DVD Review: American Hustle (2013)

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American Hustle is Now Available to Own  

More than any other time of the year, award season brings out the critic in all of us as films are held side by side for comparison and ranked in an endless number of ways on an ever-growing number of lists.

And since film press is nothing if not pattern driven as PR firms pitch the same press releases and angles to everyone on their contact list, by the end of each annual award season, audiences inundated by the constant stream of similarly covered news and editorial pieces often feel like opinions announced again and again have become the official word on the matter.

Whether consciously or not, the steady stream of repetition can trick you into thinking you’ve seen something you might not have seen or felt something you might not have felt just because of majority rule and the amount of ink spilled on whatever the topic may be. Of course, in the end, the only opinion that truly matters to you is your own in assessing everything and making up your own mind.

Yet given how successfully opinion is turned into fact in today’s fast-paced world, I couldn’t help but feel that the conman, chameleon-like quick-thinking characters that populate American Hustle would – if set in contemporary Hollywood rather than ‘70s New York – have been absolutely brilliant working in the film industry when it comes to spinning yarns and selling anything they want to earn a buck.

And perhaps part of the reason that Silver Linings Playbook and Three Kings filmmaker David O. Russell was so drawn to the world of Hustle was because it felt so familiar. Of course, that’s in addition to the way the film provides him with a springboard for the themes and motifs that have obsessed him for ages given its tale of multiple love triangles that lie just below the surface of the characters’ existential search for the happiness epitomized by the promise of the American Dream.

Revisiting the same throughline that has dominated his oeuvre from Flirting With Disaster all the way up through Silver Linings that focuses on an internal quest undertaken by a character who hits a metaphorical wall and then needs to figure out how to turn their life around for the better, Russell has achieved the impossible. He’s managed to make the seemingly larger-than-life characters of American Hustle not only endlessly fascinating but surprisingly relatable (if only on the most primal of levels) from start to finish.

Like all other film fans who read far too much award season coverage, I couldn’t believe how much this film was compared to Martin Scorsese’s ode to Wall Street driven hedonistic excess – The Wolf of Wall Street.

While some people focused on both films’ emphasis on con men and colorful characters (not to mention the fact that both pictures were based on true stories – albeit quite loosely in the case of Hustle), others emphasized the Goodfellas meets Boogie Nights ode to glitz and glamour of Russell’s cinematic technique.

Going against popular consensus – despite growing up with a particular fondness for Scorsese whose works I knew inside and out – while I understood the surface level comparisons, the one thing I was totally unprepared for is just how much I preferred Hustle to the overblown exhaustive spectacle that was Wolf.

Additionally it was absolutely thrilling to discover that unlike the interchangeable blow-up doll like women that were used as sex toys for gratuitous scenes of unappealingly animalistic sexcapades in Wolf, Russell has – in once again reteaming not only with his Oscar winning Silver actress Jennifer Lawrence but nominated Fighter star Amy Adams – crafted two fully realized female characters.

Using Adams and Lawrence as muses the way that Scorsese uses DiCaprio, writer/director Russell ensured that the women of Hustle were just as (if not more) powerful, intelligent and fascinating than the male characters who became their marks in love and life via Bradley Cooper’s ambitious yet easily manipulated FBI agent to Christian Bale’s confident conman and the bighearted politician played by Jeremy Renner.

Completely vanishing into their Oscar nominated roles and changing multiple times from start to finish, American Hustle is a master class in acting.

Rewriting Eric Warren Singer’s more procedural, fact based script that centered on the outrageous headline grabbing Abscam scandal to flesh out the characters and infuse the thriller elements with off-the-cuff, fast-moving humor and complicated, multifaceted romance, Russell used his writer’s sensibility to helm what is his most exciting film to date.

The recipient of three Golden Globes including Best Picture (Musical or Comedy), while it would lose all ten of its Oscar nominated categories matching the same fate as Wolf's, it’s my prediction that just like 1997’s overlooked Boogie Nights, Hustle’s reputation will grow stronger than Silver and Fighter’s in the years ahead.

Featuring some of the most quotable dialogue of the year, American Hustle also boasts a virtuoso performance by Amy Adams who plays a woman with so many layers and complex mysteries that in retrospect, I truly believe she had the most difficult role and should’ve been awarded the Oscar for Best Actress over dazzling Blue Jasmine star Cate Blanchett.

Newly transferred to disc to hopefully kickstart a greater appreciation for this American masterpiece, Sony’s high-caliber DVD release comes complete with an Ultraviolet digital copy and featurettes plus additional footage you’re sure to relish on repeat viewings to explore the dizzying highs and lows that coexist in a single scene by characters that grow more intriguing with each passing minute.

