Brian’s Review – Silver Linings Playbook (2012)

After a stint in a mental institution, former teacher Pat Solitano moves back in with his parents and tries to reconcile with his ex-wife. Things get more challenging when Pat meets Tiffany, a mysterious girl with problems of her own.

Brian

Rating: 9 out of 10

Holy Shit! Bradley Cooper can act! I honestly had no idea. Everything I’ve ever seen him in prior to this movie, he’s always delivered a minimalist performance where he seems to be doing little more than acting like himself. But, here he delivers a nuanced and fleshed out character that isn’t just interesting, but funny and touching as well. Honestly, all the acting in this film is fantastic. Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro, and Jacki Weaver are all top notch and make the film work but I knew THEY could act. Cooper caught me a bit off guard.

As I’m sure you’ve read from the above synopsis, this is a film about mental illness and the long term effects it can have on life, love, and finding your place in the world. As generalized as that description can sound, it describes the experience of watching the film perfectly. David O. Russell does his best work since Three Kings here. He has always been a visionary director that uses interesting characters to help round out a detailed and oft-kilter world. But, here is a film that is more about emotion than rational thought. Cooper, De Niro, and Lawrence all have their mental illness vices. De Niro is obsessive compulsive, Lawrence lost her husband and has thrown herself to any man sexually who will make her forget her pain, and Cooper has constant fits of rage stemming all the way back to an incident where his wife was unfaithful. Each of them is looking for their own “Silver Lining.”

 That makes for an interesting premise and certainly Russell is adept at weaving the tale but it’s the interaction between the characters that makes this film special, particularly the believable chemistry between Lawrence and Cooper. Their relationship builds over the course of the movie, not from some lame chance meeting like all of the predictable romantic comedies. They have very little in common except for one thing: they both have no filter between their brains and their mouths. This makes for some funny and unpredictable dialogue that is completely original.

I’ll admit that this may not be everyone’s cup of tea. A lot of film goers like their neat and tidy films that ride off into the sunset. While this film is far from a negative experience, it doesn’t dare to think that these people are cured. It just lets them find their silver lining within their imperfect existence. 

 

The A-Team: A Public Apology

matt

I just want to take this opportunity to apologize to our readers. I was wrong, and I’m sorry.

There’s no way on God’s green Earth that I should have posted my cousin Shawn’s review of “The A-Team.” He was giddy with joy, bubbling with a childlike excitement over this reboot of the 1980s television show about a group of Army Rangers wrongly arrested, but who break out of jail and work as soldiers of fortune — helping the most needy along the way. He posted publicly on facebook that it was far better and more enjoyable than the Academy Award-nominated “Black Swan.” I never should have posted that review, in which he gave it a 7 out of 10.

What can I say? My cousin has crappy taste in movies.

I promised in our podcast that I would watch the A-Team and give my honest opinion of it. Shawn said I had been unfair to the movie, since I lambasted it when it hadn’t even hit theater. I listed it as a movie you shouldn’t waste your money on this summer.

Well, my wife and I sat down to watch this over the weekend, and I have to say, that those are some of the worst 117 minutes I have ever spent in my life. This film embodies everything that is wrong with Hollywood. It’s full of moronic dialogue, hokey plots, action that is simply insulting to your intelligence, wooden acting, and a source material that was recycled from a television show that was never even good to begin with.

The film starts out with Liam Neeson’s character being absolutely pummeled by two hulks that are just throwing haymakers at his face while he’s strapped to a chair. He, of course, has a key hidden in his mouth and escapes — WITHOUT A MARK ON HIS FACE. After he escapes, he just randomly comes across three other Army Rangers on three separate occasions within minutes who come together joyously as The A-Team. Isn’t that special?

Later, the crew gets shot down in a plane and escape in a tank in the sky. Naturally, the tank has some parachutes attached. While falling, they shoot down drones that are firing at them. Obviously, you can’t land a tank — let’s not ask ourselves, then, why it has parachutes — so they fire the cannon with great precision to direct the plummeting tank — now down to one parachute from three — and land it safely in a lake. They then drive out of the lake. Naturally. Somewhere in there is a plot about forfeiting and espionage. It’s not worth getting into.

This film has an i.q. equal to the rating I give it — a big fat 2.

The Midnight Meat Train

Bradley Cooper (The A-Team) stars as Leon Kauffman, an ambitious New York photographer whose reckless search for a serial killer known as “the Subway Butcher” (Vinnie Jones) leads him down a dark and dangerous path that puts his own life at risk. Leslie Bibb, Dan Callahan, Brooke Shields and Tony Curran also star in this thriller from Japanese director Ryuhei Kitamura, and based on a short story by horror giant Clive Barker.

Brian
Rating: 4 out of 10

This is a better film than “Book of Blood,” but that’s like saying one piece of shit smells a little better than another.  Believe me, I love Clive Barker and I love horror movies.  Both of these should have been like peanut butter and jelly but when you try to adapt a short story and don’t figure out interesting ways to expand on the original ideas, you’re left with little except grisly murder scenes and paper thin characters.

Stylistically, it’s well shot and has some suspenseful scenes but would have worked far better as a tight 30-minute thrill ride instead of a 90-minutes mess.