American Hustle – A Movie Review

Photo from IMDB.com

American Hustle, the new film by David O. Russell, director of last year’s awards darling Silver Linings Playbook, sounds incredible! Literally, it sounds so very good. The music is at once cheesy and cool and plays the nostalgia card early and often, evoking in anyone who lived through the late 70s and early 80s a kind of emotional resonance with the movie’s characters.

This is precisely what Russell wants.

American Hustle is a complex movie. The twists of its plot are intentionally delivered in an unclear fashion as they unfold and the movie is turny enough to require voice-overs from multiple characters – a device which can weigh a movie down and break up its pacing. Fortunately, that doesn’t happen here and the voice-overs result in the audience gaining a deeper understanding of the film’s characters. Only during these voice-overs can the audience believe what the characters are saying. At all other times, they are not to be trusted.

That’s part of the fun of American Hustle. The audience can never be sure who is hustling whom.

People expecting a more grounded version of the Oceans movies are going to be disappointed, however. Those movies were built almost entirely around their labyrinthine plots. David O. Russell’s movies are built entirely upon characters and the actors who embody them. Russell has assembled a stunning cast for this one.

If you have seen a frame from previews for American Hustle you know that Christian Bale has undertaken another ridiculous transformation to play Irving Rosenfeld, a con artist who is the hub around which the other spokes of the movie spin. Bale is such a good actor, one wonders if it was necessary for him to put on a reported 45 pounds to inhabit the Rosenfeld, but who can argue with the process when it yields such amazing results? There isn’t a trace of Bruce Wayne in Bale’s performance. He is commanding as a man suddenly in over his head who is used to holding all the cards. I believed every moment Bale was onscreen. He made each of the other cast members better and when Irving is forced face-to-face with the human cost of his latest scheme, Bale makes us feel the character’s devastation. He should be nominated for his work here.

Amy Adams should, too. It may well work against her that she is ubiquitous these days, but Adams’ role as Rosenfeld’s partner and lover Sydney Prosser is every bit as arresting as Bale’s and, while Adams didn’t have to physically alter her appearance in the film, my bet is many men (and women for that matter) will never look at her the same way again. Adams’ Prosser can manipulate. She can cry. She can smolder in a manner we’ve not come to expect from Amy Adams. It’s a great part.

In fact, Adams and Bale are so great that Bradley Cooper’s performance as unbalance FBI agent Richie DiMaso never quite emerges from their shadows. Cooper is good, but, perhaps owning to the fact that the character he’s playing is fairly reprehensible, he doesn’t stand out here the way he did in last year’s Silver Linings Playbook. He’s engaging, but Bale and Adams seem to be in another class in this one. (So does Cooper’s Silver Linings co-star Jennifer Lawrence, by-the-way. I begin to wonder if there is any role she cannot play. As a supporting actress to Bale’s leading man, she is more than up to the task)

Jeremy Renner is strong. It’s his best performance since The Hurt Locker. Louis CK shows up and is nothing like one would expect, playing against type and drawing big laughs. There is also a powerful cameo which I won’t spoil, but I will say fits right into the tenor of the movie.

The character work – the masterful performances by the entire cast – is amazing. It’s so good that, at points in the film, one can fool oneself into thinking that these people are not actors, but real individuals that the camera has caught in some of the most terrible circumstances they could imagine. It’s pretty clear that’s what Russell wants the audience to feel.

That’s why the movie feels more character than plot driven. That’s why the resolution feels less than completely satisfying. This movie is a reflection of real life – a stylized, beautifully realized, not-at-all sentimentalized, 1970’s-sized reflection of real life. If that’s a disco to which you can dance, American Hustle is a terrific partner.

American Hustle receives 4 and a half pink foam hair rollers out of a possible five.