Through American Hustle, Russell proves that when it comes to quality filmmaking, you can’t hustle viewers ready to process everything they’ve read during award season on their own terms while watching a movie filled with people that do the same.   

Text ©2014, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy of this title in order to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

Blu-ray Review: Out of the Furnace (2013)

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“Let me make this right,” is more than just a line uttered by one of the main characters near the end of writer/director Scott Cooper’s feature filmmaking follow-up to Crazy Heart. When it comes to the core ensemble of individuals that populate the unforgiving terrain of a blue collar coal town in Pennsylvania, the desire to make things right is more than just something to say – in Out of the Furnace it’s a way of life.

Filled with men who long to right wrongs, regardless of the cost – what the characters onscreen realize far too late is that even if they have the best of intentions, sometimes scores simply cannot be settled since every single person has a slightly different definition of right and wrong in this gritty, existentially driven revenge picture.

Bogged down by wrongs right from the start following the film’s horrific introduction to Furnace’s embodiment of pure evil as played by Woody Harrelson as the unmercifully twisted, sadistic Harlan DeGroat, we encounter a pair of brothers whose lives will be forever changed once they cross his path.

With the deck stacked against them right from the start, it isn't too long before we realize that although they're related, we've been introduced to two very different brothers with two very different ways of coping with the hands they’ve been dealt.

The older of the two, Russell Baze (Christian Bale) keeps his head down and shovels coal in the very same factory that put their father on his death bed. Willing to risk the same fate (before he realizes, the plant is inevitably closed in favor of cheaper foreign labor) in order to put food on the table and pay his bills, Russell has unofficially taken over his father’s role as the family patriarch as the dutiful, good son.

Unwilling to do the same, his restless younger brother Rodney (scene-stealer Casey Affleck) took the first opportunity he could to get out of the dead-end town. Enlisting in the military and stop-lossed into a total of four tours before he finally returns home to stay, Rodney has tried everything to sublimate the pain and reproduce the primal adrenaline rush of battle.

But when gambling only leads to debt (which in the past Russell worked double shifts to keep at bay without informing his prideful, troubled brother), before long Rodney begins taking part in underground fights as an agreement with his money man John Petty (Willem Dafoe).

Tired of the minimal paydays, Rodney forces John to arrange a higher stakes match in order to resolve the outstanding debt once and for all that he not only owes John but John in turn owes to Harlan, which leads to a fateful meet that has a domino effect on every member of the ensemble cast in unimaginable ways. And it’s this key decision that winds up forcing Russell out of his daily grind, leaving him no choice but to put down the shovel and pick up a rifle to fight the war that has been waged in his own backyard.

Incredibly downbeat and emotionally exhausting, although Cooper’s take of brotherly vengeance was initially planned as a vehicle for actor Leonardo DiCaprio and his Body of Lies director Ridley Scott (both of whom still serve as producers), it’s hard to imagine anyone other than Bale in the role, given the way he once again manages to disappear completely into the role.

Filled with character actors as opposed to A-listers that stand out too conspicuously as DiCaprio may have done (through no fault of his own given the way it’s hard to forget who you’re watching in a number of his films), Out of the Furnace is therefore helped by the lack of obvious megawatt star quality. Likewise, since the work owes a great deal to its ambient surroundings which help convey mood and atmosphere, the Pennsylvania town becomes a character in its own right.

While the main theme of the film as well as the arc for our lead character is incredibly straightforward, Furnace makes one fatal mistake along the way by working one too many dubious contrivances into the film’s plotline that call attention to themselves amid the simplicity.

From a cell phone call that transforms into a digital recording at the exact right moment in order to capture audio of a murder and a few too many cruel twists of fate that intersect at the exact same time for Russell with regard to his brother, his girl etc. (that seem better suited to a bad country song), when Furnace tries to get too complex, it loses its way completely.

And with so much affecting Russell, you begin realizing that plot might have been strengthened considerably by sharing some of the wealth of the storyline among the rest of the cast to build up the back-stories and characters played by Zoe Saldana and Forest Whitaker in particular in order to adequately pay off on a narrative revelation that is revealed in the film’s second half.

These shortcomings aside, overall Cooper proves to have an even greater cinematic handle on filmmaking his second time around and uses the various resources at his disposal to rich effect. By calling on multiple senses at once, this technique particularly stands out via a symbolic hunting sequence that is echoed in the movie’s penultimate sequence.

