Movie Review: American Hustle

American Hustle
Directed By: David O’Russell
Starring: Amy Adams, Christian Bale, Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, Jeremy Renner, Robert De Niro, Michael Pena

Premise: American Hustle is about Irving Rosenfield (Christian Bale), a married con man who falls in love with a seductive and equally cunning woman (Amy Adams). Together they run cons each taking on a role, her as a charming British woman Sydney Prosser. When they are caught by a desperate-to-make-a-name-for-himself, FBI agent Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper) he forces them to work a heist involving the New Jersey Mayor (Jeremy Renner), gambling, fake sheiks (a hilarious Michael Pena), and the mafia in order for them to avoid prosecution. Everything seems to be going well, that is until Irving’s unpredictable wife (Jennifer Lawrence) joins in the mix.

 

Things To Know About American Hustle

 

As a movie, it’s not Oscar worthy, but Amy Adams sure is.
The movie, as a whole, is nothing special. But when you break it down into little pieces, it has some incredible parts to it. The writing is great. The dialogue was witty, funny, and clever and the way the characters related to each other was extremely dynamic. The plot wasn’t particularly remarkable long cons have become such a staple in many movies now-a-days (you can blame Ocean’s 11 for that). It sometimes became side-tracked and muddled. Luckily for David O’Russell, he had Amy Adams on his side to keep things a float.

Amy Adams is so damn good.
Like really really damn good. First of all, she looked gorgeous. Beautiful dresses with strategically placed double stick tape. Secondly, she showed great range. It was a new side of her and there was something so uninhibited about it. The way she played off of Bradley Cooper and Christian Bale was great, but there was something electric that happened when she was joined with Jennifer Lawrence.

Jennifer Lawrence stole every scene she was in.
Okay, so she may be a little young to play a role like this. And she most definitely stood out like a sore thumb, but there was no denying that she had a presence in this movie. Her character was wild, unpredictable, and completely out of her mind. And Jennifer Lawrence brought that spark she brings to all her roles when she gets really really tense. It was there when she was yelling at Bradley Cooper in Silver Linings Playbook, it was there when she was yelling at Haymitch in Catching Fire or screaming for Peeta, and it was everywhere in this movie. Her scenes with Amy Adams were really incredible, tense chemistry palpable. Besides watching people have crazy break downs is a great American pastime.

Jeremy Renner and Bradley Cooper were a little out of place.
Christian Bale really immersed himself in his role and he was great to watch, beer belly and all. However, Jeremy Renner and Bradley Cooper felt not of the time. They felt too contemporary. Cooper had his moments, but it was too difficult seeing Jeremy as his character instead of as Jeremy Renner. I don’t know if it was the development of their characters, their acting, or just the fact that they were miscast. I loved Cooper in Silver Linings Playbook, but he was out of place here.

This is a movie to watch for the performances alone. Amy Adams is at her very best and should give Sandra Bullock a run for her money come Oscar time. American Hustle is definitely a movie to check out.

Rating: 3 ½ Stars

 

 

 

 

 

Movie Review: The Dark Knight

Close, but no cigar. TDKR was a lot of bang for the buck, but it didn’t have enough surprises.

The Dark Knight Rises

Starring: The entire cast of Inception (minus Leonardo Dicaprio), plus Christian Bale and Anne Hathaway. To be more specific, the above people plus, Joseph Gordon Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Tom Hardy, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Gary Oldman, plus a bunch of surprises!

 

Premise: When we last left Batman eight years ago, he was on the run, accused of killing Harvey Dent so that Dent’s death could promote change in Gotham. Since then, Bruce Wayne has made himself a shut-in in his own home, hiding from the world and any human contact. Though there are still petty criminals – such as “robin-hood” jewel thief – out there, organize crime has been crushed under the Dent Law. That is until a new evil arrives at Gotham named, Bane, a masked (for lack of a better word) terrorist that threatens to bring down the Batman, Bruce Wayne, and destroy Gotham once and for all.

My Review: I’ll just say it. Let’s just cut the cord and say it. The Dark Knight was the better of this trilogy. And since everyone is comparing it to The Avengers…I feel like The Avengers was the better movie. There. I said it. It’s done. It’s out there.

