Movie Review: Maestro (2023)

Genre: Biographical Drama

Director: Bradley Cooper

Starring: Bradley Cooper, Carey Mulligan, Sarah Silverman

Running Time: 129 minutes

Synopsis: In 1943, Leonard Bernstein (Bradley Cooper) is catapulted to fame when he receives his big break conducting the New York Philharmonic orchestra. Although he prefers homosexual relationships, he falls in love and marries Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan). As the decades pass and the family grows, Bernstein's career in the spotlight is marked by endless socializing and episodes of infidelity with other men, testing Felicia's limits.

What Works Well: Some of Bradley Cooper's directorial touches are seamlessly smooth, and the few concert scenes are animated with gusto. Carey Mulligan embodies Felicia's tolerance with stalwart fatigue. 

What Does Not Work As Well: The script (co-written by Cooper and Josh Singer) ignores what made Bernstein a celebrated and innovative talent, and equally bypasses the creative process. Instead the focus is on tiresome and overly familiar couple dynamics beset by infidelity and then sickness. The portrayal of a perpetually smoking and nasal-sounding Bernstein staggering from one social gathering to the next lustfully chasing after the next attractive man is remarkably tedious.

Conclusion: Lacking the foundational soul of greatness, the pretentiousness is corrosive.



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Movie Review: Nightmare Alley (2021)

A drama about greed, Nightmare Alley is gorgeously photographed but poorly paced and emotionally sparse.

In 1939, Stan Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) burns the body of his dead father and drifts across the land. He finds work with the traveling carnival owned by Bruno (Ron Perlman), where the main attraction is a geek show. Stan meets Zeena (Toni Collette), who runs a clairvoyant act with the perpetually drunk Pete (David Strathairn). Stan eyes the communication codes used by Zeena and Pete as his ticket to riches, and convinces performer Molly (Rooney Mara) to partner with him in both romance and business. He ignores warnings about the dangers of dabbling in the afterlife.

Stan and Molly find success with an upscale clairvoyant act in big city hotels, attracting the attention of conniving psychologist Dr. Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett). She agrees to an uneasy scheme, providing Stan confidential information about her wealthy clients Judge Kimball (Peter MacNeill) and the tycoon Ezra Grindle (Richard Jenkins), while he dupes them with fake seances. Molly disapproves of Stan's greed and intrusion into the spirit world, but he pushes ahead.

Directed and co-written by Guillermo del Toro, Nightmare Alley is an adaptation of the William Lindsay Gresham book, previously brought to the screen in a 1947 Tyrone Power classic. Here del Toro switches to colour, and with the help of Dan Laustsen's stellar cinematography delivers stunning beauty. Every scene is a masterpiece of picturesque framing and angular tension highlighting a noir psyche, although the glossy visuals threaten to slip into postcard artificiality.

Beyond the rich artistry, Nightmare Alley is bloated and unbalanced. The relatively simple rise-and-fall story of one man stretches to a tiresome 150 minutes, and often focuses on the wrong elements. It's a full one hour into the movie before Stan and Molly leave the carnival, and in that entire time, Zeena and Pete's show is never once presented as an effective act inspiring Stan's ambition. Once Stan and Molly achieve success, they are denied the thrill of commanding a room and instead are immediately reduced to a bickering couple. Without a reservoir of trust and affection, the rupture of their relationship loses impact.

del Toro's favorite theme of monsters among us gets a good workout. The chicken-biting geek is a monstrous representation of comeuppance as a freak show with audiences marveling at how low a man can fall. Meanwhile, both Stan and Dr. Lilith struggle with insatiable urges for emotional domination and avarice, their monsters within engaged in dark battles of possession.

Cate Blanchett as Dr. Lilith adds a jolt of intrigue once she enters the movie about halfway through, finally presenting Stan with a soul more twisted than his own. But Lilith plays in a higher league: she is sophisticated, successful, and resourceful, while he is a scrappy small-timer with misguided delusions of grandeur. His initial victory in guessing the contents of her purse was never going to be anything more than beginner's luck, and she predictably designs his downfall with methodical relish.

In the lead role Bradley Cooper is adequate and charismatic without quite finding the necessary level of behind-the-eyes intensity. Rooney Mara is underutilized, and the rest of the cast includes small roles for Willem Dafoe and Mary Steenburgen.

