o'russell's ABSCAM movie AMERICAN HUSTLE

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