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Speaking of Carmine, I really think that if anyone was going to get an Oscar nom for best supporting actor it should have been Renner over Cooper.
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Jan 16, 2014 20:46
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Renner definitely deserves it over Cooper.echoplex posted:Exactly how I felt. Carmine's ending was at odds with the rest of the tone of the film, which I found a bit troubling.
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Jan 16, 2014 22:57
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I liked this movie quite a bit. "Everyone hustles everyone" may not be the most original observation, but the character interaction as they all attempt to con each other for their personal reasons made a pretty entertaining ride. My only real disappointment with the movie: I thought for sure that at the end Bale would lose the combover. After opening the movie on the spectacularly Trump-like hairdo and monologuing repeatedly about fooling yourself as well as others, the hair seemed to have pretty obvious symbolic meaning. When the character tried to go straight and live honestly, it just seemed to follow that the hair would go too.
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Jan 16, 2014 23:59
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I walked out of this really disappointed and it's been tough for me to place why, exactly. It's like, the movie almost works in a lot of different places, and sometimes you are watching it and thinking "wow Amy Adams/Jennifer Lawrence/Louie is giving a really good performance right this exact second" but then the rest of the time it feels like you're watching a bunch of actors who just got up from a nap and are really looking forward to taking another nap, going through the motions of a story that is supposed to be circuitous or generally complicated in some way even though the director is clearly not interested in telling it. About half the jokes played well and then the other half felt like that video where they removed the laugh track from the big bang theory. It just felt sloppy, I guess.
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Jan 17, 2014 00:46
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I've always been terribly bored by Jeremy Renner on screen. I'm really impressed that he was able to excel so well in a role that ideally would have been played by Joe Pesci thirty years ago.
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Jan 17, 2014 04:14
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Jeremy Renner's character was pretty forgettable and while his performance was good it didn't match up to the "wacky very unsubtle satire"-esque poo poo that all the other actors are getting recognition for.
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Jan 17, 2014 04:52
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bam thwok posted:American Hustle had all the trappings of a masterful film: Trunk shots borrowed from Tarantino, the legend himself, De Niro, as the big bad mob boss, the period stylings of Argo, the promise of titillating sex, corrupting drugs, and an intricate miasma of "what's the con and what isn't?" hanging over the characters' heads. But all of those are subverted. Honestly I didn't even like Louis CK in his role because it sort of took me out of things in the moment. I could handle the cast chewing the scenery in 70s garb but then all of a sudden it's like "Hey, there's Louis CK within this setting being Louis CK. Okay..." If I left the film with any real positives it was my being impressed with Jennifer Lawrence. I hadn't really seen her in many films (well, Winter's Bone and First Class, I guess), just sorta knew her vaguely as the Hunger Games chick (and I haven't seen any of those movies). I think she did a great job with Rosalyn and despite some scenes where it maybe didn't work as well for me (Live and Let Die) for the most part I was very impressed. Punkin Spunkin fucked around with this message at 11:47 on Jan 17, 2014 |
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Jan 17, 2014 11:44
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Surlaw posted:Renner definitely deserves it over Cooper. To me it feels like the film moves towards an "alls well that ends well" ending, and overall I'd have said the tone was lighter than it was darker purely for the comedy side of things. To me it doesn't really fit - it skews bleak in a way that is divorced from the rest of the film perhaps?
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Jan 17, 2014 12:20
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Slackerish posted:Jeremy Renner's character was pretty forgettable and while his performance was good it didn't match up to the "wacky very unsubtle satire"-esque poo poo that all the other actors are getting recognition for. Does that say something good or bad about the other actors though? In some ways, I think the main cast was hamming it up a bit, and Renner was playing his role with a lot of sincerity. Just the scene where he finds out that he was betrayed - that wasn't overacting, he did an excellent job there. I would have preferred him nominated over Cooper. TheFallenEvincar posted:If I left the film with any real positives it was my being impressed with Jennifer Lawrence. I hadn't really seen her in many films (well, Winter's Bone and First Class, I guess), just sorta knew her vaguely as the Hunger Games chick (and I haven't seen any of those movies). I think she did a great job with Rosalyn and despite some scenes where it maybe didn't work as well for me (Live and Let Die) for the most part I was very impressed. She's legitimately a good actress, and a good reason why the Hunger Games movies are good. (Also Jeffrey Wright was in the last movie and I was  when I saw him.)
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Jan 17, 2014 16:12
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echoplex posted:To me it feels like the film moves towards an "alls well that ends well" ending, and overall I'd have said the tone was lighter than it was darker purely for the comedy side of things. To me it doesn't really fit - it skews bleak in a way that is divorced from the rest of the film perhaps? Carmine and Irving are crooks out of necessity. They understand the world is corrupt, and they compromise themselves accordingly for the greater good (New Jersey; Irving's family). Richie on the other hand sees himself as a hero, clearly fighting for good. His assumptions about himself and who the FBI are allow him and other agents to just become a rival street gang. The attempted rape and the assault show that Richie is just a mentally broken and sad man looking to validate himself through whatever means. He just chose a badge instead of life of crime. In the end, I don't think we really get a happy ending. Carmine's in jail with a ruined career. Irving's son is probably worse off than when the movie started as he splits his time with the Tellegio crime family. Sure Richie got his comeuppance, but his boss is still in charge. The movie ends with the notion that it's a lovely world defined by crime where nobody comes out uncompromised. I don't think it's a happy movie is what I'm saying.