And There Came a Look at Select Academy Awards Nominations – Predicted Winner Best Director: David O. Russell

Somehow, the director who should win this award, in my opinion, wasn’t even nominated. In fact, three directors that most Oscar watchers thought were shoe-ins for nominations were left off the ballot. Kathryn Bigelow (for Zero Dark Thirty), Tom Hooper (for Les Miserables) and most egregiously Ben Affleck (for Argo) did not hear their names called when nominations for this year’s Academy Awards were announced. Bigelow has won the award. She captured it for The Hurt Locker in 2008 in what must have been victory made all the sweeter as she triumphed over her ex-husband James Cameron who was up for Avatar. Those folks voting for Best Director nominations could have had this fact in the backs of their minds when they chose to pass her over. Tom Hooper was the toast of the television awards season the same year for his brilliant John Adams. Then in 2010, his The King’s Speech was the most highly nominated film with 12 nods. It took home Best Picture and Hooper himself was named Best Director. Again, the voters remembered and shut Hooper out this year for a nomination for Les Miserables. As surprising as this omission was, it doesn’t come close to the shock that Ben Affleck’s lack of a nomination for Argo has inspired in industry watchers. Argo has secured most of the major awards – including Best Director awards for Affleck – this season leading up to the big night. And yet, no Academy Award nomination for Affleck. It’s inexplicable.

So, with these players off the table, this category comes down to two choices, and it’s going to be close. Steven Spielberg for Lincoln and David O. Russell for Silver Linings Playbook.

I’m going with Russell.

That his cast (Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Jacki Weaver and Robert DeNiro) were all nominated for acting awards (a feat not seen since Warren Beatty’s Reds in 1981) says quite a lot about the direction Russell provided. So does the fact that Beatty won the 1981 Best Director statue. The Academy likes Russell, having nominated him for Best Director for 2010’s The Fighter. He’s got a great chance to win.

Silver Linings Playbook is the kind of movie that sometimes rubs me the wrong way. Billed as a complex romantic comedy and something of an independent project, it could have turned me off had Russell decided to take it in a darker direction that is implied as a possibility throughout the film. Word is that Russell, in point of fact, shot many key scenes multiple times with different shading and outcomes so that he could cut together the movie he wanted in post production. I loved the movie he came up with for its realism, its sharp characterizations and its heart.

He gets all that he can out of his actors, and their nominations are proof of this. He creates a version of Philadelphia that makes one feel like they took a trip to the city as they watched the film and the city itself – and its storied football team – become characters in their own right. Russell somehow manages to corral wacky comedian Chris Tucker into an affecting role (great choice for Tucker’s career) and keeps all the various plot elements (a ballroom dance competition, the Eagles 2008 season, mental illness and visits to therapists, book making, father and son dynamics, hopeless pursuit of lost love, etc) distinct and clear. Silver Linings Playbook is a movie that unfolds from early tension to conclude with pure joy. That’s something of an impressive arc.

Can Russell beat Spielberg, his only real competition for the Academy Award? I don’t know, but I think he deserves to!

And There Came a Look at Select Academy Awards Nominations – Predicted Winner Best Actress: Jennifer Lawrence

She’s only 22. I keep telling myself that when I consider Jennifer Lawrence. She’s only 22 and so amazingly talented. Consider this, she opened and carried an action franchise (The Hunger Games) when American audiences simply aren’t generally interested in heroic women. Then she held her own on-screen with Bradley Cooper. What’s that you say? The guy from The Hangover? Face-Man from The A-Team (I understand perhaps only my family saw this… but we liked it!)? Okay, she held her own on-screen with Jacki Weaver who is a prior Academy Award nominee for Animal Kingdom. Not impressed? She held her own on-screen with Robert DeNiro, Academy Award nominee for almost everything he’s ever been in.

Her portrayal of a widow bent but not broken by the life she’s lead is the central one of Silver Linings Playbook and she makes everyone around her – especially Bradley Cooper – better. She is heartbroken and heartbreaking. She is strong and vulnerable. She is funny and tragic. Tiffany is a mixed up character whose bouts of depression have hampered her moving on from her husband’s death. Searching for connection, she makes her way through a series of men before bonding – oddly – with Cooper’s Pat.