Nightmare Alley is visually vibrant, but rarely visceral.



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Movie Review: Aloha (2015)

A romantic comedy with convoluted but irrelevant sub-plots, Aloha never shakes the impression that a bunch of actors took a dream vacation and cobbled together a platitudinous project to write-off the expenses.

Army veteran and now private contractor Brian Gilcrest (Bradley Cooper) returns to Hawaii to negotiate a land access agreement with a native chief. Brian is working for tycoon Carson Welch (Bill Murray), who is operating a satellite business with murky ties to the military. Air Force Captain Allison Ng (Emma Stone) is Brian's liaison, and he also reconnects with his ex-girlfriend Tracy (Rachel McAdams), now married to man-of-few-words Major John "Woody" Woodside (John Krasinsky).

The land negotiations go reasonably well, with Allison (who is one quarter Hawaiian) entranced by the natives' spiritual connection to the sky, whereas Brian remains more grounded. Allison's all-business facade starts to melt in the presence of Brian's charisma, but he is more intrigued by the potential of rekindling the passion with Tracy. But when the real cargo of Carson's latest satellite project is revealed, Brian has to decide where his loyalties lie.

A lacklustre outing by writer and director Cameron Crowe, Aloha meanders in and out of several storylines with no conviction. Riding on the laid-back star power of Cooper, Stone, McAdams, Murray plus Alec Baldwin in a glorified cameo, the plot has traces of romantic comedy, a barely-there side-story about evil corporations desecrating the sanctity of the land, and an overly familiar damaged and cynical man making half-hearted attempts to right past wrongs.

The talented cast and decent island scenery offer some enjoyment, and to give Crowe his due, he pulls out a final father-daughter scene that belongs in another, much better movie. But the rest of the narrative never justifies itself as a story that needed to be told. The script lacks wit and edge, and gets worse at it goes along, choking on cliches of women falling for a flawed man they want to fix in between unconvincing debates about spirituality and pragmatism. By the time a kid's photograph reveals a weapons secret and one guy with a laptop reprograms a satellite on the fly, all credibility is lost.

The big familial reveal is telegraphed in the opening five minutes and comes as no surprise among all the other no surprises. It is left to John Krasinski to try and salvage a few moments of humour as a stoic husband who says plenty by not talking. He's a man who knows who he is, whereas Aloha suffers from  both an identity crisis and impostor syndrome.



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Movie Review: Serena (2014)

A drama and romance with psychological suspense undertones, Serena enjoys a ramshackle rural aesthetic and an ominously beautiful ambience, but catastrophically fails to build emotional resonance. 

In 1929, George Pemberton (Bradley Cooper) runs a timber operation in the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina. His key men include administrator Buchanan (David Dencik) and expert tracker Galloway (Rhys Ifans). The Great Depression is impacting the economy and plans for a national park supported by Sheriff McDowell (Toby Jones) threaten George's business, but he vows to continue tree-cutting operations. In his spare time George enjoys big game hunting and tracks a mythical panther.

On a trip to Boston, George meets and quickly marries Serena (Jennifer Lawrence). Her family used to own a major timber operation in Colorado, and as a 12 year old she miraculously survived a devastating fire. Now she joins George at the Smoky Mountain site and proves herself a capable leader. But a series of mishaps and betrayals place a strain on the newlyweds, while the presence of George's previous lover Rachel (Ana Ularu) and her son inflames Serena's jealousy.

An adaptation of the 2008 novel by Ron Rash, Serena promises an evocative dramatic romance and a descent into tragic turmoil. But despite the presence of enigmatic stars Cooper and Lawrence and some chillingly beautiful cinematography courtesy of Morten Søborg, the film is undermined by a fundamentally unbalanced script by Christopher Kyle. Director Susanne Bier struggles to create any sort of rhythm or empathy, and the second half sinks into a calamitous swamp of flat mishaps.

At 110 minutes, Serena is overrun by an unrelenting checklist of events unsupported by character depth, and becomes a rare example of a film crying out to be longer. The dialogue is sparse, banal, or non-existent, stranding George and Serena into a marriage after barely exchanging 10 words. Scenes of passionate lovemaking fail to compensate, and the couple's central bond remains exceptionally brittle.

Other potentially interesting characters suffer worse. Galloway is teasingly presented as possessing mystical qualities before being abandoned into stock henchman territory, while Rachel barely says a meaningful word, her mere presence having to suffice as a cause for Serena's anger.

