American Hustle

Four David O. Russell veterans team up to present one of the most interesting and entertaining films of the year. American Hustle is a film about two things: deception and survival. Be prepared to sit back and immerse yourself in a tale of deceit, lies, and passion. 

Set in New Jersey, the film follows Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale) and his lover and partner in crime Sydney Posser (Amy Adams). Caught in a scheme by FBI agent Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper) they are forced to work with him to pull their largest heist on Camden, NJ Mayor Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner) to avoid jail time. Rosenfeld agrees as he attempts to keep his wife Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence) under control and quiet.

In the vein of a more accessible and comprehensible David Lynch, Russell really enjoys what he does and it is apparent. While it may be easier to understand than Mulholland Drive, it's still easy to lose your footing and wind up confusing yourself, but that's what makes it fun! It's easy to see Russell's passion overflow out of the film. 

The details all the way down to the music, set pieces, and costumes take you pack to the 70's; to a world of con-artists, mafia, and the FBI. The music alone was some of the best soundtrack work in recent memory. However, the colors, patterns, and clothes worn by every character both added to the feel of the 70's and added to the depth of the characters. 

David O. Russell crafts a wonderful plot built around four incredible characters, and that's where the beauty of this film truly lies. Unfortunately the story itself brings nothing new to the genre, but the characters move the film along with ease. Every character is played with precision and skill by the Russell veterans from 2008's The Fighter, Amy Adams and Christian Bale, and those from 2012's Silver Linings Playbook, Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence. 

Each of the actors shines in his or her respective roles. Christian Bale plays the con-artist who believes himself atop the world with perfection. Amy Adams portrays her seductive character, the lover and conning partner of Bale's, with ease. But the other two actors outshine the other two. Providing much of the comedic relief Cooper and Lawrence continue to show their acting prowess. Cooper plays the cocky FBI agent who coaxes the two con-artists into his master plan. He plays the sometimes crazed, oft arrogant character with perfection. Jennifer Lawrence has become one of the best young actresses in the business today and she does not disappoint in American Hustle. As the wife of Bale's character she plays the older, eccentric, and inquisitive character just over-the-top enough to make it believable. She never ceases to impress. Even Jeremy Renner nails his role as the near-perfect mayor. 

Overall, this is an amazing film in terms of directing, acting, and design. Every actor is successful in bringing the characters' passion to the screen. Each of those three things combine to pull you into the world surrounding the characters and make you feel like you were transported back forty years.

9.5/10

Oscar 2013 Predictions

One week from today will mark the 85th Academy Awards and it'll be another year to remember. The Oscars are a time to look back on all the movies from the past year and celebrate them all! Like every year, I make my predictions in several of the major categories.

Best Supporting Actor
Should win: Christoph Waltz or Robert DeNiro
Will win: Waltz

Christoph Waltz plays every role he is in perfectly and his role as Dr. King Schultz is no different. Making an enjoyable character really fun to watch on screen and help tell the story. It was great to see Robert DeNiro playing a more powerful role than his other recent roles. Proving he still has his acting chops about him. It'd be great to see him win. And finally there's Tommy Lee Jones, who worked well in Lincoln and showed audiences how difficult compromising politically was in those times, but I don't think this is his year.

Best Supporting Actress
Should and will win (without question): Anne Hathaway

Using the live singing to its fullest, she nearly steals the entire movie with her brief time on screen. Showing anguish, pain, and a little bit of hope, Hathaway as Fantine blew this role out of the water and showed that she can get serious when she's not flirting with death as Selina Kyle in The Dark Knight Rises.

Best Screenplay
Should win: Django Unchained
Will win: Django Unchained

Possibly one of Quentin Tarantino's best scripts, I think it will take home the Oscar for best screenplay this year. With creative dialogue he sets up his gruesome violence, which he's known for, and makes you laugh when the violence is directed at slave owners/drivers. Only screenplay that might beat this out is Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom. His story of young love holds true to his quirky style of humor and show an odd take on the first love of two young children.

Best Adapted Screenplay:
Should win: Lincoln or Silver Linings Playbook
Will win: Argo

Having not read any of the things these stories are based on, I am looking at them solely based on the translation to the screen. Nothing can stop the Academy and every other award show giving the award to Argo, probably to make up for the fact that Affleck wasn't nominated for best director. That's why it'll win this award. It's not the best movie of the year. The most deserving of this award is Silver Linings Playbook. I didn't know it would be such an enjoyable film. Every twist and line of dialogue combined with the various extreme characters, made this a ton of fun to watch from beginning to end. Lincoln on the other hand is equally as good as Playbook, but much more dramatic and slow-paced. The part of Lincoln is seemingly written directly for Daniel Day-Lewis, much like his last award winning role as Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood.


