Silver Linings Playbook

To be perfectly honest with you, I wasn't thrilled with the 2012 Best Picture Oscar nominees.  I really liked Django Unchained and Beasts of the Southern Wild, and Argo was also very good, but the rest underwhelmed me.  I've never been a huge fan of David O. Russell.  I've always found Bradley Cooper a little annoying.  I hate Chris Tucker.  Suffice to say, I wasn't looking forward to Silver Linings Playbook very much.  Luckily, I really enjoy Jennifer Lawrence, and this is the role she won her Best Actress award for.  Will that be enough to make this worthwhile for my admittedly subjective tastes?

Do you like stories about people with psychiatric disorders?  Are you tired of watching Mad Love over and over again to get your bipolar disorder film fix?  Then I have a movie for you!  Silver Linings Playbook follows Pat (Bradley Cooper) as he recovers from a mental breakdown that led to him losing his job and wife.  Pat's bipolar disorder was treated in a psychiatric institution until his mother, Dolores (Jacki Weaver), took legal custody of him.  Now, Pat is living at home with his parents until he can convince his estranged wife that he has changed enough for her to take him back.

"That sounds like a pretty terrible plan"

To do this, Pat has been working out and has decided to read all the books his wife is teaching at her high school.  Unfortunately, she has a restraining order in place, so it's a little difficult for him to show off his insane plan growth.  That's where Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence) comes in.  She is also a little crazy, but in a I've-just-been-widowed-so-I'm-having-sex way.  The pair bond over medications and being the disappointments of their respective families and eventually come to an agreement.  If Pat is really going to convince his wife that he has changed, he needs to do something that requires dedication and is far outside his comfort zone.

Considering that wearing garbage is something he's okay with, that could take some work

Tiffany needs a partner for an upcoming dance recital and promises to sneak Pat's wife some letters if he works with her.  Now, spending a lot of time dancing with an attractive woman who is fifteen years your junior may not sound like the best way to convince your wife to forgive you, but keep in mind that everyone in this story is a little crazy.

The age difference doesn't bother anyone else?  Nobody?

The acting in Silver Linings Playbook is universally good.  I'm not a fan of Bradley Cooper, but he played his bipolar character convincingly and I didn't feel pandered or preached to.  I didn't like his character --- everything from his motives, to the way he reacted to his parents, to his emotional triggers annoyed me --- but none of that his the fault of the actor.  This is easily the best work I have seen from Cooper to date.

ACTING!

Thankfully, Jennifer Lawrence was amazing.  I thought she showed a very realistic dose of "everyday crazy" and came across as a believable, natural character.  She delivered most of the best lines in the film and had the most impressive character arc.  Lawrence is the difference between this being a mediocre character piece and being a Best Picture contender.  

You don't think Bradley Cooper can carry a prestige picture, do you?

One of the biggest surprises in this film was Robert DeNiro's best work in at least a decade (is it bad that The Score is the last thing I remember him being decent in?).  I'm not entirely sure what was behind his character (undiagnosed OCD is my best guess), but DeNiro was vulnerable and energetic.  Jacki Weaver was pretty good in an underdeveloped role; I like Weaver, but I think her Best Supporting Actress nod has more to do with it being a thin category than thanks to her work.  If she had five more minutes of solid screen time, I am sure she could have changed my mind.  The biggest surprise for me was the fact that Chris Tucker was actually pretty good and not at all annoying. 

"I didn't think it was possible either"

The rest of the supporting cast was decent, but nothing particularly impressive.  Veteran Bollywood actor Anupam Kher made an appearance as a pretty well-adjusted therapist, John Ortiz was okay as a supposedly "normal" guy that was acting a little crazy, and Julia Stiles was convincing as a horrific bitch.

David O. Russell directed the film and adapted the screenplay for Silver Linings Playbook.  He obviously did a good job with the actors, even if you ignore all the accolades the cast received.  Just getting DeNiro to wake up and act in a film these days shows impressive pull with a cast, and turning Bradley Cooper into a viable lead character was equally impressive.

*** cue sheepish grin ***

As far as the rest of the movie, I though Russell did a solid job.  The script was a little too heavy-handed for my liking --- did everyone have to display a degree of "crazy"? --- but the script was reasonably smart.  I felt that the turning point was telegraphed, and I would have preferred for it to be less obvious when Pat worked everything out in his head, but he handled the emotions in the story well enough for that to balance out.

It would have been nice if the plot was surprising at all.  This isn't necessarily as formulaic as your typical rom-com, but it's not far off.  For a script that could occasionally be very witty, the plot was pretty conventional.

A romantic movie with a diner scene.  How novel.

That familiarity is Silver Linings Playbook's biggest obstacle.  This movie wants to stand tall as a realistic and funny movie about people functioning with psychological disorders, but it is so eerily reminiscent of other movies about so many other things (Garden State, My Best Friend's Wedding, Timecop, etc.) that it feels like a bit of a rehash.  That doesn't make it bad, and Jennifer Lawrence alone makes this worth watching, but a more unique plot and a more lovable main character would have gone a long way toward making Silver Linings Playbook more special.