From the effective use of Pearl Jam tunes and Dickon Hinchliffe’s understated score to help punctuate the mood of vital moments to a terrific visualization of the darkness of the color palette (which is virtually free of bright colors) to transport you to the setting, Cooper does an admirable job of externalizing the internal struggle of the characters through the cinematic medium. It’s these smart, subtle touches that stand out even more in Fox’s flawless Blu-ray transfer.

A deceptively simple tale of vengeance, in Out of the Furnace, Cooper weaves a multi-layered tapestry that reinforces at every turn his characters’ desire to try to make things right, even if they risk getting burned in the process.   

Text ©2014, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy of this title in order to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

Blu-ray Review: The Machinist (2004)

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A.K.A. El Maquinista

All Trevor Reznik (Christian Bale) wants to do is sleep.

Having been plagued with horrific insomnia for a year—although told much like Edward Norton’s main character in David Fincher’s Fight Club that the loss of sleep won’t cause him death—Reznik is a walking zombie.

Moving in that endless state which finds everyday bleeding into the next one, Reznik fears his eyes have begun to play tricks on him as they’re understandably unable focus or adjust to light and dark that’s enhanced by director Brad Anderson’s bleak visual design.



And by bleaching out the color on the film print the way that the obsessive compulsive machine shop worker Reznik endlessly washes his hands and minimalist apartment with bleach augments screenwriter Scott Kosar’s incredibly ambitious symbolism filled screenplay to masterfully eerie effect.

On the surface, there's initially Reznik’s name which is indicative of “butcher" (its meaning in Czech) which adds yet another subtext to the character’s position working in a machine shop where his fatigue results in a near fatal accident that costs an employee an arm. And of course, when you add Trevor to Reznik in Kosar's homage to Nine Inch Nails musician Trent Reznor, you know you're dealing with something instantly off center.

Yet, tactfully Anderson avoided a particular heavy metal style or anything too overt in his execution of Kosar’s work that from the first page and/or frame easily hearkens to the obvious influences of Kafka, Dosteovsky, Freud, and existentialism.

And once again, Bale loses himself in the production dropping a frightening sixty-three pounds to play the emaciated visibly skeletal haunted worker who plies his trade in an anonymous factory called National.



However, there’s much about Reznik we don’t quite understand--especially considering the structurally issue that the quiet and damn near comatose character interacts sincerely with only two people throughout including Jennifer Jason Leigh’s concerned, compassionate call girl Stevie and Aitana Sanchez-Gijon’s sympathetic airport diner waitress. Despite this, we as well as Reznik are quick to understand that there’s much more to his insomnia and rapid weight loss than he realizes.



Dropping endless red herrings and-- filled with dialogue, symbols, and elements that don’t fully become welded together until the devastating conclusion that answers our questions in a sequence of pure wonder—it’s a tough film to view to say the least but one that necessitates a second viewing soon after its finished.

As, just like a nightmare—the kind most of us have while we’re asleep but Reznik has when he’s awake—we’re not sure who or what is lurking around each corner as Reznik’s paranoia increases when he meets a mysterious new coworker Ivan (John Sharian) who behaves strangely, seemingly follows Reznik, yet is also one no one else in the film acknowledges.



Not quite film noir and not quite Hitchcockian although elements of the nicely balanced Roque Banos theremin-heavy score seem like they would’ve been a natural choice made by the master of suspense, The Machinist nonetheless manages to immerse you completely into its macabre labyrinth of mania.



No-- maddeningly and making it all the more a work of pure intellectual wonder-- it never lets us in on what exactly it is that the employees make in that peculiar machine shop let alone the city in which it takes place. For although it certainly seems like its Los Angeles—The Machinist was filmed in Barcelona out of necessity (as no American company would back the strange film) and made to appear like a generic metropolis.

With a distinct visual style—Anderson’s movie is increasingly striking on Blu-ray as that curious work that seems to have adopted the same Spanish signatures of directors working throughout Latin American cinema in crafting a highly literary and worthwhile urban dreamscape of existential hell.



In a transfer filled with crisp precision, in my most recent viewing of The Machinist, I was immediately aware of the astute choices made throughout that's been enhanced in high definition from the noticeably bleached out color scheme and bravery in only using sound when absolutely necessary whether it’s to heighten a key line that will double back or the sound of a car or clock that fits into the finale.

Containing Anderson’s directorial commentary track as well as deleted scenes, the theatrical trailer, the Blu-ray also offers the standard definition featurette The Machinist: Breaking the Rules in which Bale admits that despite others reluctance or question as to just what the hell the movie was about, he committed to the vision, knowing it was the type of movie he’d want to see.