Best Director:
Should win: David O. Russell
Will win: Steven Spielberg

With Affleck getting snubbed for this category, it could very feasibly fall into the hands of Steven Spielberg, again. Spielberg is a master of storytelling and he deserves this nomination as much as anyone. However, I'd like to see a comedic director win and Sliver Linings Playbook is just the movie that could do it.

Best Actress:
Should and will win: Jennifer Lawrence

Many critics claim that Jessica Chastain's performance in Zero Dark Thirty is the best female performance of the year, but that is simply not true. Jennifer Lawrence is more passionate and embraces her character's crazy side. She plays Tiffany, a recent widow, dealing with her new found intimacy issues. At the most pivotal moment she proves that she cares about Pat (Bradley Cooper) and does what Pat can't: stand up to his father Pat Sr. (Robert DeNiro). She sells this moment of genius absolutely perfectly. Lawrence fulfills what it means to be a best actress, whereas Jessica Chastain has very brief explosions of emotion that generally do nothing for the character.

Best Actor:
Should and will win: Daniel Day-Lewis

The Academy can make history this year. If Daniel Day-Lewis he will become the first actor to win this award three times. Only Walter Brennan (three times for best supporting actor) and Jack Nicholson (two for lead actor, one for supporting actor) have won three acting Oscars. Who is more deserving of this honor than Daniel Day-Lewis. A character actor who always finds a way to embody his character, whether it is a writer/painter who can only move his left foot (My Left Foot 1989), a gang leading butcher (Gangs of New York, 2002), or his most recent best actor win as a greedy oil prospector (There Will Be Blood, 2007). His acting can't be beat. And this year is no different. On screen there is no actor, no Daniel Day-Lewis. There is only Abraham Lincoln. He and Sally Field reportedly would text each other only in 1850s language to never be out of character. 

The only performance I could see beating him out would be Bradley Cooper, but that's probably only because I enjoyed Silver Linings Playbook immensely.

Best Picture:

Who will walk away with the biggest prize of the night? Again, critics and other award shows would have you believe that Argo is the best movie of the year, but it might only win to give Ben Affleck some redemption. However it's rare that a movie wins best picture without being nominated in the directing category. But Hollywood loves nothing more than a movie revolving around the production of movies (Last year's The Artist, proved that). While I do agree that Argo is good, it just didn't hit everything I feel a best picture should. There were very few characters I related to, believed, or cared about.

Amour, Life of Pi, and Les Misérables will all fall short due to the nature of the awards. Amour shouldn't win because it will handily take the best foreign film award. Life of Pi ends too ambiguously in my opinion, though the Academy often likes ambiguous endings. Being visually stunning isn't always enough to win. And Les Mis is fine, but it felt too much like watching a stage production, which kind of defeats the purpose of it being a movie.

Django Unchained and Beasts of the Southern Wild are the two dark horses this year. A charming performance by new comer and youngest nominee (at five years old) Quvenzhané Wallis, which carries the entire film, is endearing enough that I think it could take everyone by surprise and win the grand prize. Quentin Tarantino's films have been on the cusp of winning best picture a few times in his career. Pulp Fiction and Inglourious Basterds being the other two. Django has the acting chops, outstanding directing, and great dialogue that it could win, though the lacking best director nomination almost discounts Django from winning, much like Argo.

The final three had been the top three pictures leading into award season, but the late run by Argo winning lots of awards has changed that. Unfortunately for fans of Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty politics have all but killed any momentum it could have gained. Arguments over the portrayal of information-getting tactics among other things turned many voters in the Academy away. The most deserving of this award, to me, is Lincoln. Usually I'm not a fan of period dramas, but it was so expertly crafted and acted that I can't help, but hope it beats all the other movies out. Then there's Silver Linings Playbook, and if you haven't caught on, this was my favorite of the best picture nominees by far. Endearing, relatable characters, a great underdog story, and entertaining dialogue make this a movie that won't soon be forgotten.

Will win: Lincoln
Should win: Lincoln

Who I'd like to see win: Silver Linings Playbook

There you have it. Another great year of movies will soon come to a close, opening the door for the blockbusters (Iron Man 3) and new horror movies (like last year's Cabin in the Woods). But looking back there are a few movies that were completely snubbed as there are every year. The Dark Knight Rises rounding out Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, should have received a few nominations including best picture, just based on how great the entire trilogy was. Sure the acting wasn't always the best, but Heath Ledger and Tom Hardy played two incredibly menacing villains. The Avengers, while being comic-book fanboys wet dreams, is only nominated for best visual effects and it will probably lose to Life of Pi.

