“Turning safety nets into hammocks,” “he’s going rogue left and right man,” “you holly rollers,” and other highlights from the Great Palin Endorsement of 2016.
Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper in ‘Joy’ (20th Century Fox)Every holiday season now seems to come with a David O. Russell picture starring Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper. This time out Lawrence plays Joy, a semi-fictionalized variation on the inspirational true story of Joy Mangano, a housewife-turned-inventor who became a multi-millionaire by creating the Miracle Mop and shilling them on QVC.
David O. Russell’s newest ode to the multifaceted pluck of Jennifer Lawrence,Joy announces right off that it is “inspired by true stories of daring women.” Between that message and a bait-and-switch trailer, hyped up with a glowering Robert De Niro and shots of Lawrence blasting away with a shotgun, audiences may settle in thinking they’re about to be swept away by another American Hustle-like story of nervy outsiders working the system. But really, the film is about a mop…
Christian Bale, Amy Adams, and Bradley Cooper strut in ‘American Hustle’
After last year’s wildly popular but kinda underwhelming mental-illness romantic comedy Silver Linings Playbook, David O. Russell changes things up with the sprawling, polyestered, multi-Golden Globe-nominated, 1970s scam flick American Hustle. Not a bad switchup, all things considered
American Hustle opens this weekend in limited release and goes wide on December 20. My review is at Film Racket:
Somehow there’s never been a big movie about Abscam, the ambitious late-1970s FBI corruption probe that convicted six Congressmen and one Senator for taking bribes from fake Arab sheikhs. Although it plays with a few shards of the real story, David O. Russell’s highly imitative but gung-ho drama American Hustle is not really about Abscam. What you have here, amidst all the science-fiction hair and byzantine deals cut in rooms lined with cheap wood paneling, is an epic power ballad of a story about love, friendship, and the high costs of each…
The ladies of ‘American Hustle’
Here’s the trailer, which reveals absolutely nothing about the plot; dig it:
Chris Barsanti 
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