However, it also luckily surpasses some of the other recent studio offerings by delivering two worthwhile extras into elevated to HD including Manifesting the Machinist which chronicles the origin of Kosar’s story conceived while a student at a UCLA evening class as a horrific version of The Odyssey as well as the fight for financing and interest and my personal favorite The Machinist: Hiding in Plain Sight which introduces you to all of the symbolism used throughout from the visuals to the dialogue.

Of course, it’s this type of “cheat sheet” extra that devotees will want to jump to first but as Anderson smartly reveals—although of course those who’ve seen the film realize that the puzzle is finally solved by the closing credits in regards to just what’s happening to the sleep deprived Reznik—the film manages to hold our interest on a far eerier level by ensuring that not everything is presented as a final, “cut and dried" a.k.a. "here’s how it all happened" conclusion.



Challenging and ingenious, moving well past the popular gimmicks of other twist ending, “can we trust our narrator?” pieces that swarmed into theatres following Singer’s Usual Suspects and Shyamalan’s Sixth Sense up through Bale’s Batman Begins director Christopher Nolan’s Memento and more—The Machinist still holds up well as the type of film that does indeed work like a Kafka or even Stranger like Camus novella.

Invading the comfort zone of your mind for one hundred and four minutes, you’ll be surprised just how long The Machinist lingers there afterward… much like a good book or that type of dream you have that you can’t quite recall but know deep down felt more like a nightmare even if you can't explain it.

Movie Review: Terminator Salvation (2009)

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To sequel or not to sequel, that is a franchise's question. It's also one that's invariably asked of its three main participants: a) Hollywood who will always vote to sequel if the first film struck box office gold; b) the audience who must decide if they've had enough of a franchise to justify going once again; and c) the critics who need to figure out just how much preparation to undergo when reviewing yet another installment.



For example, if it's a James Bond film and it's a direct sequel, it helped to view Quantum of Solace directly following Casino Royale (in understanding the plot perhaps rather than being prepared for just how dismal the follow-up would be in every way) but traditionally, we know the man named Bond and we're able to walk right on in.

And sure, for most sequels, it's kind of fun to build up anticipation by viewing earlier titles but due to time constraints sometimes it's not at always possible and this was the case for this particular reviewer when it came time for Terminator Salvation (the fourth movie in the franchise).



But allow me a moment to digress and confess as I should begin by sharing that T2: Judgment Day is one of my all-time favorite action movies. Honestly, it's a movie I still study for its beauty and brilliance, the complexity of the situations, intense orchestration of the action, and the emotional investment we feel for the characters. Likewise, it's one that additionally I feel elevated the franchise from its first very good--if now pretty dated-- introduction to the world of Terminators, Judgment Day, and the prophet that will become John Connor who is man's only hope for survival in a future where machines turn on us.

The third film was entertaining if a noticeable step down from its predecessor in what I believe most of us assumed would be the end of the series in a nicely structured trilogy. Yet with the announcement that the franchise was starting up again with director McG (We Are Marshall, Charlie's Angels) filling in for James Cameron and Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, and The Prestige star Christian Bale as John Connor-- I don't think I'm alone in admitting that it seemed like a strange fit. I mean picture this for starters-- it's the guy who instructed Cameron Diaz to dance to "Baby Got Back" in Charlie's Angels stepping in for "King of the World" Mr. James Titantic Cameron while directing the underrated, critically lauded serious thespian Bale in an action movie. Huh? Exactly.

However, even after Christian Bale's public on-set tantrum-- made infamous on late night talk shows and YouTube-- as a fan of The Terminator, I was eager to see which direction this film would take us and the sad answer is that it wasn't a good one and somebody should have stopped to ask for directions.



Simply put: if it walks like a Terminator, talks like a Terminator, it's essentially a Terminator which seems to have been the goal for the picture via a wooden script where actors repeat phrases that have now become iconic like "Come with me if you want to live" and "I'll be back" as though they were flippant throwaway lines.



Likewise, T4 (if I may be so bold) is one that uses the franchise's incredible action sequences as jumping off points in a series of successful homages that never fail to entertain even when it draws inspiration from the unlikeliest of sources including (as I scribbled in the dark) Apocalypse Now, Jaws, Transformers, Jurassic Park, and even some of the cinematography from Requiem for a Dream.

While the crashes, explosions, and fights aren't quite as impressive as they were back in the earlier days of CGI when T2 was new, ultimately as far as this film's concerned, the action is its "salvation" indeed, bridging one dull plot point to the next. With Bale virtually continuing on in his portrayal of Batman's Bruce Wayne complete with the faux comic book tough guy voice that makes me want to giggle, I wonder if the poor guy would've been better off with a longer break between summer blockbusters since he literally appears at times as though he thinks he's sliding into a remodeled Batmobile and Batpod.



