AMERICAN HUSTLE — Page 2

I still stand that the movie is still more screwball comedy than Martin Scorsese. It's like a 70s movies with 30s-40s nostalgia. As Ebiri notes, in terms of moral point of view, Scorsese and Russell could not be any more different. The camera movement is really no different than The Fighter or Silver Linings Playbook.

Ray: "I agree with you though that the scene between Amy Adams and Jennifer Lawrence is perfection, the two of them on screen is explosive. What did you think of Jennifer Lawrence's and Amy Adams' performances in general?"

Me: I'm a huge huge fan of the sublime Jennifer Lawrence, she's been absolutely marvelous in everything I've seen her in, even that ridiculous HUNGER GAMES thing. The sight of J-Law furiously cleaning house while lip-synching Live And Let Die is one of the great highlights in American Comic Acting.

I'm rather new to Amy Adams, only having seen her in THE MASTER, and she's excellent in both films. Her unspoken declaration of WAR on J-Law in HUSTLE was a joy -- never has a previously tedious film been so completely kicked into HIGH GEAR.

I keep coming back to Christian Bale as being the chief problem with the film. I really hated his performance. The stunt combover and the stunt paunch and the stunt clothes and De Niro mugging and the wandering accent left me very cold indeed, lots of Big Choices were being made without any of the real internal work that might have made me see it as anything but a lot of gimmicks. The character only came kind of alive toward the end in his interaction with Renner, and his, to me, frankly unlikely development of a conscience, but by then it was too late.

As for the film's Debt to Scorsese -- yeah, right, homage rather than theft and all that, okay fine whatever. I just didn't see that the alleged "homage" really amounted to much of anything except appropriation of a lot of filmmaking gimmicks like camerawork and multiple voiceovers. It just served to underline the comparative banality of what was going on in Russell's film compared with Scorsese's GOODFELLAS and CASINO etc.

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Updated On: 12/31/13 at 09:21 AM

Respectfully disagree with Roscoe about Bale's performance. Yes, there might be 'stunt" in every stamp of the character, but he's the heart of the movie, everything he does in this movie has voluminous heart. This is a very different kind of role for Bale, not since his youth have we seen him so much in love with life, with his leading ladies, and here he's even in full on crush with Jeremy Renner. It's great to see him play such a loving if flawed wackjob of a man. His performance is my favorite in this film with a killer cast, with Adams's a close second.. and to say that takes nothing away from the fact that everyone in the movie is wonderful.

Updated On: 12/31/13 at 10:24 AM

I saw this today and was unimpressed. Great acting from Bale and Adams-they were the standouts. great chemistry. Bale was in top form.

Surprised at all the J-Law love. Found her minuscule role grating and over acted. Like an SNL skit. Pretty awful.

Found the story clunky and confusing and not really compelling.

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Amy Adams also has a nice supporting role in "Her".

Lawrence was distractingly bad. The film was clumsily edited, and quite the snoozefest. I kept checking the time to see how much more I had to sit through. I don't get all the hype over David O. Russell's films.

The only performances of the main cast I bought were Adams and Renner. Adams was sensational and Renner is kind of incapable of striking a false note.

Bale is never anything other than Bale making choices. I have never been a fan and this hasn't changed anything. Cooper was laying on the gas pedal a bit hard and it was distracting. And Jennifer Lawrence's Great Neck-by-way-of Kabuki performance was highly entertaining. I would not necessarily say it was good.

To be fair, I was entertained. But it felt overlong and unwieldy. I can't understand it being viewed as the best picture of the year. GRAVITY was a more complete experience