JUST DOIN' THE "AMERICAN HUSTLE" TO SURVIVE...

“I don’t know what all the fuss is about” complained Mom as I talked to her on the phone the other day. “It’s just another heist movie isn’t it? I got bored, quite frankly, I didn’t even finish it.” I tutted at that, I highly disapprove of not finishing films. I have done it only two or three times in my life, usually when I felt a migraine coming on. Having recently watched American Hustle, I feel the team putting the film together was well aware that there are a lot of heist films out there. It’s a tricky one really, because heist films have a legitimate fan base for their own sake. But if you want to step above and beyond that fan base you need to do something different.       Something different that, at the same time, is not going to change the basic structure so much that it doesn’t alienate the fan base. American Hustle has actually negotiated that fine line very successfully – hence the Oscar nomination. There are those who, like Mom, are completely sick of heist movies but well… You get those in every genre…

Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale)  has a nice life all in all. He has a beautiful wife (Jennifer Lawrence) with whom he “fights and f.cks” but ultimately cannot seem to separate from; he has a nice little business running laundrettes with some art dealing on the side… Oh and he’s got a second little side line as a con artist, taking from the rich and desperate and giving to himself. Ok himself and his gorgeous business partner and lover Sydney (Amy Addams). So there he is, rolling along, making a “decent” living when… SLAM. The FBI. He is “nailed” by one of the FBI’s brightest, Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper). Now, every hustler knows that everybody, and I mean EVERYBODY has a weakness. The secret to survival lies in finding and abusing it. Richie is over-ambitious. What starts off with a simple trade off with Irving and Sydney – You get me a couple of big fish and I’ll make your charges go away – spirals slowly and steadily out of control as Richie forever sees opportunities to get bigger fish… Irving tries to warn him, not unsubtly, that he is heading into very murky waters but Richie remains stubbornly blinded by future glory… The question is, how far is he prepared to chase these dreams for and how far will he end up falling from?

Now, in one sense this is a common or garden heist film. I can, in that sense, see why Mom got so bored of it. But then, let us not dwell on the similarities. We have already covered that, the movie HAD to do it. The fans would get bored. Let’s concentrate on the stuff the movie did differently. Because, let’s be fair to the movie, it has done a substantial amount.

Now, first up, our hero.  You guys know how much of a Leo DiCaprio fan I am right? Right. I have to begrudgingly admit that although Leo is the main guy I support this year… Well… I won’t be that upset of Christian Bale gets it. I may even be rooting for him a tiny bit. Because as the heroes of heist movies go, Irving is quite a character. First of all, no Ocean’s 11 style smooth, handsome hero here. Irving is overweight and has a “killer” comb-over that gets a good few pages of dialogue all to itself. He has a beautiful blonde “dolly bird” wife sure. But what is different is, he has a COMPLICATED relationship with her. It’s a love-hate relationship, she’s depressed, is she an adequate mother? These are matters that ACTUALLY preoccupy us. We get to really know our characters in this film, as opposed to just reverting to stock characters and using all our previous knowledge to just assume what they’re like and move on. I mean then there’s Sydney. Her relationship with all the characters involved. You literally never know where she’s going to turn next, I mean you do, but the story is so cleverly designed that even a cynic like me had her misgivings.

And while we’re on the subject of characters, let’s have a word or two about Richie DiMaso. There are two types of possible cop in these movies. Ye can have the conscientious “good cop”, the hard-working, beetling antithesis to our “wise guy” heroes, like the police officers in The Wolf of Wall Street. These guys ultimately either win the day a la Wall Street or our heroes run rings round them, kinda like a Road Runner cartoon. Or, we are made to “hate” the cop so that we love the villain all the more – and ultimately the villain usually gets away. Richie… Is neither!  I mean ok, he is a sub-genre of the second variety. Ultimately he does get on our nerves. He is that over-ambitious type in the office who thinks, after taking two successful steps he is basically the best there is. Better than everyone. He has it coming to him a mile away and you know what, you kinda enjoy the smugness being wiped off his face. But at the same time… I’ll let you discover it for yourself but he has a bit of tough life. He is a bit of a “loser” in movie terms (and God knows I hate that term in real life but I’m trying to make a point here) but… Eh, he’s grey. He’s not black or white. Which makes this movie so great.

