o'russell's ABSCAM movie AMERICAN HUSTLE

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.