o'russell's ABSCAM movie AMERICAN HUSTLE

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

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?

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?).