American Hustle is a fun, solid mix of something old and something new. It very successfully take a genre where it’s generally “goodies vs baddies” and made it… Well made it closer to real life. All the characters across the board have very real personalities and original personal tales. No one is a “stock” character. There is a lot of grey and not much in the way of black and white. I mean yes, this has meant giving up on originality in other areas sometimes but, like we said at the beginning, we can’t afford to lose the fans now, can we? J Soo yeah. I guess I’m ok with it getting a pat on the head. I’m not “outraged” about the nominations. I’ll have something to say if it actually gets all ten Oscars® it is nominated for but for that, dear ones, we have to wait for next week… 

MY FAVORITE LOVE FILM EVER : "THE NEW WORLD"

Films like this made me start this blog up. No kidding. No caricaturizing. I mean it. Watching films like this, and then wanting to shout it from the rooftops, wanting to stop random people in the street and tell them how good the film is. I didn’t get the fuss about Terrance Malik before. Well to be fair I only watched Badlands. It was impressive but nowhere near on a scale with this… This leviathan. It is all about brilliant filmmaking marrying a brilliant story here. I would have said the filmmaking has a slightly larger part but on reflection this isn’t true. Because this brilliant true story needs to be told in its original form, because we do know it quite well but rarely do we know the whole, true thing. We are talking, ladies and gents, about the true story of Pochahontas. Now, one side note. Some of you may be a little surprised at this point. Yes, Pochahontas (played by the beautiful Q'oranika Kilcher) was a real person, as was Captain Smith (played here by Colin Farrel). As was their love affair. The settlers arrived on American shores at their wits end in the early 17th century. There was sickness, mutiny and very little hope as to the establishment of the colony. Captain John Smith was a career soldier and quite high ranking it is true, but he was by no means “the boss” he is made out to be in the cartoons and the like, or so it seems. He is however instrumental in the survival of that first little colony and in the dealings with the “naturals” as they seem to be called back then. And in the course of these dealings (I refuse to give too much away) the love affair between Pochahontas, the native American princess and Captain Smith blossoms. And it is beautiful, the discovery of true love, the forest, nature, communicating without words. But what then? What later? I will leave it to you to discover that. Trust me, it is nothing like the cartoon. I have to point something out. Some of you will not like the end. No, not one little bit. But I loved it. That ending made this categorically one of my favorite films ever, and I mean ever. I cried buckets. Buckets. All I will say is I strongly believe that John Rolfe (played by Christian Bale - no, I haven’t mentioned him above, watch the film and find out) deserved what he got. He suffered and fought for that happiness, that resolution. It would be a heart-rending shame if the story had ended in any other way. The very, very end is sad of course but neither here nor there. So there. Another thing I didn’t quite get before watching this film is “poetic” filming. Poems are poems and films are films and forcing the two together does not sound like the wisest of ideas to me. Err, wrong. Very wrong. The images Malik’s camera captures, the narration that is superimposed… The originality of the work of the film from beginning to end… Words cannot describe it. Having various images on screen with an external narrator in the background may not sound like the most riveting way to go about describing emotions. “Oh” , you might say, “he did that because he couldn’t have it in the film”. Wrong. He did it because he could do that kind of thing very, very well. I can think of no better way of portraying the inner thoughts of the characters. The text they narrate is pure literature. Yes, apparently the two go very well together. I am now in the small band that cannot wait for Malik’s next film. As you may know, he goes for quality rather than quantity. But hey, obviously it is worth the wait. In the meanwhile, I shall go and root out the rest of his films. I will keep you posted, naturally.