The morose music is maddeningly repetitive, as close-ups and hysterics are trotted out instead of substance. Serena promises much, but is quickly lost in the fog-shrouded forests.



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Movie Review: Case 39 (2009)

A suspense and horror film, Case 39 offers predictable evil child elements but in chillingly effective packaging.

In Portland, Oregon (but filmed in an undisguised Vancouver, British Columbia), Emily (Renée Zellweger) is a social services child support worker with a high case load. She has no family of her own, but is friends with psychologist Doug (Bradley Cooper). Emily's boss Wayne (Adrian Lester) assigns her the case of Lily (Jodelle Ferland), a young girl demonstrating signs of a stressed household. Emily investigates and finds Lily's parents Edward (Callum Keith Rennie) and Margaret (Kerry O'Malley) weird and evasive, but the child in no apparent danger.

Emily nevertheless perceives a potential risk and seeks help from detective Mike Barron (Ian McShane). Together they are forced to intervene when Lily's safety is suddenly jeopardized. Separated from her parents and about to be placed in a group home, Lily makes an appeal to temporarily live with Emily. Initially reluctant, Emily eventually agrees, unwittingly exposing herself to horrors to come.

A surprisingly good and spooky slow-burning horror film completed in 2006 but released in 2009, Case 39 carries stirring low-key echoes from The Omen. With building momentum and some effective possession-based scares, director Christian Alvart and writer Ray Wright freshen up horror fundamentals, finding room for insidious evil to worm its way into Emily's already overextended life.

Emily is caught between an adult's natural instinct to help and self-preservation, with Lily gradually exposing her ability to override the agenda. The underlying themes are familiar but still cleverly conveyed. Fear breeds incapacity, the worst anxieties can either be confronted or allowed to fester, evil takes root when invited into inner sanctums, and the radical disruption caused by the well-intentioned arrival of children are among the narrative threads weaving through Case 39.

The film's clout resides with Jodelle Ferland's fine performance and some cunning writing. Wright leaves enough room to debate how much control Lily has over the menace residing within, and Ferland does the rest with an unsettling performance filled with winning contradictions.

Renée Zellweger delivers wistful regret as a caring woman with her own set of emotional scars wondering about her life's trajectory, while Ian McShane, Callum Keith Rennie and a pre-stardom Bradley Cooper add depth to the cast.

Featuring no shortage of gruesome acts, mental disintegration and waking nightmares, the Case 39 file promises potent threats, and delivers.

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Movie Review: Burnt (2015)

A drama set in the world of haute cuisine, Burnt is an overcooked attempt to stage a high-stakes thriller in the kitchen.

Adam Jones (Bradley Cooper) was once a top chef in Paris, but lost everything due to a life of excess and addictions. After three years of self-imposed exile to clean up his life, he heads to London to reestablish his reputation. He conspires with food critic Simone (Uma Thurman) to secure the chef role at the prestigious hotel restaurant of his former partner Tony Balerdi (Daniel Brühl), although Tony ensures Adam stays clean through weekly check-ups with Dr. Rosshilde (Emma Thompson).

Adam hires a kitchen team from among his former associates, including Michel (Omar Sy) and Max (Riccardo Scamarcio). And after some effort he convinces the promising Helene Sweeney (Sienna Miller) to join his crew. Adam renews his rivalry with chef Montgomery Reece (Matthew Rhys) and obsessively drives his staff in pursuit of the elusive three-star Michelin Guide rating.

Almost everything about Burnt is overdone. Adam Jones is an unlikeable character ripped from cheap action thrillers, leather-jacketed and obsessive about getting his revenge on a world that chewed him up and spit him out. Whether he does or does not achieve his third Michelin star means everything to him, but director John Wells, filming a Steven Knight script, is very far from making anyone else care.

A large part of the problem is the unironic setting within the tony world of unaffordable uppity restaurants where food critics opine about the minutiae of whether the scallops stayed on the fire for seven seconds too long. And Wells does not help his cause by overheating all the emotions to child tantrum levels, then plastering the film from start to end with kitchen staff shouting at each other and close-up shots of food being prepared and served. To suit the milieu Cooper does his best foul-mouthed impression of Gordon Ramsey on a gnarly day.

