Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence) and Pat Jr. (Bradley Cooper) explore love, loss, and dance in Oscar-nominated SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK
SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK (David O. Russell, 2012)
Hudson River Park, Pier 63 lawn at 23rd St.
Wednesday, July 10, free, dusk
www.silverliningsplaybookmovie.com
www.riverflicks.com
Benny & Joon meets Little Miss Sunshine in writer-director David O. Russell’s cute but severely overrated Silver Linings Playbook. Adapted from Matthew Quick’s novel, the film follows the unusual relationship between Patrick Solitano (Bradley Cooper), a bipolar man who has just been released from a mental institution after beating up his wife’s lover, and Tiffany Maxwell (Jennifer Lawrence), a woman trying desperately to get past the untimely death of her husband. They both deal with their situations in very different ways: While Pat refuses to face reality, clinging to the thinnest of hopes that his wife, Nikki (Brea Bee), still loves him and will take him back, Tiffany sleeps with nearly everyone in her office and gets fired, forcing her to move back in with her parents. The interplay between Pat and Tiffany is absolutely gripping as they each battle with inner demons and mental illness. Pat also battles with his father, Pat Sr. (Robert De Niro), a casualty of the economic crisis whose serious OCD comes out during Eagles games. (The film is set in Philadelphia.) The first half of Silver Linings Playbook is a fascinating study of mental illness, sensationally performed by Cooper and Lawrence, but the second half goes off in ludicrous, ridiculous directions, with Pat Jr. and Tiffany training for a dance competition and Pat Sr. and his friend Randy (Paul Herman) involved in a silly parlay about dance and football. What had been a distinctly different take on two unique characters becomes a standard, conventional tale that nearly, but not quite, destroys everything that had come before it. Russell, who has has displayed a penchant for taking chances in such previous films as Spanking the Monkey, Flirting with Disaster, Three Kings, and I ♥ Huckabees and was nominated for a Best Director Oscar for The Fighter, here takes the easy way out, settling for a sitcomlike finale when he could have had so much more. Still, Silver Linings Playbook has a lot going for it, even if it does end up satisfied with the lowest common denominator. The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor (Cooper), Best Actress (Lawrence), Best Supporting Actor (De Niro), Best Supporting Actress (Jacki Weaver as Pat Jr.’s loving mother), Best Film Editing (Jay Cassidy and Crispin Struthers), Best Adapted Screenplay (Russell), and Best Director, with Lawrence taking home the golden statuette. The film is screening July 10 at Hudson River Park’s Pier 63, kicking off the free River Flicks for Grown-Ups series, which continues through August 21 with such other 2012 movies as Looper, Argo, Moonrise Kingdom, and The Hunger Games. For a day-by-day listing of free summer movie screenings throughout New York City, go here.
Hitting a little too close to home in recent years, Gold Diggers of 1933 is a depression-era musical directed by Mervyn LeRoy (Little Caesar, Mister Roberts) and featuring dance numbers choreographed by Busby Berkeley. Polly Parker (Ruby Keeler), Trixie Lorraine (Aline MacMahon), Carol King (Joan Blondell), and Fay Fortune (Ginger Rogers) are four out-of-work actresses desperate to find a job on Broadway. When cigar-chomping producer Barney Hopkins (Ned Sparks) teams up with newcomer Brad Roberts (Dick Powell) to create a show about the Great Depression itself, the women get excited about the possibility of getting back on the Great White Way, but mistaken identity, financing problems, and class warfare — in the form of wealthy old-money barons Lawrence Bradford (Warren William) and Faneul H. Peabody (Guy Kibbee) — threaten the show and their love lives. Gold Diggers of 1933 is screening in Riverside Park on July 10 as part of the free “Summer on the Hudson: Movies under the Stars” series, the theme of which this year is “Song & Dance,” which continues with such other films as Duck Soup, The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, Fiddler on the Roof, and the 1986 version of Little Shop of Horrors. Oh, and for this outdoor screening, the “Pettin’ in the Park” number should be particularly titillating. For a day-by-day listing of free summer movie screenings in New York City, go 
Based on a 1964 Roald Dahl novel, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory is a fanciful frolic through a children’s wonderland, filled with fear, trepidation, love, and lots of candy, both sweet and sour. Charlie Bucket (Peter Ostrum, in his only film appearance) lives with his dirt-poor family in a ramshackle room, where Grandpa Joe (Jack Albertson) can’t even get out of bed. But when goodhearted Charlie finds one of the golden tickets that will allow him to join a once-in-a-lifetime tour of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, Grandpa Joe is suddenly up and about, singing and dancing, and so will you be. Among the other kids with the golden tickets are the spoiled Veruca Salt (Julie Dawn Cole), the selfish Violet Beauregarde (Denise Nickerson), the tube-loving Mike Teevee (Paris Themmen), and the rather sloppy Augustus Gloop (Michael Bollner). Meanwhile, the creepy Mr. Slugworth (Günter Meisne) tries to lure the kids to the dark side as they slowly learn (well, some more than others) that there is more to life than just candy — and themselves. As they are ultimately led through this dreamland by the unpredictable Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder), they encounter chocolate rivers, bubble machines that make people float, and small Oompa Loompas who are quick to clean up any messes, of which there are several. The memorable soundtrack of this thoroughly entertaining, charming family film includes “The Candy Man Can,” “(I’ve Got a) Golden Ticket,” “Pure Imagination,” and, of course, “Oompa Loompa, Doompa-Dee-Do.” Directed by Mel Stuart, who passed away last August after a career that also included Wattstax, Four Days in November, and If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium, the film was remade by Tim Burton in 2005 starring Johnny Depp as Wonka with mixed results, but you can catch the original for free on Monday night as part of the annual summer film festival, which continues with such other classic fare as Robert Aldrich’s Hush . . . Hush, Sweet Charlotte, John Huston’s The African Queen, Billy Wilder’s A Foreign Affair, and George Cukor’s The Women.
The fate of an eighteen-year-old boy charged with the murder of his father is at stake in Sidney Lumet’s first film, the gripping, genre-defining 12 Angry Men. After a series of establishing shots, a judge sends a dozen New Yorkers into the jurors room, where they need to come to a unanimous verdict that could lead to the execution of the teen. Over the course of about ninety minutes, an all-star cast examines and reexamines the case — and their own personal biases — as the heat increases, both literally and figuratively. At first, the nameless dozen men make small talk, trying to be friendly, but it’s not long before some of them are at others’ throats, primarily the gruff Lee J. Cobb, who has it in for the calm and thoughtful Henry Fonda, who is ready to stand alone if necessary for what he believes in. The other uniformly excellent actors playing a very specific cross-section of white, male America are John Fiedler, Martin Balsam, Robert Webber, E. G. Marshall, Jack Klugman, Edward Binns, Jack Warden, Ed Begley, Joseph Sweeney, and George Voskovec. “I tell you, we were lucky to get a murder case,” Webber tells Fonda, but he won’t feel the same as the tension reaches near-violent proportions. 12 Angry Men is a searing examination of the criminal justice system as well as basic human instincts, behavior, and common decency. The Philadelphia-born Lumet, whose parents were both in the Yiddish theater, is able to tell the story in cinematic ways despite its taking place mostly in one small, sweaty room, letting the intense acting drive the narrative; the director, who was nominated for an Oscar for the film, would go on to make such other classic New York City dramas as The Pawnbroker, The Anderson Tapes, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, and Prince of the City. Nominated for a Best Picture Oscar and winner of the Golden Bear at Berlin, 12 Angry Men, based on an original teleplay by Reginald Rose, will be presented in a DCP restoration at Film Forum July 5-11.