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Jan 18, 2014 16:27
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I didn't like this movie. I'm genuinely confused as to why critics all falling all over it; The Wolf of Wallstreet wasn't great, but it was better than this. That said, the Science Oven scenes were pretty good. Hey don't put metal in there!
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Jan 18, 2014 19:01
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For me, the funniest part of the whole movie is near the end when Jennifer Lawrence says "hey honey I don't want you to be mad or anything but I really think you should open up your mind to maybe getting um, well, a divorce..." and Bale is just "uhh... yeah, yeah... ok" with a completely straight face I busted out laughing so hard it was the perfect way to end that scene and relieve the tension from that plotline.
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Jan 18, 2014 22:38
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This strongly reminded me off the BBC TV series Hustle, and I thought it was great. It was clear how it was going to end, but getting there was fun.
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Jan 19, 2014 11:39
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Seedge posted:This strongly reminded me off the BBC TV series Hustle, and I thought it was great. It was clear how it was going to end, but getting there was fun. This movie wasn't half as a clever as a even a bad episode of that show. The show was also firmly tongue-in-cheek with lots of winking and nodding to the audience. More of a "We're having a rollicking farce of a time" versus "WE ARE SERIOUS ACTORS WATCH AS WE GAIN WEIGHT AND CRY AREN'T WE SOOOO OVER THE TOP?".
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Jan 19, 2014 21:34
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I found it enjoyable and entertaining, if a bit long and convoluted. Still not sure if Cooper's acting was irritating or he was playing an irritating character. Probably a bit of both.uublog posted:Also, I thought the cinematography when they're walking into "Studio 54" was really cool, with the lights flashing, and it seemed like Cooper was gliding across the floor, and then like ten seconds into it I wondered if I was having a seizure and I was like, "hmm, maybe this is a bit too much." AH had more and made much better use in the soundtrack. Binary Logic fucked around with this message at 23:50 on Jan 19, 2014 |
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Jan 19, 2014 23:48
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Finally saw this movie. And boy, is it pretty or what? And the music was amazing, gotta love the 70s. On top of that, all of the actors did a good job, but especially Renner and Lawrence. Yet I didn't care about anything that happened. At all. It was like watching a beautifully animated landscape of the late 70s. There was stuff going on, but: who cares? Those lights, man, look at all the lights!
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Jan 24, 2014 23:29
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Jack's Flow posted:Finally saw this movie. And boy, is it pretty or what? And the music was amazing, gotta love the 70s. On top of that, all of the actors did a good job, but especially Renner and Lawrence. Yet I didn't care about anything that happened. At all. It was like watching a beautifully animated landscape of the late 70s. There was stuff going on, but: who cares? Those lights, man, look at all the lights! Yeah, that was kinda my impression. I didn't really care about the film as a whole, but the acting was great and the imagery was good.
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Jan 26, 2014 03:01
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I quite liked this, I didn't think it was amazing but I enjoyed it nonetheless. To a certain extent I think it was a lot better made than it actually was, what I mean is the acting was fantastic, Amy Adams especially, the cinematography, the production design and the costumes were all fantastic, but the film itself was less than the sum of its parts. I do think it got better in the second half when it seemed to embrace being a comedy more than it was towards the start and science oven  totally owned.
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Jan 26, 2014 04:51
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Tagichatn posted:He just said a generic reply for concluding a business deal, I didn't get the impression that he understood what de Niro said. I agree and this part was probably both the best moment of the film - the reveal that De Niro spoke Arabic, although it had to be coming with the constant "so he doesn't speak arabic/he's from mexico/he doesn't speak arabic/he's from mexico" stuff - I was cringing and wondering what would happen. And then suddenly it was forgotten and somehow the stock stuff that he could say was enough. Hell if nothing else surely Bradley Cooper should have been able to speak it, since he's the translator, at least in theory? I did enjoy the film an awful lot but that moment in an otherwise mostly "real" feeling thing totally threw me.
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Jan 30, 2014 19:21
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This movie felt like David O. Russell tried REALLY hard to make a Scorsese movie. The music, the cinematography, the subject matter, etc. Great performances all around, but the movie was kind of all over the place for me. It just felt sloppy plot-wise. Just a very poor job of actually telling the story. And all the characters come off as scumbags and you don't really want to cheer for any of them. Was anyone else waiting for Louis CK to say "You can't go in there. Your father is dead."?
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Apr 6, 2014 14:16
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I saw this on a plane. This is totally a plane movie. The acting was great enough for me to look past the contrived plot. As somebody mentioned, I really like how much attention Cooper and Bale pay to their hair. It's the most visual metaphor for how insecure both men are and how they feel the need to reinvent themselves.
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May 19, 2014 20:39
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