o'russell's ABSCAM movie AMERICAN HUSTLE

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?

(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