o'russell's ABSCAM movie AMERICAN HUSTLE

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

i like almost all the performances in this but if it were up to me that script would have been burned and rewritten from scratch, such a confusing, confused, and bad piece of writing.

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

― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Monday, October 13, 2014 11:51 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://straightfromthea.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/blankstare-CtA.gif

for real

O_o

Lol

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

― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Sunday, October 12, 2014 4:24 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'm with this. really felt to me of a piece with, like, Flirting With Disaster, all the awkward arguments and dysfunctional relationships. after seeing the movie, all the 'oh this wanted to be a Scorsese epic' talk seemed to be just people reviewing the trailer. really goofy movie. Christian Bale yelling "oh God I love gettin' to know ya!" killed me.

To be goofy the movie needed to be shorter and less concerned with hoping the audience gets the jokes. The movie went wrong from the first moment when the camera lingered on Bale's toupee. It's like, "Yeah, it's Bruce Wayne looking like Goodfellas' Morrie, I get it." But Coop and Amy Adams could've done a FWD.

this movie totally wanted to be like scorsese. flirting with disaster is one of my favorite movies and i love david o russell and this movie is totally going for scorsese, just filtered through an idiosyncratic sensibility. it doesn't have the same themes but it has a similar style. wall to wall pop music, slo mo, unreliable narrators, chopped up chronology, all in a specific, past era and milieu -goodfellas and casino shit. scorsese obviously didn't invent any of those things but that specific combination codes as scorsese.

but yeah it's really funny occasionally in a way that only david o russell movies are. and i'll keep watching movies that he directs as long as glimmers of that are there.

Yeah, this was blatant in trying to be Goodfellas. It was also forgettable and bland. Should've taken more time to incubate this rather than diving headfirst after Silver Linings.