a long time to stop thinking that this just seemed far too much like several other (and better) movies. what was the point of this? everyone seemed like they were acting like the actors in those other films or had really modelled themselves on previous movie characters rather than people IRL (i.e. it never felt very believable for some reason). so while i think everyone did 'a great job' in their role, i never gave a shit. nice little twist towards the end, but i would rather have watched a film about jeremy renners character than these boring con-artists (or maybe i am just tired of films about assholes). expected this film to be more deliriously enjoyable a la goodfellas rather than a very studied version of it.

also the use of music was quite uninspired - cant argue that any of the songs were less than great but it seemed unimaginative to just use i feel love or bowie again. seemed like the music supervisor just knew the most famous/important songs of the period rather than the songs that someone with a deeper knowledge would have used. i feel love seemed too hip or something.

it's a funny case where the acclaim seems insane since there's just decades of smarter, funnier, better paced, better made films about the seventies and snookering etc etc, but its not like a movie where a bunch of decent actors get to act in a lightweight caper is the worst thing in the world. it's just so relatively negligible and slack. but then from my pov boogie nights mostly just a'ight, already too much of a "hooray for funny haircuts" 70s-hits-montage for me to get too excited, and i never liked casino.

its a film about several other films, so knowing about everything its doing

also, fake balding deniro>>>fake balding bale doing deniro

lol this was terrible.

well you've had a month of the ILE chorus singing in your ears too

it seems to be a pretty divided chorus, at least at first it was

btw i did indeed fish my phone out at one point, unlock it, open the notepad application, and write "long black road - from american hustle"

you are a horrible person

hahaha.

i was like what is this unknown billy squier song i'm hearing right now??

or golden earring, actually, is the first band i thought it was

Golden Globes (Hollywood foreign press) like the movie anyway--

"best film comedy" plus acting awards for Amy Adams and Jennifer Lawrence.

i wouldn't call it a comedy

and i wouldn't exactly call what lawrence was doing "acting"

you sound like statler and waldorf, in the best way. :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGfx3QAV64M

What's the worst way?

there is none!

they should just have S&W host the oscars.

you know what my favorite part of the oscars is?

the end!

you got to the end without telling us the punchline!!

http://www.country933.com/files/statler-waldorf-boo1.jpg

christ this movie was made quickly! Silver Linings Playbook was only out in late 2012. he doesn't sit about i have to give him that.

amazed at this being called 'a black comedy' by some folk. i liked it plenty though.

finally saw this last night

Feel like this boils down to everyone shouts at everyone while doing their hair. Supporting actor: HAIR CURLERS
I liked how it looked, but it was like watching a bunch of really good actors all simultaneously going for it while the camera just rolls and rolls and rolls and hey fuckit we'll just edit a story into it who cares we look good right

It was fine but if this thing sweeps the Oscars I'm done.

Classic January-February response from audiences, mostly deserved ("Uhh...this thing is loved?").

done with liking bad movies? as if! :)

xp

haha no smartypants done with awards bullshit

then again I say that every year and still get snookered

you can proceed as long as u know it's all bullshit to the core

like Obama

now see that's generous of you

lol <3

I was so bored by this I had to leave with 50 minutes to go. Only done that once before. I'm not proud but it felt right.

I felt kinda bored after 20 minutes and all I could think was "jfc I have two more hours of this?"

and yet, "it was fine" (throws up hands and puts on a Harold Lloyd film)

what did you eat that you're throwing up hands

a hand sandwich

this guy doesn't like it.

pretty sure that's a woman

this guy woman doesn't like it.

Much prefer Kevin's takedown of Argo last year...

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2013/01/down_with_argo_ben_affleck_s_iran_hostage_movie_is_the_worst.html

Slate column is right about the twist, and the acting, but villifying Ordinary People is getting almost as boring as doing the same to Driving Miss Daisy (as much as I might agree they should've lost).

And Wolf is the worst nominee. (pending my likely never-watch of Captain Phillips)

Argo is no good either.

that slate column is too careful about reassuring us that it IS a good movie and she DID like it

Seriously, why didn't she just tear into one of the actually terrible films in the lineup?

I have no problem as long as she wrote the movie is bullshit tho.

So I saw this tonight, was really good if not classic or whatever

Also: Elizabeth Rohm? WTF

http://news.yahoo.com/abscam-con-man-american-hustle-wrong-jennifer-lawrence-024025307--abc-news-topstories.html

Weinberg also said his mistress was not involved in the operation, unlike in the movie. But as portrayed in the movie, Weinberg did marry her, and together they raised his adopted son who is now a policeman. He says they have since divorced, and she is peeved about the movie.

"She didn't like the way she was portrayed," he said.

i'm not surprised, lawrence played her like a walking cliche

Wasn't Lawrence the wife not the mistress?

hah heh oh yeah

there was an ok movie buried......somewhere in this mess

man this got boring really fast

once ppl get oscar buzz taint on their flicks they get picky imo, this was not-quite straight to dvd trashy fun but it was a similar brand of fun

it just lacked some basic tension. it seemed to ask the audience to sympathize with everybody involved, Cooper ostensibly the "bad" guy by virtue of being the most actively annoying. and all the Scorsese/Tarantino homages were so wall-to-wall, there wasn't anything clever about the stylistic appropriation it just went on and on and on

Scorsese
it just went on and on and on

I want to cut up that sentence Burroughs-style.

we needed you in December

this was distracting enough but kind of a void -- nothing to chew on, nothing that resonates afterward. some of the character conflicts were interesting in theory but basically left unexplored by the film.

russell likes to help his actors make High-Impact Scenes, no matter how much sense they do or don't make in the context of the whole movie. i think P T Anderson also has this problem, less so with his last film. but at least he mixes the High-Impact Scenes with other, more genuinely offbeat, stuff.