The Dark Knight Rises wasn’t bad. It was really, really good, in fact. The movie looked fantastic. Seeing it in IMAX, I could definitely tell that it was shot on an IMAX camera. The action sequences looked incredible. But when it was all said and done, I didn’t walk out of the theater feeling jazzed, feeling excited, feeling like I wanted to talk and talk and talk about it. The movie was definitely set up as the last movie of a trilogy. With each face that popped up, you were reminded of an old friend, an old, comfortable feeling. However, the problem with that is with each passing beat, you felt exactly what the movie was building towards, and you knew exactly how it was going to end. And then, it ended exactly like that…with maybe one twist I didn’t see coming.

Though it was the perfect ending to the trilogy, it all felt too neat and tidy. I just wanted something more. To read what I liked and disliked about the movie check out my list below…

Rating: Almost 4 Stars…almost.

 

 

 

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SPOILER ALERT!!

SPOILER ALERT!! DO NOT CROSS THIS LINE IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE MOVIE! SPOILER ALERT!! SPOILER ALERT!!

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

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5 Things I Liked About This Movie

1)      Michael Caine – He was fabulous in this movie and had much more to do than he did in TDK. Even in his small role he added so much depth and heartbreak to his character. He was magical on screen.

2)      Anne Hathaway – Okay, so I just like the girl. I’ve seen most, if not all of the movies she’s in. I think she’s a fine actress. I was a bit worried he role as Catwoman would be all one liners and sexiness, but I was pleasantly surprised. Though she had a lot of one-liners and was in a costume so tight you could hear the sound of the skin hugging leather as she walked, Anne brought out the more human side of Catwoman as Selina Kyle. Plus, she also provided a lot of comic relief, and we all love a kick-ass girl that can make us laugh.

3)      Batman had a worthy adversary. Don’t get me wrong Joker had the smarts and he was a great, arguably the greatest villain of Christopher Nolan’s Trilogy. But there was something about watching Bane kick the ass out of Batman that made the costs feel that much higher. Okay so it wasn’t quite the same feeling as watching Thor and Iron Man battle it out, but it did feel quite epic. And it was hard to watch.

4)      **SPOILER ALERT!!!**SPOILER ALERT!!!** I love that the movie had a happy ending. I felt satisfied with Bruce Wayne’s journey and I’m glad he got the girl. Selina Kyle was the right girl all along – it just didn’t feel right with Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard). I also they didn’t embellish anything. All Selina did was slightly turn her head in the blurry foreground, and that was enough for us to know that Bruce got his happy ending. Good, subtle work there Christopher Nolan.

5)      **SPOILER ALERT!!!**SPOILER ALERT!!!** Joseph Gordon Levitt as Robin. That was a wonderful idea. I was convinced the last 30 minutes of the movie that they were setting JGL up to be the next Batman. However, with this revelation there’s no where you can go with it. You can’t make a Robin movie. I think JGL’s overall contribution to the movie was very successful. He actually had more screen time than most of the other players.

 

5 Things I Didn’t Like About This Movie

1)      The predictability. I go back and forth debating about whether it would have been better had Bruce Wayne/Batman died this tragic hero. But the minute Alfred talked about all these things he imagined for Bruce’s life, I knew that was exactly what would happen. Especially since he went into such specific detail about it. Don’t get me wrong, it was a nice, sweet, touch, but the set up for it, took away from the impact.

2)      Repeating plot points. Bane taking the football field, then the city of Gotham hostage for some weird social experiment. Um, didn’t The Joker do this in TDK? Can’t someone just be evil because they’re evil? Just for the fun of it? The whole thing just felt recycled. Now granted the football collapsing into itself with one of the players not even noticing until he made his touchdown was a pretty fantastic piece of action. But then having Bane take the entire stadium hostage, say some words we can’t understand with the exception of “nuclear bomb”, “trigger man”, “if you escape you die”, it all just felt….contrived.

