AMERICAN HUSTLE

To him, it's all about the hair. For most men hair isn't a big deal, a couple brush strokes here, some gel or mousse or whatever and boom you're done for the day. But no, Irving Rosenfeld has a system. Most of the hair on his head is long gone, but there's still a tuft in front. As long that tuft remains, he figures he has hair and that he can glue little bits of foam to the top of his head, comb it over and call it real. It fools no one but him, not even his wife and girlfriend who seem to like him more for the confidence required to attempt it, yet such intimate acts of deception are central to David O. Russell's huckster epic American Hustle, a film that has a lot of what you need for a real film, even if the rest is all foam.

Everyone in the film is a schemer or a cheat of some kind and the implication is that the artifice of deceit is so ingrained in them that they don't really know how to do anything else. Rosenfeld (Christian Bale) is an entrepreneur who came up with the idea of breaking windows for his fathers glass company as a child and by the late 70's skims off of several dry cleaners he owns but his big thing is fencing stolen/forged art and good ol' insurance fraud. His partner/lover Sydney (a wonderfully fragile Amy Adams), is an ex-stripper who's good at keeping everything bottled up. Irving notes that she's got everything needed to be a good con, she can look right through you and she understands Duke Ellington. In terms of self deception, she doesn't have a comb over but she does spend half the film wondering in and out of a British accent while inhabiting her perfected alternate persona “Lady Edith.” It fools more people, including Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper), the hungry FBI agent who busts them before using their skills to set up stings that will hopefully put his name on the map.

The partnership is uneasy, quickly becoming a love triangle. Actually it's a quadrangle because Irving is married to Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence), perhaps the slickest con in the film, who soon becomes involved in the latest sting which, like many 'big scores,' has spiraled up in scope till they're trying to get Atlantic City rebuilt with money from a fake Sheik and bribe congressmen to legislate for his citizenship. If that last bit sounded familiar, the film is based on the famous ABSCAM case. If your worried about this being a historically accurate account, don't. Russell assures us at the start of the film that only “Some of this actually happened.”

The film enjoys being as removed from reality as its character, allowing the film to indulge in proper movie fantasy. Russell (Three Kings, Silver Linings Playbook) shoots the film in a modified Martin Scorcese style, and it's a lot of fun to watch the love quadrangle unfold with its elaborate camera moves, Jukebox soundtrack (Jeff Lynne in place of Scorcese's Stones), dueling narrators, and plenty of deliberate homages to the master. Russell makes the style his own somewhat. For instance: he sometimes has people sing along to the soundtrack, leading to a standout moment where Lawrence joyously sings “Live and Let Die” after potentially sending someone to their death. On the nose, sure, but fun. But you never forget you’re watching a Not-Scorsese movie, which is disappointing for Russell who used to swing much harder for the fences stylistically with films like Three Kings and I Heart Huckabees. He’s still produces good work, but he seems to have mellowed out considerably. The film isn’t completely forgettable visually: there's a great image with a laundromat carousel and a jaw dropper where all the bickering, spurned lovers arrive at an event like incoming rock gods from out of the fog to the stings of 10538 Overture.

He also distinguishes himself with a sense of looseness that runs completely counter to the cocaine induced madness of Goodfellas or the greatest accused faux-Scorcese film Boogie Nights. Instead of being a massive explosion of plot, character exposition, and episodes from their lives that show us what they do, Russell aims to slow everything down to create a sense of intimacy. That approach is usually a strength for him and it does ensure that all the actors have moments to shine, but it wrecks the pacing and muddies everything up thematically. The film starts with a strong thread, but it's lost and found again many times along the way that the film feel adrift and directionless. 

Still, Hustle is mostly fun, it might even spawn a catch-phrase with 'science oven,' and it'll make a good party movie, but it's ultimately a formula movie without anything audacious to add. There's substance here somewhere, but in a film with so many people trying to break free of artifice, David O. Russell doesn't quite manage it either.

