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<\/a><\/p>\n\nI don’t know, man. I’m not seeing it. I’m not seeing what others are seeing. I am on board with this article<\/a>, although I didn’t like Amy Adams as much as he did. I enjoyed the performances tremendously, everyone is excellent. But Jennifer Lawrence strolls away with the picture. Easily. This wouldn’t be an issue if she were the lead but she’s not, she’s supporting cast with five scenes, tops. This is a problem. I kept wanting more of her, and wondered why we weren’t seeing this entire story through her eyes. Put her front and center. <\/p>\n I wrote a piece about Jennifer Lawrence a couple of years ago<\/a>, pre-Oscar-win, and I am totally not surprised at what has happened in her career since I wrote that piece. She is a phenomenal actress, unpredictable, absolutely nuts, and 100% alive in every moment. You cannot anticipate what she will do next. The entire movie springs to messy messy life when she shows up. And the rest suffers. <\/p>\n Christian Bale is terrific. Bradley Cooper (my old classmate) is great, with his home-perm and his rat-a-tat delivery. Great role for him. Amy Adams is okay (and I’m a fan), but I felt that she should have been supporting, not lead. The character wasn’t interesting enough. I kept waiting for Jennifer Lawrence, and she’s not in it enough.<\/p>\n I adored Jeremy Renner, and the brief scenes we got of his home life were just great. They said it all about that character, and I LOVED Elisabeth R\u00f6hm, as his wife. We don’t get much of her either, but what we do get is rock-solid: an entire LIFE is there for us on the screen, and she does it with only a couple of lines. Hats off. <\/p>\n People are comparing this to Scorsese, and this baffles me. Where are they getting that? From the 70s sleaze of the look and feel? Yeah, but that’s just costuming. From the voiceover which is definitely reminiscent of Good Fellas<\/i>? Not buying it. The only way this has anything to do with Scorsese is if you pair it with the words “poor man’s”. <\/p>\n Individual moments glitter with weirdness, but there are strangely dead patches that can’t be covered up. But seeing Jennifer Lawrence dancing around wildly with yellow rubber gloves on, all as her horrified little son sits on the couch watching \u2026 or seeing her stumble drunkenly down a hallway, falling out of her slinky white dress \u2026 now SHE is nuts, SHE really IS lost in the world being portrayed. I feel like I’m actually looking at something real when I’m looking at her. Hearing her go on and on (and ON) about her nail polish and how good it smells, with that whiff of something rotten beneath – “you know, it’s like flowers on top of GARBAGE” \u2026 and honestly, that nail polish monologue is really bad screenwriting, laying the theme out in an obvious metaphor \u2026 but Lawrence sells the HELL out of it. She sells the hell out of it so much that you want her to shut up about her damn nail polish already, but that’s the beauty of it. That’s how far she goes with it.<\/p>\n What would this film have been if it realized she was the lead character? What would have happened if it hadn’t privileged the male point of view and taken a side route? Well, it would have been a very different movie, albeit a better one. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I don’t know, man. I’m not seeing it. I’m not seeing what others are seeing. I am on board with this article, although I didn’t like Amy Adams as much as he did. I enjoyed the performances tremendously, everyone is … Continue reading