Theater Whore: American Hustle

American Hustle - 8/10

There were quite a few reasons why I didn't want to see American Hustle. I'm not a big fan of Bradley Cooper. Or Jennifer Lawrence. They were in Silver Linings Playbook which is one of the shittiest films I've seen in the last few years that was given quite a bit of acclaim. Amy Adams I am starting to appreciate for her great acting (she was in Her which we saw the same night as this movie). And of course Christian Bale is great...except in Out Of The Furnace which I saw a couple of days ago. But it was playing at the same theater as the first movie we saw and if you have ever been to Century City Mall then you know that once you are inside you are stuck there for a while.

The film takes place in 1978 and is sorta kinda based on things that really happened. Irving Rosenfield (Bale) is a swindler but low level. He is good at what he does and isn't trying to take things to a huge level. He's just doing his thing. The start of the movie shows his routine to master the terrible comb-over he sports. Its just...bad. At a party he meets with Sydney Prosser (Adams) and he falls in love with her immediately. Then he almost scares her off when he talks about his business. She comes back and they work great together.

Theater Whore: Out Of The Furnace

This is gonna be a pretty fast review. The trailer for Out Of The Furnace made this look like a pretty great film. Hell, the cast alone made me wanna see this. Christian Bale, Casey Affleck, Forest Whitaker, Willem Dafoe, and Woody Harrelson? Come on! That is a lot of good in one place. So why didn't I enjoy a single moment of this movie? Mostly for the fact that it was about halfway through this two hour movie where what is shown immediately in the trailer occurs.

The story is something that could've been done on a half hour episode of some show. Brother comes back home from war a fuck up, the other brother is a drunk fuck up, his woman meets someone new, fuck up war brother gets killed because he is a fuck up, and evil guy ends up paying for a crime that is slightly more fucked up than the ones everyone else did.

This movie just happened. There's no need to tell any of you to ever see this. The accents that people have are bad. The acting is so wooden. It was like watching a bunch of people on screen who didn't quite want to be there. Its not even bad because its sad, because its not really sad. It made me feel no emotions other than the joy that comes with not living where they do.

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