Cooper’s performance is at its best when he is on-screen with Lawrence. Her intensity, which seems completely effortless, ratchets up his own and the two work together like a dysfunctional Astaire and Kelly. The metaphor is chosen specifically for the film’s conclusion as those who’ve gone to see Silver Linings Playbook know.

The question is how Lawrence is able to command all of these emotions when her own life experience is so limited by her age. Other actors clearly draw on what they’ve experienced in their lives to round out their performances. Lawrence embodies her characters without that benefit and does so easily and readily. Eminently watchable, Lawrence may well be her generation’s Meryl Streep. This is her second Academy Award nomination in three years. There are clearly going to be more to come.

If she’s to lose, it may well be to Jessica Chastain whose Zero Dark Thirty performance is also wonderful. The difference for me is the emotional range. Chastain’s character has something of a one note arc through no fault of her own. That’s the role she was handed. Lawrence’s character completes a full arc of emotion. In my mind, she should win the Oscar for it.

At this point, any movie that opens with Lawrence in it must be paid attention to. Such is the power of her performance.

And There Came A Look at Selected Academy Award Nominations – Best Actor in a Supporting Role PREDICTED WINNER: Tommy Lee Jones

Here begin the actual predictions: today, Best Actor in a Supporting Role: Tommy Lee Jones as Thaddeus Stevens. In an Academy Award season jammed with indelible performances, Tommy Lee Jones stands above – if only just above – the rest.  He provides a movie full of depth its most real emotional moment following the climax in Congress.  His sharing of the actual copy of the 13^th Amendment with his secret lover and African American housekeeper Lydia Hamilton Smith played by Epatha Merkerson was the one moment of the film that brought tears to my eyes as Jones expertly reveals another layer of a character that he’d already deftly drawn. Bombastic and commanding, Jones’ Stevens dominates each scene he’s in (save for the one wherein Sally Field’s Mary Todd Lincoln one ups him), and makes something of an art of the putdown. Trust me, you’ll never hear the word “nincompoop” the same after Jones’ delivery. This award is going to go down to the wire as Robert DeNiro’s performance in Silver Linings Playbook cannot be easily overlooked. The question is which old guy, Hollywood darling is in the zeitgeist this year. My money is on Jones.

I hope I am not going to be proven a nincompoop.

And There Came A Look at Selected Academy Award Nominations – Movies I Don’t Think Will Win

There are three movies that I LOVED – all three of which I am looking forward to owning when they come out on Blu Ray – that are nominated for Best Picture that just aren’t going to win. I am betting on an upset this year in the Best Picture category. Though the director of the film I think will win isn’t nominated himself, I still think it will triumph over the early favorite in this category, which is complete Oscar bait, and deserves to be, but is fading as we come around the last turn towards the ceremony. Any of the three movies I am writing about could win. None will.

LES MISERABLES – I have loved this musical since the first time I saw it. So enamored was I that I delved into the unabridged source material and found that the characters more numerous, the themes more deeply explored and the story more complex. But the magic of the play – which I contend is utterly captured in the movie – is that the audience feels every emotion coursing through Jean Valjean, the protagonist whose epic, decades long journey to understanding that “to love another person is to see the face of God” is the backbone of the film. Tom Hooper (not nominated for Best Director) elicits amazing energy from the cast as they sing in the most stripped down performances in a movie musical that I have ever seen. Word was, when the film premiered, that recording actors on set singing their parts and using that as the actual vocal track had never been done before. That proved to be wrong, it has been twice done, but neither film in which the technique was attempted is particularly memorable today. Les Miserables will age well. It will be hailed a classic, and rightly so. The film moves one to sing, moves one to thought and moves one to tears. It surely earned the right to be included in the nominees this year and, if I had a stack of Blu Rays of all the Best Picture selections it would definitely be the … second… film I watched!

SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK – I love a good romantic comedy, but audiences are seldom blessed with a great one. Silver Linings Playbook is a GREAT romantic comedy for many, many reasons. David O. Russell, nominated for Best Director, has assembled and lead such an incredible cast that all four of the main actors were nominated for Academy Awards (this hasn’t happened since The Cinnamon Girl’s favorite movie, Reds, in 1981!). The movie takes a potentially downer of a subject – mental illness in many, many forms – and treats it with dignity and a sweetness that was surprising. The movie felt real and the characters authentic. Russell does a terrific job inspiring his audience to root for his characters at the movie’s conclusion while maintaining an appropriate level of suspense. I honestly didn’t know how the movie was going to work out, and I cannot say that about the majority of romantic comedies I see. Finally, Silver Linings Playbook has one of my most favorite lines captured on film in this or any other year and, if it wasn’t so profane, I would make it my ringtone. When Bradley Cooper’s Pat Solitano finishes reading Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, he has a definite reaction to the novel’s conclusion. It’s a terrific moment in a terrific movie.

LINCOLN – It’s a Steven Spielberg movie. It stars Daniel Day-Lewis. Its screenplay was based on a Pulitzer winning biography. It’s so real that the ticking of Lincoln’s pocket watch was actually recorded from Lincoln’s actual pocket watch! It’s a brilliant film. Engaging, charming and surprisingly funny (Lincoln’s anecdote about Ethan Allen and George Washington’s portrait is one of the funniest moments in any movie I saw this year), Lincoln is corrected lauded as being so brilliant, one almost feels as if he or she has stepped back in time to the Civil War era and has caught up with a behind-the-scenes tour of the Lincoln White House.  I rank political thrillers as one of my most favorite movie genres and I didn’t know I was going to get one when I saw Lincoln. I knew it would be brilliant. I knew I would be amazed. I didn’t know how thrilling watching the president and his team work to pass the 13^th Amendment would be. Day-Lewis is some kind of time-traveling Lincoln clone. Sally Field, as I’ve mentioned before, is in her best form in years. The rest of the supporting cast is equally brilliant (and it is great to see Gloria Reuben again!). Perhaps my most favorite thing about the movie is Lincoln’s relationship with William Seward, his Secretary of State. David Strathairn,  one of my all time favorites, play Seward and he and Day-Lewis seem well suited. The friendship they suggest – forged in the crucible (Day-Lewis pun alert) of the times – undergirds the entire movie. Those who’ve had The Cinnamon Girl’s class or know their history know why Seward wasn’t present at Lincoln’s deathbed. More’s the pity that the film couldn’t have been three hours longer to spend more time on this character and this relationship. I could have watched five more reels of Lincoln and still have been asking for more.

And There Came A Look at Selected Academy Awards Nominations – Actors I Don’t Think Will Win

Like every year at the movies, this was a great year for performances by actors. There were excellent performances from actors I really enjoy in roles that are just not going to win this year. The nominations in the acting categories include past winners and new faces, all of whom, I believe, are going to have to say that it was an honor just to be nominated when the 85^th Annual Academy Awards come to a close next Sunday night. Among them:

Bradley Cooper – BEST ACTOR: Cooper gave a nuanced performance in what could have been an over-the-top disaster as the bipolar protagonist of Silver Linings Playbook. The manner in which Cooper conducted himself in the role continually left doubt as to whether his Pat Solitano would keep his demons under control or erupt into violence and that was the power of his portrayal. I wanted to root for Pat as I watched Silver Linings Playbook even though the threat of disaster lurked in every scene. Cooper is a well regarded actor who has broken out and this nomination confirms him as more than just the good looking guy in the Hangover movies. I really liked his performance but, truth be told, I think his nomination was part of the Silver Linings Playbook movement. Every major actor got nominated in this one. Cooper was great, but the weakest of the bunch.

