BilmBlog500

A year ago this time I was leading the cheers for David Russell's Silver Linings Playbook. This year, I want to say clear as day that David Russell's American Hustle is a giant snow job of a good movie, and I cannot believe critics are falling for the hustle, I cared about the characters in Silver Linings Playbook.  It was old-fashioned at its heart and sweet at its core, and very well acted. I didn't care about a thing in American Hustle,  Christian Bale plays a two bit hustler whom I don't care about.  He runs a con with an FBI agent played by Bradley Cooper, whom I don't care about.  All the movie does is remind me constantly. of films like The Sting or Catch Me If You Can that do it better. There is the occasional pleasure.  De Niro is good and has a great moment.  Amy Adams is brilliant but too little seen.  But mostly, I was bored early and often. If you're looking for a cinematic snow job this winter, The Wolf of Wall Street would be your better...

My reviews of some of the Oscar-nominated movies: Argo, Flight The Master Life of Pi, Anna Karenina, Beasts of the Southern Wild Skyfall Wreck-It Ralph Silver Linings Playbook Lincoln, The Impossible Django Unchained, Les Miz, Zero Dark Thirty Amour and No And my Live Blog of the Oscar Telecast: 12:20 am -- the telecast In recent years I've felt as if the Oscars were often a little bit perfunctory, checking boxes and doing what you do without any thought or passion.  There will never likely be the perfect Oscar telecast.  It can't redeem itself like the Grammys or the Tonys can with live performances.  I'm fairly certain the Academy will be respectful enough of the art of film that the awards nobody cares about will continue to be on the show.  There's only so much you can do and still do the show.  Within those limitations, I thought this year's broadcast was quite well done.  Like Argo, there were things the people making the show wanted to do, and for th...

Silver Linings Playbook is the first movie I've seen in rather a while which I would like to see again. It is also the first time I have started to write a review during the post screening Q&A. I'm not entirely sure why. This is a funny movie, but I have seen funnier. It is a romantic movie, but I have seen more romantic. It is a dancing movie, and it isn't Dirty Dancing. It is a Philadelphia sports movie, but it isn't Rocky. And yet there is something about the interplay of these elements that fascinates me. And certainly, there is something about the amazing cast that deserves a second viewing. Bradley Cooper (the Hangover movies, and many other and sometimes better) is being sprung from the loony bin by his mom, on various conditions for what he has to do after release.  He did something he shouldn't have after seeing his wife doing something she shouldn't have. Hehas to use every ounce of his innate likability to keep you with him while he keeps doing th...