3)      Where are our heroes? Bruce Wayne/Batman and Commissioner Gordon were out of commission for most of the movie. What’s up with that? I understand Bruce Wayne had to go through this whole “life changing,” “who am I” sort of journey, but it just took him so long to get there.

4)      It was dark. Like really, really dark. There was this heavy feeling all throughout the film. I understand it’s not that type of movie. But it is a comic book movie at the same time. Even though there were a few light hearted, chuckle-worthy moments, for the most part I felt like the weight of the world was on its shoulders – or Batman’s shoulders.

5)      **MAJOR PLOT POINT SPOILERS**DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE MOVIE** The actions of some of the characters/authority figures were not believable, leaving us with unanswered questions that BUG ME. Would the world really just abandon a city refusing to let anyone escape? If people can sneak in, no one could get communication to the outside world that the bomb was going to explode anyway so that they could let as many people escape in the final moments as possible? How did Bruce Wayne get from the prison back to Gotham City so fast? How does everyone, even a little boy know Bruce Wayne is Batman except for Gordon, who’s supposed to be a detective? Why does Selina Kyle dress up like a cat? So. Many. Questions.

6)      (Yeah, sorry, this needed to be done.) The Batman? What’s up with calling Batman, “The Batman”? Is it a comic book thing? It just bugs me and sounds pretentious. The Batman. Did they do that in TDK?

 

 

 

Movie Review: The Fighter

I went into this movie, with high high high expectations, and at times that can be a movie’s worst downfall. Sometimes the hype is so big that when you get to the movie your brain leaves little margin for error. However, this is not the case with The Fighter. Everything you HEAR, SEE, READ about The Fighter is true, and also so much more.

 

 

Title: The Fighter

Cast: Christian Bale, Mark Wahlberg, Amy Adams, Melissa Leo.

 

My Review: All you really need to know about this movie can be summed up in six simple words: THE FIGHTER HAS A LOT OF HEART. Okay, maybe that’s seven letters. Mark Walberg plays Micky Ward, a boxer who’s forever been living in the shadow of his once-famous-now-crackhead brother, Dickie Ecklund, Christian Bale, who may, or may not have knocked out Sugar Ray Leonard. He’s not only living in that shadow in the public, but also in his family. Micky’s mother, Melissa Leo, seems to have rose colored glasses on when it comes to Dickie, also known as denial. But who really wants to believe that their children need help?

This movie, pulls you in with out you knowing it. I love movies that get you so involved you want to yell out all the things that come to your mind in that moment. And some people in my packed theater did, though I held back. The under-dog story, though predicable, was mesmerizing. Just because something is predictable, doesn’t mean the story is good. If the story is good, if the characters are good, if the movie gives you something to fiercely fight for, then screw the fact that it’s predictable.

Christian Bale. I have a love-hate relationship with Christian Bale, though I find his Batman voice ridiculous, I’ve always loved the guy’s amazing ability to act. I’ve loved him ever since Newsies. (And he does get to show off his singing chops in this movie as well). But I have to admit, I have an tendency to dislike actors who do something that in my mind is unforgivable. I dislike Angelina Jolie for breaking up Brad and Jen’s marriage, I dislike Jennifer Garner for breaking up with Scott Foley because she was getting to famous, etc, etc. (I know, petty) And I disliked Christian Bale, after hearing his now infamous Terminator 3 rant. But he was SO GOOD in this movie, he was so committed, so METHOD, that it’s hard not to like the guy. It’s hard not to root for the guy. I think Christian Bale deserves an Oscar for the role. I, will, however, continue to dislike Angelina Jolie.

Mark Walberg, was great as well, but he always is. But this was definitely Christian Bale’s movie, as well as Melissa Leo, and Amy Adams, and all the other supporting cast. Amy Adams was totally likeable and I loved seeing her in a tough girl character not taking any s*** from anyone. I’d want to be that characters friend, because no one would ever mess with me again if I were hanging out with her.

In summary: GO SEE THIS MOVIE. It’ll make you laugh, it’ll make you angry, it’ll make you frustrated, it’ll make you cry, and it’ll make you cheer. Everything a good movie should be. This movie has definitely breached the top 5.

 

Rating: 4 1/2 stars out of 5.