Jacki Weaver – BEST ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE: As the concerned and compassionate mother, dealing with both her husband’s Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and her son’s bipolarism, Weaver shines. Her smile is tinged with a lifetime of compensations for the behaviors of the men in her life and, no matter the scene, she manages to convey the years of toil that life took on the character. Her Dolores Solitano is real and affecting and more than holds her own with her on screen husband Robert DeNiro. In another year, Weaver would have been a real threat to win this. She’s up against an unstoppable force this year, so the nomination will have to be honor enough.

Robert DeNiro – BEST ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE: DeNiro is one of the most vaunted actors of his generation though, surprisingly, he has had a difficult time in recent years finding roles worthy of this talent. He seems to have taken paychecks over substance in many of his last few choices (I’m looking at you, New Year’s Eve) but Silver Linings Playbook is certainly a return to form. DeNiro is an actor who sometimes seems more comfortable with oversized characters who dominate the screen. Pat Solitano, sr, is not one of those roles. In this character, DeNiro is able to re-engage the audience with the actor in a manner we haven’t seen in a while. The performance reaches its apex in a moment of true tenderness when Pat breaks down and speaks to his son as we expect a father to do. It’s a powerful moment, both heartwarming and heart-wrenching simultaneously. Not many actors could pull it off the way DeNiro does. This was a tough choice, but I think another crusty film veteran is going to take this award this year.

Hugh Jackman – BEST ACTOR: Hugh Jackman’s performance as Jean Valjean in Les Miserables may be the bravest performance by any nominated actor this year. His physical transformation is nothing short of breathtaking, to be sure, but the manner in which he strips himself bare for the audience is where the power of the role is discovered. Acting almost entirely though singing on screen in the most intimate fashion because of choices made by director Tom Hooper – and not always singing perfectly well I might add – Jackman delivers in what surely is his most demanding performing role yet. He made me cry more than once (but that’s not saying much, poignant McDonald’s commercials have been known to bring me to tears) and he is the backbone of the film, present in almost every scene and commanding all of them. The contrast of a Tony Award winning actor, Jackman, singing on screen with an Academy Award winning actor whose pure skills at the craft might be better than his, Russell Crowe, is obvious. In the film, Crowe sometimes seems as though he is singing in a garage band. Jackman always seems as though he is singing at Royal Albert Hall. In a different year, he would win this award, hands down. But this is not a different year.

The Academy Awards Are Almost Here – This Blogger’s Approach

Two weeks from tomorrow night – Sunday, February 24 – The 85th Annual Academy Awards celebration will be telecast into homes and onto personal devices all over the world. Here at And There Came A House, we’ll be watching. Me, The Cinnamon Girl, HJ jr, Stretch and Sous Chef will begin to gather at about the time the stars arrive to be dissected on the Red Carpet – an activity in which we like to join. The Cinnamon Girl will create a meal that’s easily consumed in front of the television but incredibly prepared.  A few years back, she wowed us with popcorn flavored to individual tastes. A year after that it was custom, single baked pizzas. She followed that with a slider bar. Whatever she makes, I can guarantee you’d rather be here than wherever you are watching the show!

There are some movies I really loved from last year that are up for awards, one of them, in fact, ascended onto my own, personal Top Ten Best Movies of All Time list the moment the end credits rolled. That movie was Ben Affleck’s Argo. That he wasn’t nominated for Best Director speaks, in my mind, to continuing Gigli backlash. Will it ever end?

Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook, Les Miserables… all three nominated for Best Picture. I fully (almost fully in the case of Les Mis) enjoyed each. Denzel Washington’s performance in Flight brought me far closer than I ever wanted to be into the pathology of alcohol and drug abuse.  I will watch what movie choices Jennifer Lawrence makes with great interest after her turn in Silver Linings Playbook as I thought she commanded every scene she was in. Tommy Lee Jones was a collection of acerbic  put downs and epic insults as he played his way to one of the most surprising and heart warming moments of any movie I saw last year in Lincoln. And Alan Arkin in Argo was simply cool, baby.