Jones' background and intriguing sexual preferences, including a complex relationship with Tony, are promising topics when touched upon, and the film would have greatly benefited by better exploring the man outside the kitchen.

Instead, Burnt loudly smashes the promising dishes against the wall and settles for 100 minutes of food porn.

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Movie Review: The Mule (2018)

A drama and character study, The Mule is a simple yet elegant story of an elderly man looking for renewed purpose.

In Illinois, Earl Stone (Clint Eastwood) ran a successful horticulture business, but was a neglectful husband to his now former wife Mary (Dianne Wiest) and an inattentive father to his bitter daughter Iris (Alison Eastwood). Now in his eighties, Earl did not keep up with online commerce and goes bankrupt. Granddaughter Ginny (Taissa Farmiga) maintains a good relationship, and one of her friends connects Earl with a drug cartel in need of reliable transport across state borders.

Earl starts making long drives to deliver bagfuls of narcotics, and establishes a reputation as a dependable and trustworthy mule, attracting the admiration of Mexican cartel boss Laton (Andy Garcia). Earl uses his substantial earnings to help good causes in his community, and to mend fences with his family. But Drug Enforcement Agency agents Bates (Bradley Cooper) and Trevino (Michael Peña) start to close in, with their boss (Laurence Fishburne) desperate for a big bust.

Directed by Eastwood and written by Nick Schenk, The Mule is inspired by a true story. The film is a warts-and-all exploration of a life full of joy and regret, and a remarkable second wind carrying Earl into an ocean of criminal activity. An old man at peace with himself and long past caring about niceties and political correctness, Earl makes for an ideal and nearly undetectable criminal.

Eastwood never judges his protagonist, instead allowing Earl to arrive at his own conclusions. With the curtain about to fall on his life, this is a man who learns almost too late that career success at the expense of a family life in tatters may not have been the best trade off. The same oblivious attitude that led Earl down the wrong path the first time around remains in evidence as he never seems to question the devastating social ills his mule activities are helping unleash.

But at least this time Earl uses his windfall Robin Hood style to rebuild community and recreational centres and help his family members, gradually earning his way back into the life of Mary and Iris. He will again confront a work-versus-family decision point, this time with the threat of a brutal death for defying vicious criminals. But having been around the block once before, Earl is better equipped to recognize the landmarks.   

The film is not without weaknesses. Plot holes abound in the intelligence battle between the cartel and the DEA, and The Mule is another film where the criminals are highly resourceful except when it suits the script. Overall the investigative elements featuring the high profile trio of Bradley Cooper, Michael Peña and Laurence Fishburne are underwritten for the available talent. A couple of key characters, including a Filipino informer and a chief cartel lieutenant, are given prominence then ignored.

Eastwood's directing is an example of eloquent efficiency, the character conflicts created with sharp and short strokes, allowing plenty of time for road trip interludes showcasing Earl's comfort with ruling his domain behind the wheel of his pickup on the open highway. When the time comes for serious conversations, Schenk conjures up memorable exchanges between Earl and Bates at a diner, and then between Earl and Mary, reflecting on second chances.

The Mule is about seizing life's next opportunity at any age, as discovered by the old man absentee. 

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Movie Review: A Star Is Born (2018)

A musical drama and romance, the 2018 version of A Star Is Born is a slick package but adds precious little to the oft-told story.

Jackson Maine (Bradley Cooper) is a hard drinking country-rock music star, still packing arenas but well past his creative prime, and suffering from worsening tinnitus. One night after a show he stumbles into a bar and catches a performance by Ally Campana (Lady Gaga). Entranced, they talk through the night. She reveals her insecurities about her looks and unwillingness to perform her own material. Ally's father Lorenzo (Andrew Dice Clay) is a chauffeur and wanna-be crooner who believes he could have been another Sinatra.

Jackson invites Ally to his next concert and insists she perform a song with him on stage. The clip goes viral and soon she is part of his tour, their romance blossoming as her reputation grows. Jackson reveals his own troubled upbringing in Arizona, and his strained relationship with his brother Bobby (Sam Elliott), now his tour manager. Music producer Rez Gavron (Rafi Gavron) spots Ally's potential and starts packaging her into a superstar, straining her relationship with Jackson, whose drinking gets out of control.

