o'russell's ABSCAM movie AMERICAN HUSTLE

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

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.

https://www.yahoo.com/movies/american-hustle-sparks-1-million-libel-suit-filed-by-101422631012.html

101,422,631,012 is a lot of people suing.

(Sorry, get the hook.)

I finally watched this over the weekend on DVD. It succeeded for me as a very silly comedy. Parts of the script seemed to reach for a greater significance or deeper message, but the tide of ridiculousness was much too strong and the message was far too slight to pay any attention to. I understand the Boogie Nights comparisons made elsewhere in the thread, but this movie was much weaker imo. It did make me laugh, so there's that in its favor.

http://www.projectcasting.com/news/david-o-russell-amy-adams/

Clooney's story makes him out to be like a drunk dude in Hoboken on a Saturday night.

accidentally just put some foil in the science oven :-(

Dude's kind of human garbage, apparently?

http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/sns-zap-ent-david-russell-groping-story.html

is there a thread for joy i thought i remembered one

he reshot the third act after test screenings. ho.

yea just saw clips on charlie rose it looks rough

i watched like the first half hour of this and was extremely bored so i stopped it. it seemed like the entire reason for the movie was to cosplay the 70s. kind of impressive on a formal level (set design, soundtrack, etc.) but not really engaging at all. felt like the kind of movie made with a bunch of producers patting each other on the back the whole time for being so clever and hip.

otm, there is an inherent self-satisfaction in the idea of making another movie with the same personnel in front of and behind the camera, ick no thanks

did surprisingly well in the box office this weekend as anti-SW fare, heard lots of people in the multiplex yesterday discussing it -- ugh.

discussing different films in alternate posts: C or D

I prefer my 70s rehashes to have spaceships and aliens over smug cokeheads with mustaches.

ok so the irl events depicted in this movie took place in the 90's, and at some point in the film someone says "no one will buy a 20$ mop in 1995", yet DOR period-pieced it (cars, clothes, interiors) as taking place in the 70s? odd choice. i saw it with my family on boxing day and we argued over when it was set until someone checked it on their phone

definitely the worst of his last three, but more interesting than i would have though possible for a movie about someone inventing a mop..? i thought it was cool as a parable on the pitfalls of patent law, incomplete contracts, and the high risks low-income people have to take on to get their inventions to market. bradley cooper was useless, the awesomeness of jenifer lawrence definitely the propelling force

im tired to really parse my thoughts properly, but i think joy is quite misunderstood. its better than his last two movies (the marty-tribute american hustle and the icky silver linings). and for all the reviews talking about awkward shifts in tone, actually, i think the tonal shifts are pretty well integrated.

good things about this - a genuine rags to riches movie, a working/lower middle class family in a hollywood movie (not esp common anymore), some fabulous visuals/framing, jennifer lawrence and bradley cooper's performances; a racially diverse cast, and a film that manages to inspire you without being mawkish about it. its one of the few genuinely good feel-good movies ive seen in a while. ive heard some critics LOLing about its premise, which seems cruel. it might just be a mop, but hey, its still a business. and this addresses the setbacks any new entrepreneur might have to face, while also managing to express the desperation of wanting to do something with your life. i think this is what the film/JL pulls off the best.

bad things - a few scenes were a bit wes anderson-ish. it was wrapped up too neatly. i think russell's stylised approach might have cropped o ut a lot of the individual stuff about this story; sometimes i felt like i was watching dragons den, there were a few scenes with overly expository dialogue (though it was generally well delivered, which made it seem a little less forced).

sometimes i felt like i was watching dragons den

LOL, otm

Found some of Joy puzzling--things like the scene where everyone was urging Lawrence to declare bankruptcy; it didn't feel right to me that panic would set in so soon--but overall, I didn't mind it. Thought De Niro was better than I'd see him for a while (admittedly, I skip most everything he does nowadays). Cream's "I Feel Free" was wasted.

As with Gone Girl, liked American Hustle a little more second time around. I think Bale's excellent; he completely disappears into the role. Many excellent musical cues. Don't think it means much, don't think it tries to mean much.

you and I are gonna argue about the musical cues and Bale until the Atlantic absorbs Hialeah and Doral.

Totally loved "10538 Overture" (such a great choice), Chicago, and "Dirty Work," and things like "Jean Genie" and "I Feel Love" worked well too. I mean, I know there wasn't a great deal of imagination at work with a couple of those, but there's just a knack for matching the song to the moment throughout. Much better than anything found in Joy.

joy is at heart a more hateful elitist absolutely fucking stupid story than atlas shrugged and i'm sort of horrified that it hasn't been more generally received that way (from what i've seen?).