Zero Dark Thirty

Zero Dark Thirty is a grim, detached portrait of the CIA manhunt for Osama bin Laden. Technically it is brilliant, utilizing its handheld camera to the peak of its potential. Professionally shooting the Seal Team 6 sequence impeccably, making it look like it could have come straight from a documentary.

First things first, I'm generally not the biggest fan of war movies. There are always exceptions, most recently with The Hurt Locker and, now again with Zero Dark Thirty. Two movies from Kathryn Bigelow. What I loved about Locker was how it became not about war or fighting, but a character drama about an adrenaline junkie and I was hoping for something similar here. Unfortunately much of the character development falls very short. Minimalistic interactions between characters give fleeting glances at what these people went through, where they came from, how learning new information affects their relationships with one another.

At its pivotal moment, Zero Dark Thirty is hollow. I go to the movies to see a plot with developed characters and relationships, not to just see a condensed ten-year news report, from what the CIA will share, of what happened. 

Jessica Chastain gives a decent performance, with a few cursory moments proving her acting ability. It's hard to truly put a word to her performance; how can you, when the majority of her time on screen is spent silently looking off camera. I felt more like I was watching a high schooler getting her senior pictures taken for much of the film. Brevity is probably the most appropriate term here. However, the moments where she holds nothing back are incredible and add much needed, albeit minuscule, emotion to the movie. Maybe that's the point. How calculating and cold you have to become to be in charge of something like this. Jason Clarke easily steals the screen when he shares it. Playing an interrogator who beats and tortures detainees, gives a brief glimpse at the humanity some people risked as a part of this manhunt.

One thing I was sure Zero would be is a love-letter to America. I was pleasantly surprised with a general worldly look at the hunt. Instead of focusing on only the United States, Zero Dark Thirty does an outstanding job reminding the audience that it was not just this country in search of Bin Laden, but that it affected the entire world. 

Where Zero Dark Thirty really shines is its development of information-getting techniques used throughout this hunt. The torture scenes were uncomfortable, but rightfully so. How can people be up in arms about torture methods exposed periodically during the war and the hunt for Bin Laden. They were dark, gritty, and felt real. Yes, there were parts that seemed excessive, but isn't that what happened in the real search? As a country the first thing thought to do was torture anyone thought could have an iota of information as to the whereabouts of Bin Laden. Later in the movie the interrogation techniques lighten up, but still hold the same power. 

Mark Bohl and the whole team working on the script had quite a task ahead of them when they began rewriting it after Bin Laden was announced dead. What worked very well was the final twenty-ish minutes of the movie, where Seal Team 6 makes the move into the compound. This sequence and its unabashed use of torture, when needed, are Zero Dark Thirty's saving graces. 

In the end I wouldn't be upset if it won best picture, but I really don't know that it will. Both Lincoln and Silver Linings Playbook were expertly crafted from top to bottom. My advice to you, don't take Zero Dark Thirty as pure fact or pure fiction, but how you take tequila, with a grain (usually more) of salt.

8/10

Golden Globes

Although the Golden Globe nominations just came out and I have a few movies to see (18 to see all the best screenplay, acting, and picture nods) it means one thing to me. The best time of the year for movies has finally begun.

As I do every year, I will attempt to see the other 18 movies by the time the awards happen (yet another reason I love winter break!). The Golden Globe nominations are a good place to start if you're looking for those outstanding movies you may have missed earlier in the year and are usually at least somewhat accurate when it comes to predicting the Oscars.

Looking at the nominations so far, four movies clearly stand-out: Lincoln, Zero Dark Thirty, Les Misérables, and Silver Linings Playbook. The leader of the pack is Lincoln, no surprise to anyone, with seven nominations, the other three falling behind (with four nominations) my least favorite nominee, Argo, and my most anticipated movie of the year: Django Unchained (each receiving five nods).

Of the six mentioned above, I've already seen three and the winners are clear: Lincoln and Sliver Linings Playbook hands down. However the buzz surrounding both Zero Dark Thirty and Les Mis may make me think twice.