Directed, co-written and co-produced by Cooper, the latest version of A Star Is Born is a grand exercise in quality film making, but nevertheless fails to justify its existence. After the 1937, 1954 and 1976 versions, it is difficult to imagine what more can be added to the narrative. And sure enough the 2018 go-around settles down to a straight forward regurgitation, most closely resembling the 1976 edition, thankfully absent anything resembling Streisand's frightening ego.

Despite the unnecessarily overlong running time of 135 minutes, Cooper demonstrates good directorial touches and avoids getting bogged down in any one mood for too long. He has less success with the unmemorable music, a combination of bland and generic, and overall the film carries less of an emotional punch due to the ease with which Ally gains her stardom: being thrust onto a stage by a superstar in front of a ready-made audience of 100,000 fans in the digital age is not exactly the most arduous route to stardom.

More troubling is Ally's journey from talented singer-songwriter with a unique appeal to the prepackaged and generic gyrating entertainer she turns into under the suspect tutelage of producer Rez. It may be that the road to a Grammy in 2018 means spouting nonsense lyrics while dolled-up to look like every other manufactured airhead, but Ally never even pauses to question her trajectory.

In her film debut Lady Gaga ironically shines in the early scenes as the wide-eyed ingenue, but is less effective and often just surly when Ally's stardom takes hold. Cooper is excellent as the fading Jackson Maine, and the balanced emphasis on the two leads is one of the strengths of the 2018 retelling.

The romance is familiar and suddenly fiery when it suits the script, the idea that trouble may follow  obsessive drunkenness and career divergence seemingly catching Jackson and Ally by surprise. Jackson's deep backstory related to his relationship with his father and brother carries good weight, and with Sam Elliott in good form, more time could have been invested in this aspect.

A Star Is Born provides glossy, loud and overblown entertainment. The movie is tolerable, but the story is just tired.

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Movie Review: The Words (2012)

A drama about the thin line between truth and fiction, The Words is a finely crafted story of success, guilt and self-justification.

Celebrated author Clay Hammond (Dennis Quaid) is delivering a reading of his latest bestselling novel The Words in front of a live audience. The book is about young New York-based author Rory Jansen (Bradley Cooper), who achieves overnight success when his short novel becomes an unexpected literary hit.

For many years Rory and his wife Dora (Zoe Saldana) had struggled on meagre incomes, waiting for his career to take off, but Rory experienced nothing but rejections. After they honeymoon in Paris, Rory stumbles upon an old typewritten manuscript in an old satchel bag. Dora mistakes it for his work, he claims it as his own, and it turns into his big break. But the appearance of an old man (Jeremy Irons) threatens Rory's success, while at the reading event, young literary student Daniella (Olivia Wilde) tries to seduce Clay into revealing the true meaning behind The Words.

Co-directed and co-written by Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal, The Words is a clever story within a story within a story, with the multiple layers revolving around the creative process of putting words onto paper. The fictional Rory is the film's fulcrum, the manuscript he finds hides an old and deeply personal Parisian family tragedy of love found and lost, and the author Clay is the creator of both Rory's dilemma and the discovery that makes him famous.

Klugman and Sternthal jump around in time and alternate between the fictional world of Rory, the old man's haunting background and Clay's here-and-now reality, and easily manage to keep all three interlaced stories coherent. With one established author, one emerging author and one writer who never was, the film tackles several worthwhile themes, and poses some piercing questions about what constitutes success, the value of owning an experience, and the various guises of inspiration.

Rory feels he did not earn his fame and is undeserving of the accolades, and guilt will haunt him as he strides to the forefront of the literary world. The words he wrote are not his own, but they did fall into his laptop, unclaimed. The old man has to contend with his bittersweet experiences, hitherto only living within him, gaining widespread and unexpected exposure. And Clay conceives of this story perhaps as a mechanism to cleanse his soul, Daniella representing his interrogator as she probes the secrets underpinning the famous author's success.

Understandably, not all parts of The Words work equally well. The scenes in Paris are bathed in sepia tones and are a touch too emotionally utopian, while the interaction between Clay and Daniella is marginally forced. With Bradley Cooper, Zoe Saldana and Jeremy Irons all in fine form, the central story of Rory, Dora and the old man is the most powerful, and fortunately this is where the film invests most of its time.

Thought-provoking, nuanced and delicate, The Words shimmer off the page and onto an enjoyable screen experience.