RESCUE DAWN

Rescue Dawn – or rather writing it’s review – is one of those jobs I keep meaning to get round to and failing miserably. So now I’m in the mood for a bit of writing and have the time, I’m just riding the wave ;) This can be qualified as one of the most extraordinary true stories I have ever heard. Master director Werner Herzog and talented actor Christian Bale tell the unbelievable story of Dieter Dengler, one of only two survivors who escaped from the Pathet Lao prison camp in Laos, during the Vietnam war.
On Febuary the 1.st 1966, Lt. Dieter Dengler (Christian Bale in the film) was shot down over Laos. His fate is similar to that of all prisoners of war at the time; he is arrested by peasants and taken to the Pathet Lao prison camp. There, he meets seven other prisoners of war, Americans and Thai civilians (who worked as “kickers” with the army – a kicker, by the way, is a person whose job at that time was to kick pallets of rice and food down the plane to aid refugees in the Peace Corps thank you Wikipedia for enlightening me on that one!). Anyway, so, there thy are, in the prison camp, but Dengler is determined not to stay there – so the group rallies and an escape plan is soon made. The plan is executed with heroism but they are very far from being “out of the woods”… Because their actual prison is the jungle itself and getting out of it is going to take even more determination than the getting out of the prison…
Now, I want to add a disclaimer here. Researching this film, I have found numerous claims the film is quite inaccurate on a lot of counts – especially the way one of the POWs, Eugene DeBruin is portrayed. Here, you can find a critique by the families of the other prisoners of war on the matter, but although the link comes first, I would save it for later and click here to read more about Dieter Dengler, and don't forget to scroll down and check his fellow inmates if you have the time – or maybe you would like to try here to read an excerpt of his book “Escape from Laos”. And I would watch the film, it is a VERY exciting Hollywood film. (Possibly “Hollywood Film” is the key word here – you cannot help but notice certain "Hollywoodisms" in it.)Just bare in mind it is “based on” true events as opposed to a “true story”. A good work of fiction and not an actual, factual account. Besides, it pushed me to do quite a lot of research on the matter and has brought to light, for me personally anyway, an incredible story of determination and survival, not just on the part of Dieter Dengler but for all the men – even those who struggled heroically but didn’t make it home… It’s also a stunning reminder of the horrors of war and the man’s capacity for cruelty to his fellow man. A topic I seem to be repeating myself on but then again… It’s one of those things you can’t really repeat enough…

PUBLIC ENNEMIES

I am rather surprised with myself as I start writing this review. I ADORE this film. It has two of my favorite actors in it. The fact that I have not mentioned it before kinda defies logic. However, blogger doesn’t lie (as far as I know) and I have trawled my previous posts to no avail. So here goes. Well, thinking about it, it sort of makes sense that you will love this film. The leading actors? Johnnie Depp, Christian Bale and Marillon Cotillard. Gangster movie. About a REAL gangster. Director ? Micheal Mann. Have I got your attention yet?

The unlikely hero of this story harking from 1930’s America is John Dillinger (Johnnie Depp). He is an old-school gangster and bank robber and boy is he getting on the police’s nerves… There are many things impeding the police from catching Dillinger: He is intelligent, cunning and an expert at getting away with anything but murder. To add insult to injury – the public LOVES him! In the troubled times of the Great Depression, Dillinger refuses to take money from the people and targets only big banks and corporations, thus making himself some rather powerful enemies. Regardless of public opinion, the FBI is just about sick of being made a fool of by Dillinger. They set their number one man, Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) on Dillinger’s proverbial tail. Purvis and Dillinger will start a deadly game of cat and mouse – but this is not all Dillinger has to worry about. The times are, as a wise man will say decades after him “a’changing” and the underworld is adapting to it. The question is will Dillinger, an old-fasioned bank-robber with is “Mol” Billie Frechette (Marillon Cotillard) on his arm be able to adapt as well?

First of all, if you thought that with quadruple Oscar® nominee Michael Man at the helm, you had nothing to fear – you would be right. The film is a good quality, old-fashioned gangster movie and it’s a movie about the real men all films in this genre were based on. Dillinger’s story is particularly fascinating seeing as it combines this fact with the changing times and the dynamics in the underworld, a place we all assume has “laws unto itself”. Actually no, it changes with the times and those who can’t adapt are left by the wayside just as with everything else… I have heard the film being described as a “guys movie” yet I’m not sure I agree… I mean yes, it’s a gangster movie but the bizarre relationship between Purvis and Dillinger – very equally matched enemies here – is interesting to watch for any lady who likes a bit of action in her movies. Plus of course, there is the fact that both Depp and Bale are drop-dead gorgeous (I’m being candid here, come on now…) And last but not least, there is the love between Dillinger and Frechette as portrayed by Depp and Cotillard. As you can imagine from actors of that caliber you will be reaching for tissues.

In short, Public Enemies very successfully combines a fascinating period film with breath-taking action. You will enjoy it – no matter what your tastes are =)