If the past few years have taught us anything it's that Kathryn Bigelow knows how to make a war movie not revolve around a war (the main rationale behind her adrenaline junkie focused Hurt Locker taking the big prize at the Oscars). But how can one make a movie about the search for Osama Bin Laden not revolve around war? I don't think it can be done, which makes me think this will end up being reminiscent of past 'war-centered' award winners like Apocalypse Now, Platoon, and The Deer Hunter. Where this movie will be different is the fact that no one in America will be able leave the theater without wanting to chant "U.S.A."

This is what I expect to see surrounding me in the theater:

As much as I love The Hurt Locker and Kathryn Bigelow for taking down James Cameron and his precious Avatar"d," (Don't get me wrong, I like Avatar, but I would have liked it better had it been an original story) I think this is an low and easy way to get nominations. Take a story that everyone has at least heard about and make it into a movie. I sincerely hope I fall in love with this movie.

Now onto Les Mis. A musical. The last time a musical won was 2006's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Could this be the year to dethrone a comedy? Possible, but not likely. Either way, it is already being heralded already as one of the musical greats. Probably most famously for having the actors sing live on the screen. In the modern age, yes this is something new and rare, but when film first started, the only way to record sound was to actually have them sing live. Maybe the nostalgia will capture audiences the way it did last year in The Artist. Although for many I think it will add a feeling of watching an actual Broadway production, which will detract some, but attract many more.

Finally there is Quentin Tarantino's new film Django Unchained (for those who don't know, the 'D' is silent). In true 'him-fashion,' for lack of a better word, Tarantino has made what looks to be like the best western in years! I'm especially looking forward to seeing Leonardo DiCaprio and Christoph Waltz (both nominated for Best Supporting Actor) square off in the film. Both are able to carry weighted roles and make them look easy. Seeing Jamie Foxx and what I'm sure will be gratuitous violence through out is definitely exciting as well.

Other movies worth mentioning are the Ewan McGregor and Emily Blunt carried Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, the awkwardly adorable Moonrise Kingdom, and the apparently visually stunning Life of Pi (Move over Avatar).

While I still like the Golden Globes they pale in comparison to both the Oscars and the Emmys so no TV talk from me today. Even some of the movies were a surprise. There was talk of The Dark Knight Rises getting some attention, but alas, it went unnoticed. We shall see how these movies hold up through the coming months building up to the Oscars.

Silver Linings Playbook

Before I start this, I know I seem to love every movie I see. This is a problem for a lot of people. One of the most often questions I get is "how do you not like a movie?" My response usually involves something about how I find the things I like about a movie and remember those. And for the most part I do like every movie I see, but nowadays it's even more true. Maybe it's because I know the movies I want to see and I don't settle for other movies or maybe it is because movies are simply getting better overall. 

Yes, there are still the awful movies (Twilight series among others), but I tend to avoid seeing those without any problem. Occasionally watching a bad movie is a lot of fun (see the Step Up series), but once you figure out how to spot the winners from the losers going to the movies is always an enjoyable experience. Silver Linings Playbook is almost a hidden gem only because of its limited release.

It has been receiving attention for awhile since it debuted at film festivals across the country, even some Oscar buzz. I was skeptical about the Oscar talks until I saw it for myself. This movie comes out of left field and just works.

When you take a mentally unstable person and another mentally unstable person and make them the main character of your movie (or book) you open the door for anything to happen. Bradley Cooper's character, Patrick, spent eight months in a mental hospital for various reasons that I will not mention here and Jennifer Lawrence's character, Tiffany, has her own issues as well. The two compliment each other perfectly.

The story is very relatable on many levels. Either you have come in contact with someone with mental issues like the characters or you have actually acted like the characters in the film (with or without the instability). It follows the ups and downs of bipolarity through the characters and the plot and it is great to watch. I feel that you really get a chance to understand the troubles of mental instability all while being able to laugh. There were very few moments where I wasn't laughing.

Cooper and Lawrence deliver one hundred percent. I believed both of their mental instability. Whether it was acting or just a regular actor's personality doesn't matter. They were both incredible. Definite Oscar contenders (first for Cooper and second for Lawrence and so far my favorites to win them, but Lincoln will probably change at least the Best Actor). Robert DeNiro is stupendous as the father set in his ways. Other than that most of the characters fall by the wayside since they have minimal screen time...With one exception: Chris Tucker. He was an huge addition to the humor and you'll understand if you see the movie.

Overall, this is a great movie for everyone. No matter who is watching he or she will definitely be able to find something to enjoy in Silver Linings Playbook. There are multiple meanings for many of the jokes and lines throughout this movie and you can read into them however you like. And therein lies the beauty of this film. I think this is an instant classic and a must-see. It will build Oscar buzz and hopefully take a few awards.

9.5/10