All-star cast has a ball keeping the twists coming in David O. Russell’s 1970s-set AMERICAN HUSTLE
AMERICAN HUSTLE (David O. Russell, 2013)
Opened December 13
www.americanhustle-movie.com
Combining cast members from his previous two hits, Silver Linings Playbook and
The Fighter, which garnered fifteen Academy Award nominations and three wins between them, David O. Russell scores big again with American Hustle. Inspired by a true story — the film opens by playfully declaring “Some of this actually happened” — American Hustle is set in 1978, focusing on smarmy con man Irving Rosenfeld (a dynamic Christian Bale), a paunchy small-timer with a spectacular comb-over and ultra-cool, ever-present shades who is pulling off low-level dirty deals first by himself, then with a new partner, the sexy-beautiful Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams, channeling a young Nicole Kidman), who also goes by the name Lady Edith Greensly. Soon the Feds come calling, and FBI agent Richie DiMaso (a superbly coiffed Bradley Cooper) gives them little choice but to take part in a sting involving Camden mayor Carmine Polito (a wonderfully wigged Jeremy Renner), a fake Arab sheikh (Michael Peña), several congressmen (including one played by longtime character actor Anthony Zerbe), and a major mobster (a surprise, uncredited appearance by a two-time Oscar winner doing what he does best). While Richie falls for Edith — they have one heckuva night at Studio 54 — Irving has to deal with his shrewish, demanding wife (a scene-stealing Jennifer Lawrence) as he develops a real fondness for Carmine. As in the best caper flicks, Russell (Flirting with Disaster, Three Kings), who rewrote Eric Warren Singer’s original script (there is also substantial improvisation by the outstanding cast), keeps the twists coming, leaving the audience guessing who’s conning who up to the very last minute. Linus Sandgren’s cinematography, Michael Wilkinson’s fab costumes, Judy Becker’s spot-on production design, and the period-heavy soundtrack (featuring songs by Elton John, the Bee Gees, Donna Summer, Tom Jones, America, Wings, and others) capture the late 1970s in all its bizarre glory, with no detail overlooked. Bale is sensational as Irving, giving the role a heartfelt depth, while Adams, in boob-baring dresses, and Lawrence, in gorgeous, upswept blond hair, are superb as the strong women he is caught between. An expertly made movie that celebrates the art of filmmaking itself, American Hustle might be a fictionalized version of what really went down, but everything about it rings absolutely true.
Nominated for ten Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director (David O. Russell), Best Actor (Christian Bale), Best Actress (Amy Adams), Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Bradley Cooper), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Jennifer Lawrence), Best Original Screenplay (Eric Warren Singer and David O. Russell), Best Film Editing (Jay Cassidy, Crispin Struthers, Alan Baumgarten), Best Costume Design (Michael Wilkinson), Best Production Design (Judy Becker, Heather Loeffler)
Jean-François Laguionie’s award-winning animated film, The Painting, has a very cool premise: The characters inside one of a painter’s works have organized a rigid class structure of the Alldunns, who have been completed and have sole access to the ritzy castle; the Halfies, who are not quite finished and are not allowed to join them; and the Sketchies, outlined figures who are terribly abused by the Alldunns. At the center of it all is an impossible Romeo and Juliet-like love story between the Alldunn Ramo (voiced by Adrien Larmande) and the Halfie Claire (Chloé Berthier). With the power-hungry Alldunns, led by the Great Chandelier (Jacques Roehrich), on the rampage, Ramo, the Sketchie known as Quill (Thierry Jahn), and Claire’s best friend, the Halfie Lola (Jessica Monceau), are on the run, trying to reunite the lovers and find the real-life painter so he can finish the Halfies and Sketchies and bring peace to the land. But soon they have fallen out of their painting and into the artist’s studio, where they meet characters from other works, including a reclining nude (Céline Ronte) and a self-portrait (Laguionie), and enter different canvases during their adventurous, and dangerous, search for the creator. Laguionie (Rowing Across the Atlantic, A Monkey’s Tale), who has been making animated films for five decades, has fun mimicking Modigliani, Matisse, Picasso, and other major artists, but his world-building doesn’t quite hold together as the characters continue on their colorful journey. He successfully walks that fine line between playful parable and melodramatic morality play, but things ultimately get away from him as the resolution nears. The Painting is screening December 30 at 6:15 at the IFC Center as part of the series “An Animated World: Celebrating 5 Years of GKIDS Classics,” paying tribute to GKIDS’ ongoing New York International Children’s Film Festival, which continues with such other animated works as Tono Errando, Javier Mariscal, and Fernando Trueba’s Chico & Rita, Goro Miyazaki’s From Up on Poppy Hill, and Jacques-Remy Girerd’s Mia and the Migoo.
Genre master and onetime boxer John Huston returned to the ring in Fat City, a gritty 1972 drama about a group of has-beens and never-will-be’s struggling to survive in Stockton, California. Stacey Keach stars as Billy Tully, a down-on-his-luck fighter looking to make a comeback at the ripe old age of twenty-nine. He spars at the local Y with eighteen-year-old Ernie Munger (Jeff Bridges) and likes what he sees in the kid, telling him to meet his old manager, Ruben (Cheers’ Nicholas Colosanto), who decides to take on the unseasoned youngster. While Ruben lands Ernie — who seems more interested in bragging about having scored with his girlfriend, Faye (Candy Clark), than training properly — his first few bouts, Tully gets day work picking vegetables and hangs out at a local gin joint with a seedy, whiskey-voiced barfly named Oma (an Oscar-nominated Susan Tyrrell). Legendary cinematographer Conrad Hall, who shot such wide-ranging gems as Cool Hand Luke, In Cold Blood, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Marathon Man, and American Beauty, casts a gray pall over the proceedings as dashed hopes and dreams come falling down on these disillusioned perennial losers. In many ways Fat City, based on the novel by Leonard Gardner — who also wrote the screenplay — is an update of Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront, but moved to the hard times of early ’70s America, when so many people had no way out. You do not have to be a fight fan to fall in love with this film. A clear influence on such auteurs as Martin Scorsese, Fat City is screening December 28 at 6:00 as part of the Museum of the Moving Image series “See It Big! Great Cinematographers,” which continues through December 29 with such other beautifully shot films as The Godfather, Persona, and Doctor Zhivago.
In the summer of 2005, four navy SEALs went deep into the mountains of Afghanistan to assassinate a Taliban leader responsible for the recent death of twenty marines. Writer-director Peter Berg tells the story of Operation Red Wings and the remarkably brave quartet in Lone Survivor, an ultraviolent action thriller that very well could be used as a training and propaganda film for the next generation of super-soldiers. Close-knit navy SEALs Marcus Luttrell (Mark Wahlberg), Michael P. Murphy (Taylor Kitsch), Danny Dietz (Emile Hirsch), and Matthew Axelson (Ben Foster) are lying in wait for Ahmad Shah (Yousuf Azami) when they are discovered by a trio of goatherders. Forced to decide between letting the possibly innocent men go or killing them so the mission can continue, they choose the former and start to leave the area, but they soon find themselves in the midst of a bloody firefight, one of the most brutal ever depicted on film. Ultimately, only one of them is left, and Lt. Commander Erik S. Kristensen (Eric Bana) and the rest of the team are ready to go in and try to bring him home alive. Berg, who made the exciting Saudi Arabia-set al-Qaeda thriller 
