Jennifer Lawrence

Dancing, Crazy People, and the Philadelphia Eagles

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Silver Linings Playbook
  • IMDB: link

silver-linings-playbook-posterWith his latest movie, Silver Linings Playbook, writer/director David O. Russell (The Fighter, Three Kings) delivers his most mainstream film to date in this adaptation of Matthew Quick‘s novel of the same name about a teacher (Bradley Cooper) who moves back in with his parents (Robert De Niro, Jacki Weaver) after spending eight months in a mental institution. At times I think Russell can get too cute for his own good (see I Heart Huckabees), but Silver Linings provides the director the kind of manic characters he enjoys while still forcing him draw within the lines. The result is one of the year’s best films.

Our story begins with the release of Pat (Cooper) from his stint in the loony bin after brutally assaulting a fellow teacher who he discovers sleeping with his wife (Brea Bee). Armed with medication he refuses to take and an optimistic attitude of winning back his wife (despite being still haunted by her infidelity), putting his life back together, and looking for the silver lining in every bad situation, Pat begins his slow (and rocky) road to recovery.

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The Hunger Games

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: The Hunger Games
  • IMDb: link

hunger-games-poster

Long before the young adult novel by Suzanne Collins on which The Hunger Games is based, Hollywood has enjoyed the idea of a culture putting murder on display as reality television for the enjoyment of the masses. From the enjoyable The Running Man to the deplorable The Condemned the results have been mixed.

And we’re not even going to get started on the dozens of gladiator and horror movies that use some version of the tale as well. Originality is not this film’s strong suit. And with a running time of 142 minutes neither is brevity.

The Hunger Games gives us a world in which the twelve poor outlying districts attempted to rise up against the rich capital state 74 years ago only to be thwarted and beaten back down. Now, in memory of the events and to keep the populace in line, one male and one female between the ages of 12 and 18 are chosen by lottery to kill each other on live television in “The Hunger Games,” with as much pomp and circumstance as they can muster. Murder, of and by children, it seems is to be the sport of the future.

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Like Crazy

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Like Crazy
  • IMDB: link

like-crazy-posterLike Crazy wants to be this year’s Blue Valentine. Paradoxically it also wants to be a romantic love story. Despite some nice performances and an understated feel, the movie leaves much unsaid about a pair of people who, even after spending two hours with them, we’re not sure if they belong together.

The film has a documentary feel that stresses real moments. This gives us small petty fights and cute moments with the pair in bed together, but it also shares with us long stretches that would have been better off on the cutting room floor. Too often the film’s rabid embrace of realism gets in the way of basic storytelling.

Like Crazy begins with the meeting of British exchange student Anna (Felicity Jones – think a more bubbly version of Emma Roberts) and Jacob (Anton Yelchin). The pair hit it off immediately and the glory days of their relationship is a montage blur until Anna’s Visa expires and she has to return home. Against the advice of some very cool movie parents (Alex Kingston, Oliver Muirhead) Anna overstays her time in America.

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X-Men: First Class

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: X-Men: First Class
  • IMDB: link

x-men-first-class-posterAfter jumping ship to make a largely forgettable remake of Richard Donner’s Superman, and leaving the franchise in the hands of Brett Ratner, Bryan Singer returns to the X-Men universe as a producer for a relaunch of the series (of sorts).

The newest film, which in some ways feels like a prequel and in others more of a half-hearted full-relaunch that lets part of the original film series stick around, is a period piece set duing the early 1960’s, specifically set around the events of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

After a short introduction of a handful of the characters as children (including an expanded version of the early footage of Magneto in a concentration camp we saw in X-Men), the film fast-forwards to 1962, where most of the story unfolds.

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