Grade: B

MAN OF STEEL

I have a colleague, the wonderful Micheal G. Smith over at White City Cinema, who has, in his indirect way, been trying to get me off of blockbusters. After seeing Zach Snyder's new Superman reboot Man Of Steel, I'm starting to see his point of view. As I watched Clark Kent/Superman (Henry Cavill) tossing General Zod (Micheal Shannon), through building after building in the "exciting" finale, I started to wonder just how many explosions can you see in a lifetime without getting bored, or even appalled that images depicting the deaths of hundreds of thousands of human beings are being peddled off as entertainment. 

It would help if the film was more effective at making me care about Superman and Zod. As I always say: a good Action movie isn't about explosions, it's about us being worried about the heroes in those explosions. It's hard to care about Clark Kent/Superman in this way as he's is essentially invulnerable. You can take his powers away with Kryptonite but it would be better if we cared about him as a person. It's not impossible to make Superman interesting, the 1978 Richard Donner film made the Blue Boyscout work by embracing the immigrant angle and maintaining a light, comedic touch. But of course modern superhero movies aren't allowed to be silly, so Snyder tires to give us a dark, gritty “realistic” character study of this flying alien who shoots lasers out of his X-ray eyes. But in zapping the silliness, Snyder and screenwriter David S. Goyer have neglected to replace it with anything worthwhile. The result is like Batman Begins if Bruce Wayne was really shallow and generic (It should be noted that the two projects share Goyer as a screenwriter).

To cover for the blandness at the heart of the film, Snyder amps up everything around Clark. The film begins with with an overcomplicated retelling of Superman's birth on the doomed planet Krypton. All the classic story beats are there, but now there's a sudden coup d'etat by General Zod, leading Clark's father (Russell Crowe) to jump on a flying monster straight out of Heavy Metal magazine so he can retrieve a magic skull fragment that tells baby Krytonians what they're going to be when they grow up. As stupid and convoluted as that sentence was, it's somehow worse in the film which doesn't explain why any of that was important till much, much later. It aims for enticing but it comes off as confusing and badly conceived. By the way, I love that even though Krypton is supposed to explode in "a matter of weeks," the government makes no attempt to evacuate and finds time to try and sentence Zod and his cronies.

We then jump forward to Clark as an adult, wandering around Canada like David Banner in the Incredible Hulk show. This is interspersed with clumsy flashbacks of young Clark learning to deal with his powers like we've seen in every Superhero movie, except now it looks like a bad Terrence Malick movie. Everything is these scenes is sun kissed and beautiful, but the angles are all wrong. This is a consistent issue I have with Zach Snyder (300, Watchmen), who has a wonderful visual style he doesn't know how to use.

It goes on like this for a long time. On the advice of his human father (Kevin Costner) Clark does his best to keep his powers secret, while a computerized version of his biological father tells him how he's really, really destined. Oy vey, how he's destined. He's like Jesus, but he can fly, a sort of SuperJesus if you will, but the film lacks the due diligence to make that analogy work and it resorts to cheep tricks like posing Superman in the crucifix pose without him really sacrificing that much. The film is lost in cheep style, unnecessary CGI face masks and senseless violence. I have no idea what Clark thinks of all this. He doesn't talk much, he just sort of stares stoically into space like a catalog model. It'd be tempting to call Cavil bland, but to be fair, the film doesn't ask much of him. He looks the part, and the Superman costume is fantastic, but the film isn't interested in performances. With the exception of Costner, everyone feels underused. The film casts great actors like Harry Lennix, Amy Adams, Christopher Meloni and Laurence Fishburne in supporting roles only to do nothing with them.

The violence in the film is a real issue. We've seen a lot of cities being destroyed on screen lately but there's a difference between the self-consciously cartoon carnage we saw in Avengers and what we get here. Because he's intent on giving us the “realistic” Superman, Snyder and Co. have decided to go really far out their way to invoke 9/11 imagery in appallingly specific ways. There are scenes of people trapped under rubble, covered in ash and crying for help as building after building topples behind them. The imagery is frankly uncomfortable and not a frame of it is earned. The Superman character is essentially a power fantasy, but instead of being able to share in the feeling of watching Superman triumph over evil and save the day, all I could think about was all the innocent people that are dying terrible, terrible deaths because Superman doesn't think to draw Zod away from  populated areas. We are told that the 'S' on Superman's chest represents hope, but this film has none. It's joyless, cynical plodding leading to tasteless destruction, darkness and despair. You know, for kids!