Of course, in The Dark Knight it worked to sort of push Batman into the shadows and bring forward the Joker to steal the movie away. However when Bale is now playing the franchise's legendary John Connor a.k.a. the leader of the dystopian resistance that's occurred after Judgment Day hit the planet, it's not exactly helpful that he's the least charismatic and/or likable character in the entire movie.



Capably going into stud-muffin action movie mode (although The Transporter's Jason Statham should rest easy knowing that Bale is zero threat on this level)-- he's nonetheless missing any emotional involvement whatsoever as he physically goes through the motions in this coolly executed, impressively choreographed, and inventively shot action film that ultimately feels like its missing its central processor. (Hmm, perhaps it needs a Windows Vista update?).

But thankfully, while John Connor bogs down his scenes without a flicker of hope (which is easily understood given the situation yet a bit confusing when his wife played by Bryce Dallas Howard is expecting a baby)-- the film's other lead Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) unexpectedly commandeers the entire film.



In an opening prologue, we first encounter Wright on death row when he's persuaded by the terminally ill cancer ridden scientist Helena Bonham Carter to donate his body to science in order to possibly receive a second chance to do something good with his life rather than his prior evil.



As we flash forward to the year 2018, fourteen years after the Terminators housed at Skynet's artificial intelligence conglomerate became self-aware and led to the nuclear holocaust of Judgment Day-- we run into not only the solider John Connor (whom some of his military superiors feel is a false prophet as he's unwilling to accept orders to kill humans for the "greater good" in trying to wipe out Skynet) but also Wright having suddenly awoken in the midst of the war-torn planet.



As Wright finds himself striking a fast alliance with the sharp, quick-on-his-feet resistance fighter Kyle Reese (Star Trek and Charlie Bartlett's Anton Yelchin) and a young girl named Star that Kyle is protecting in their makeshift family as two more freedom fighters sans a sophisticated network-- they all try to get in touch with John Connor.

Frequently, they hear Connor's voice on the radio commanding other remaining humans to keep up the resistance and take on the Terminators who predictably swoop in unexpectedly to kill or kidnap humans in a few scenes that directly seem like they're mimicking the holocaust with a crowded container filled with petrified, malnourished humans.



Providing the testosterone fueled series with a much needed strong female character, the screenwriters deliver us Blair Williams (Moon Bloodgood)-- a tough as nails fighter pilot not above snuggling with Marcus Wright for the comforting sound of a heartbeat and body warmth before-- of course-- more violence ensues.



Inexplicably given a rating of PG-13 rather than R (although it falls somewhere in between)-- while it is definitely less gruesome or gory than some of the effects in T2-- it's still a hilarious example of how subjective and nonsensical the MPAA system is since the film will no doubt be far too intense for young teens.



While the excellent production values and score by Danny Elfman (in tandem of course with that original great theme) are impressive as was Worthington-- it was the camera work that was particularly inventive in its use of hand-held cinematography so that we feel like we're spinning in an out of control helicopter or slamming into a vehicle made all the more visceral with its dark color palette and grayish color scheme.

Yet in the end and other than a hell of a lot of great sequences for those involved in the CG, cinematography, and editing departments to put on their respective "reels" of past work, it's a Terminator that doesn't add anything new to the franchise.



In fact, in the debate of to sequel or not to sequel preparation, it's one that damn near requires your complete understanding of the entire mythology (especially the first movie) before this one even begins to make sense. So thereby Salvation ultimately confuses more than it needed to by adding Back to the Future layers onto it (especially in regards to John Connor meeting his teenage father Kyle Reese and we realize with dismay just how boring Connor becomes as though he's a Terminator himself).



Mainly, it feels as though it's trying build a new spin-off of future tales for Reese that will then circle back to the first film and subsequent installments in a bizarre modern day prequel, sequel conundrum a la Star Wars. So all in all-- while it was a definite disappointment, it's still one that I didn't hate as much as most of my colleagues (many of whom are still ridiculing it forty-eight hours later)-- as I even got a few definite kicks out of the action scenes that had me pulling out the requisite ear-plugs within the opening ten minutes.



However, it was a pointless retread so to return to the opening thesis in the case of Terminator Salvation, basically to sequel or not to sequel should be answered with a resounding "not." Thus, please go ahead and just break the "I'll be back" promise while we all enjoy T2 once again instead.