Animal Kingdom

The DVD case for Animal Kingdom has a quote from a critic, calling this "Australia's answer to GoodFellas."  That's a bold statement.  It did win seven Australian Film Institute awards and was nominated for five more.  Granted, I don't know what it was up against in Australia --- did AC/DC or silverchair act in any movies this year? --- but that's still pretty impressive.  Jacki Weaver was even nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar, so it's not just the Aussies that like this movie.  But this is America, home of the gangster movie.  How does Animal Kingdom stack up?

Joshua Cody's (James Frecheville) mother has died from a heroin overdose, so he goes to live with his estranged grandmother, "Smurf" Cody (Jacki Weaver).  Smurf is mother to one of the more notorious gangs in Australia.  Pope (Ben Mendelsohn), the eldest, is into armed robbery; Craig (Sullivan Stapleton) is a major drug dealer; Darren (Luke Ford), the youngest, just kind of follows his brothers' lead; Baz Brown (Joel Edgerton), a brother by everything except blood, is Pope's partner in crime and appears to be the brains of the group.  Joshua is only eighteen, so he's not exactly running in the same circles as the other Codys, but their problems quickly become his own.

Around this time, the Melbourne task force for armed robbery was under a lot of pressure for apprehending a suspicious number of newly deceased suspects; they were approaching suspects (that were probably guilty) and, instead of arresting them, shooting them dead without cause.  Word on the street was that Pope is next on their list, so he is in hiding by the time Joshua moves in to the Cody house.  The street was wrong, though; it was another member of the gang that is shot dead by police, unarmed, in a grocery store parking lot.  That sort of aggression cannot go unchallenged in high stakes cops-and-robbers; the Codys decide to murder some police officers to send a message.  It's not like they aren't suspects, though, so the entire family gets picked up for questioning, including Joseph.  He hasn't been raised around crime, though, and the rest of the family starts to get nervous over what he may or may not have said.  Inspector Leckie (Guy Pearce) begins paying special attention to Joseph, which unnerves the Codys even more.  The film opens with a voice-over from Joseph, where he explains that all criminals are afraid, even if they don't realize it, because they all know that theirs will not be a happy ending.  How can Joseph live with people who fear him being used to hurt them?  How can family solve a problem like that?  Who will make the choices that must be made for survival?  Can they all live happily ever after?  All these questions, and more, will be answered in the next exciting episode of...Animal Kingdom!

...and we're back.  This isn't exactly the sort of plot you usually associate with GoodFellas, is it?  Right off the bat, the film starts off with a downer (heroin-dead mother) and it doesn't ever become fun.  Joshua never witnesses the perks of being a gangster.  There is no romanticizing a life of crime here.  Instead, this film focuses on what is typically the final third of any gangster film: the investigation and apprehension of the gang.  It does that very well, in fact.  The film is believable, the characters are cutthroat, and the pace suits the plot.  This is David Michod's feature film debut as a writer and/or director, and I was impressed with how well he told this story and how he handled the actors.

Speaking of actors, all good gangster movies need a few standout characters.  Despite his age, James Frecheville was very impressive in his feature film debut.  It's not like he put on an acting showcase or anything, but his performance might be one of the best sullen teenager bits I've ever seen; teens are surly and not terribly talkative to their families, and Frecheville captured that attitude perfectly.  He wasn't terribly interesting, but that wasn't his job.  The star of the movie was undoubtedly Ben Mendelsohn as Pope.  As a person, Mendelsohn looks unassuming, even a little nerdy.  He takes that awkwardness and transforms it into something creepy and frightening in this movie.  It's not even what he does (at least at first), it's how he stares at people.  Jacki Weaver's performance was also noteworthy; I was waiting for her Oscar-worthy moment for almost the entire film, but it was worth it when it came.  She was a creepy, cold-hearted bitch, and yet did it in a very motherly way.  The rest of the cast was good, but more or less filled their parts.  Nobody was bad, but there were only a few choice parts in the movie.  I would like to point out Guy Pearce's respectable mustache:

That's not teen surliness; it's cop 'stache envy

While I liked the characters, I was disappointed that I didn't actually get to see the rising action in this story.  Would it have been too much to ask for one armed robbery scene, or one drug deal gone bad?  Australian movies (the ones I have seen lately, anyway) seem intent on taking all the fun out of violent films.  Yes, this was impressively plausible.  The ending was pretty awesome, too.  I just wish the film had even one moment where things seemed all right, if only to contrast with the tense atmosphere of the rest of the movie.  I also would have liked to see more of Smurf in the movie; the idea of a mother actively supporting her gangster sons is an intriguing one, and I think her part could have been bigger.  You know, looking at it with a bit of distance, I suppose that this movie does share one thing in common with GoodFellas; both have main characters that are nowhere near as frightening or interesting as their crazy friends.

Despite that, this is definitely more character-driven than I expected.  Without that robbery gone bad or whatever to begin the film, Animal Kingdom latches on to the faults of each respective Cody brother as they handle this less than ideal situation.  I'm not a huge fan of voice-overs --- they are often tacked on because the movie is hard to understand otherwise --- but Joseph's bit at the start of the movie acts as the theme to the film, and was very well done.  If the movie had any variance in mood, or if Joseph was a more charismatic character, I think this movie would have moved from "worth viewing" to "seriously awesome."