Grade: D

THE MASTER

Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film, The Master, is a fantastic piece of film making. It's an immaculately shot, scored and acted, intimate epic of post-WWII America and if it's not one of the best film's of the year, it's certainly one of the most thoughtful.

The film is essentially about two bootleggers. Joaquin Phoenix plays Freddie. The man isn’t like you and me. He’s a mentally unstable veteran who wanders the Earth making booze out of paint thinner, photo developer and other handy stuff. It’s unclear whether or not his illness is something he was born with, shell shock or a result of ingesting paint thinner and photo chemicals, but he insists: “It’s not poison if you drink it right.”

This comment tickles the films other bootlegger, a man by the name of Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman). Dodd doesn’t make booze; he makes religion. He peddles a spiritual system known as The Cause. The goal of The Cause is to return the mind to a perfect state, or rather, to purge animalistic thought. At first it looks like psychotherapy, but then like torture. Inductees are put through “processing,” where the subject is repeatedly asked the same invasive questions without end until the processor is satisfied. They are forced to repeat tasks over and over and to not ask questions. Members can leave at anytime but are told those who leave are enemies of The Cause.

After a few rounds of processing, Dodd takes Freddie with him in his travels around the country as his special project. But Freddie is a hard project, extremely impulsive and given to sudden acts of violence. He’s loyal though, sometimes to a fault, others to a point. In one scene he kicks down a door to beat an enemy of The Cause, in another he’s openly calling Dodd a liar.

Dodd's family (its matriarch played by a wonderfully icy Amy Adams) feels that Freddie is beyond any help and they’re probably right, but Dodd keeps him on anyway. Does Dodd think he can help this man, or does he just want to make him into his pet? “Everyone serves a master,” Dodd informs us late in the film. If the pet analogy was intentional, then Anderson has chosen his title more cunningly than I had thought.

It should be noted how hard it is for an actor to play a part as unstable and borderline inhuman as Freddie. It’s a very difficult, physical role and Phoenix pulls it off effortlessly. It's one thing for an actor to disguise himself with mannerisms, it's another to become completely invisible in a part. After wasting years on ill-conceived performance art, Phoenix has doubled down and given an outrageously great performance that will completely reevaluate my expectations of him from here on out.

Much has been made about the film's relation to Scientology, and yes The Cause is outrageously analogous to the mysterious religion in much the same way that Citizen Kane was to William Randolf Hearst. However Hearst came off looking a lot better than Scientology does in this film. Whatever Dodd's intentions, he is a cruel man and Hoffman, at the top of his considerable game, plays him as a man who is more contradiction than anything else. A lesser actor might have played the false Messiah as stiffer or statelier. But instead Hoffman goes the other way and softens him to the point that he’s oddly likable and in doing so, opens a wondrous world of ambiguity. It's clear that he's a tyrant, but is he a fool as well? It's entirely possible that he actually believes what he’s selling; in past lives going back a trillion years, that he can cure cancer and nuclear war with hypnosis. Is Dodd insane or just a snake oil salesmen, building religion out of spare parts the way Freddie concocts his liquor?

Grade: A

The Master comes out in limited release on Friday. In the few theaters equipped to handle it, it will be shown in 70mm. It’s not the type of film one would expect to see in the format, but the clarity of 70mm improves any film. Watching The Master in the format is unlike watching a normal film, it's so sharp that it's more like looking through a window than anything. Color depth also improves astronomically. The film frequently returns to a shot of a boat wake that gives new meaning to the color blue. Mihai Malaimare Jr.’s cinematography is absolutely sparkling and the film will look great in any format, but if you have the chance to see in in 70mm, go—your eyes will thank you for the rest of your life.