I didn’t see all the Best Picture nominees. After The Cinnamon Girl and I forced ourselves to see Let There Be Blood and Inglorious Basterds (two movies we could recognize were worthy of praise while at the same time noting we really, REALLY didn’t like them) to prepare for the show, we determined that seeing movies just because they are nominated for Best Picture even when our instincts tell us we won’t enjoy them is not a good way to spend a evening.

Or $50 for that matter.

So, no Amour or Beasts of the Southern Wild or Life of Pi or Django Unchained for us. We are okay with it.

For the next couple of weeks, I will share some thoughts on the nominated films we saw and the performances we enjoyed as we look forward to the Academy Awards show. It’s a fun night around our house every year.

Seth McFarland may well be a good host (though Ted was ABSOLUTELY NOT a movie The Cinnamon Girl and I enjoyed last year and Family Guy seems to me crass and stupid) but Tina Fey and Amy Prohler set the bar pretty high. His promos seem that he’s on the right track.

Hey, rumors are the cast of The Avengers are going to present together and all the actors who’ve played James Bond will appear onstage for the 50th Anniversary celebration. If those two things happen, I’ll be plenty happy with the show.

Even if Argo doesn’t win Best Picture.

But it better.

The Virtues of Staying through the End Credits

The Cinnamon Girl and I went to see Silver Linings Playbook last night – rare for us on a Thursday but we didn’t have to teach on Friday which is a rare blessing. We really enjoyed the movie feeling that the publicity it is garnering, the Academy Awards nominations it has received and the general good feelings surrounding it are all well deserved. If we bracket Valentines Day, it’s my favorite Bradley Cooper movie by a longshot.

I trust the joke in that last sentence is clear.

After the movie was over, we sat in the quickly empty-ing theater as the end credits scrolled as is our habit, especially when H J, jr, Stretch and Sous Chef have been left at home.We watch for actors’ names and songs from the soundtrack while we discuss what we liked, what we didn’t like and if we’d recommend the movie to friends (to be clear, we recommend Silver Linings Playbook, heartily).

Marvel Films has made staying though the initial segment of the credits something of a must with quick and clever post-credit sequences that they used to cannily tie their cinematic universe together. In fact, Marvel’s The Avengers had two sequences – an immediate post credit sequence revealing Thanos, the big bad of the piece, and a post credit sequence which was actually after all of the credits during which our heroes consume shawarma (check the fact that Chris Evans covers his face throughout the shawarma-izing; he’d grown a beard for his next role before this scene was completed months after the movie was in the can). I can honestly say that The Cinnamon Girl  and I were remaining through the end credits long before it became the thing to do.

I believe that sitting through the credits really “locks” the movie in my mind. Inevitably, those I’m with talk about specific scenes from the film, choices the actors or director made that they liked and I am immediately brought back to those moments and choices, reliving, immediately, parts of the film. Talking with the folks I’ve seen the movie with does the same thing. It clarifies my perceptions of the movie and my reactions to it. Reacting during the credits also makes the experience much more communal than simply sitting in a darkened theater is without doing so.

I’ve found that there are some movies after which The Cinnamon Girl and I look at each other and stand right up, gather our refuse (we always have refuse – I am incapable of being in a movie theater without popcorn and a soda) and walk out. I find we do that after movies that we didn’t enjoy very much or weren’t very good. There is a long list of those sorts of movies. Unfortunately, there are probably more of those than I would like to admit. Given that it costs us well over $100 to take the whole family to the theater, it would serve the bottom line better if we were a bit more discerning sometimes…

Sitting through the end credits and talking about the movie is like having a dream journal. Upon waking, the dream is often lost if not written down with alacrity. For me, it’s the same with seeing a movie. If I don’t speak about it during those credits, if I don’t take those moments to let it sink in, the film is not likely to leave a lasting impact on me.

Not all movies should make a lasting impact on me. They can’t all be Silver Linings Playbook or Flight or Lincoln or Argo (or 2009’s Star Trek for that matter). But the ones that can – the ones that should – I think I owe them the end credits.

After all, I’m normally over $100 in anyway. I might as well stick around.