Russell's filmmaking talent has kind of shrunk, his earlier films have a volatile mix of tones that I appreciate, in this one he just dials the scorsese-amp up to 11 for nearly every scene and it all felt the same.

i neither hated nor loved this film, but after this and Silver Linings Playbook I think it'd be fair for anyone to write off O'Russell.

i mean, the guy who made flirting with disaster just seems cannier and smarter and funnier than the guy who made this movie.

i neither hated nor loved this film, but after this and Silver Linings Playbook I think it'd be fair for anyone to write off O'Russell.

― display name changed. (amateurist), Thursday, May 29, 2014 4:07 AM (4 months ago) Bookmark

these 2 movies are so bad that ive found myself retroactively wondering if DOR was ever a good director at all. i used to love the guy!

Silver linings i disliked as soon as i saw it, but Hustle i had to slowly realize i hated a while later. it does everything in the most LCD pandering way, its supposed to be a movie about manipulation, deception, wearing masks, but we have characters telling us in voiceover what their deepest thoughts are thereby undercutting the uncertainty one would expect in a character piece about con artists (does Irving really love Sydney, or is he using her? good thing we have this voiceover monologue about how madly he loves her!)... or that scene where jlaw explains how her nail polish is sweet but also a little sour smelling and like 2 scenes later hollds up her hands and says "my marraige is like this nail polish.... sweet but with a sour fragrance also" the whole movie operates at this level of cynicism and basic assmption that the audience is stupid. and i think DOR knows all this, but he also knows that he can just go Haha, you guys like crazy wigs right?? and make 1 billion dollers. which makes him way worse than the guys make bad shit because thats all they know how to do

so otm

.. or that scene where jlaw explains how her nail polish is sweet but also a little sour smelling and like 2 scenes later hollds up her hands and says "my marraige is like this nail polish.... sweet but with a sour fragrance also"

lol this is otm, idk i liked it in a v dum fun way, def didnt deserve much acclaim imo; yea orussell is a hack now who thinks hes frank capra

the musical cues, the soundtrack, ill-advised and obvious voice-over, SNL-level performances...

I liked the SNL-level performances, but that is an apt description for sure.

it's like 'Ooh, look, Jennifer Lawrence smoking and with a funny accent!"

"these 2 movies are so bad that ive found myself retroactively wondering if DOR was ever a good director at all."

He was never a good director at all. In fact looking at his filmography I'm not sure what movies he made that would make anyone think he was good director...

Spanking the Monkey and Flirting with Disaster still work; the latter depends on timing and inflection to work, and he and the actors keep thing humming. Three Kings isn't the masterpiece 1999-is-best-year-of-cineMAH-ever claim, but at least its tonal shifts and engagement with a world and people beyond the characters are audacious.

I Heart Huckabees was very obviously not a work by someone with the same priorities as nu-DOR. Even if you hate it, as many (most?) do, you can't deny it does not feel like the same guy at all.

flirting with disaster is terrible, i heart huckabees is worse and feels like completely the same guy, three kings i feel like maybe might be not terrible but i'm not going to watch it again to confirm

in conclusion: fuck watching o'russel

why is it terriblee?

it's been a while but iirc it starts out okay and then about 40 minutes in becomes smug and insufferable and not half as clever as it thinks it is and then doubles down on that

sending Alan Alda and Lily Tomlin's kid to lace your shit with acid

'three kings' is definitely his best film imo. really funny, lots of excellent zings on american culture and american foreign policy, excellent performances, some great action scenes and his best music cues by far.

I want to defend american hustle as a really solidly fun three-star movie somehow but idk

re the voiceovers : I think the intent is that they're about self-deception? but at some point of script-revision this got nixed? like the idea seems to be that they reveal these ppl as essentially p empty and stupid but when the movie gifts them a happy ending the tone is a little off

re the nail varnish ( which is 'rotten', surely, not sour?) yes, basic cynicism and contempt, but idk what possible non-contempt version of this could get made; I suspect the non-contempt version is 'argo'

fwiw i wouldve forgiven everything if the jokes were better. this makes u appreciate how much better boogie nights was at pulling off chucklin @ wigs & costumes type stuff, along with everything else

i loved huckabees, when it came out

a really solidly fun three-star movie

Yes. At some point I'll see it again, but that's how I felt too--did not feel it was weighted down with all these grand ambitions and pretensions people ascribe to it, forgot it soon after.

so" the whole movie operates at this level of cynicism and basic assmption that the audience is stupid. and i think DOR knows all this, but he also knows that he can just go Haha, you guys like crazy wigs right?? and make 1 billion dollers. wh

yeah but those wigs tho

man this was like 2-3x as funny as boogie nights

the wigs aren't a joke (though the curling iron is a joke), that is like claiming the elton john needle drop is a joke