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Movie Review: War Dogs (2016)

A dramatic comedy, War Dogs is an unapologetic story of young men profiteering from the business of weapons trading. Brash and vivid, the film passes no judgment: this is digital capitalism as applied to the often hypocritical enterprise of feeding the global death machine.

It's the mid-2000s in Miami. David Packouz (Miles Teller) is a pot-smoking college dropout, making ends meet as a massage therapist serving creepy rich men. David tries his hand at selling high quality bed sheets to retirement homes, and nearly bankrupts himself, just as he discovers that girlfriend Iz (Ana de Armas) is pregnant. Fortunately, David's high school friend Efraim Diveroli (Jonah Hill) has just moved back to Miami. A fearless, quick-witted entrepreneur, Efraim is dabbling in low-level arms trading as a middle man bidding on official US Army requisitions through a public procurement website.

Efraim is good at what he does and asks David to join his fledgling company AEY Inc, an offer David accepts although he lies to Iz about his sojourn into the arms trading business.  AEY lands an order to supply handguns to the Army in Iraq, but when the shipment is held up in Jordan, the two friends have to personally intervene, resulting in a harrowing war zone experience. Higher stakes opportunities lie ahead, as AEY goes after a mammoth contract to supply the Afghanistan Army. Efraim and David partner with shady international arms dealer Henry Girard (Bradley Cooper), and find themselves in an Albania warehouse where Cold War surplus equipment can be translated into huge profits.

Based on real events chronicled in a Rolling Stone feature article and directed by Todd Phillips, War Dogs picks up the theme and style developed by The Wolf Of Wall Street and The Big Short: young men behaving badly and finding extreme riches in surreal yet factual environments. And War Dogs polishes the formula to a shine, mixing millennial brohood comedy, the ugly yet fearless American prototype, and deadly serious world events into a potent mix. Propelled by an excellent thumping soundtrack featuring plenty of 1970s and '80s rock, the result is a tight dramatic comedy with plenty of punch.

At just under two hours the film contains no flab. Phillips uses the first 30 minutes to draw in the characters of David and Efraim, and they are a classic opposites-attract duo. David is more timid, struggling to find his place in life and reduced to half-baked business ventures doomed to both cause embarrassment and financial failure. Efraim is brash, big, and ridiculously confident, finding opportunities, swinging for the fences and easily able to cast aside the horror of a bad war in search of the capitalist dream. While David frets about profiting from a war he and Iz do not support, Efraim has no such qualms: the war is happening anyway, the weapons have to be sold, and the profit is there to be made.

The heart of the film is then dedicated to the seemingly bizarre world of modern weapons bought and sold to feed war's voracious appetite. It's a wild west but real market where young men can make money by sitting in nondescript offices and clicking their way into the world of go-betweens, connecting idle weapons with active war zones. Phillips captures the anticipation, excitement, and frenzy of dealmaking, with David's character providing engaging narration to fill in the gaps. And when deals go bad and on-the-ground sojourns are needed, War Dogs soars, first to the chaotic Iraq theatre and then onto Albania, a forgotten Cold War front line now waiting to translate ancient surplus hardware into cold hard cash.

The interaction between David and Efraim is maintained at the heart of the film, Phillips guiding the two protagonists through phases of a friendship that morphs into a hazardous business relationship, ultimately revealing some painful true colours. Jonah Hill easily occupies the eye of the storm, giving Efraim a force of nature personality, deploying the same obtuse behaviour whether in glitzy Miami bars or in the world's worst hell holes. The story is told through David's eyes, and Miles Teller delivers a circumspect performance, David's dilemmas shaped by burgeoning family responsibilities both pushing him towards money-making opportunities and pulling him to question his motives.

War Dogs is absurdly serious, the business of war translated into a wild adventure where extreme riches dance with death.

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Movie Review: Joy (2015)

Loosely based on the early career of businesswoman Joy Mangano, Joy is a lighthearted drama that benefits from a committed Jennifer Lawrence performance but is also structurally unbalanced and underdeveloped in patches.

Joy (Lawrence) is a financially struggling divorced mother of two young kids, with a chaotic home life. Her parents Terri (Virginia Madsen) and Rudy (Robert De Niro) divorced when she was a young child. Her former husband, lounge singer Tony (Édgar Ramírez) still lives in the basement, although the couple divorced two years prior. Terri is depressed and spends her days watching bad daytime soap operas. Rudy runs an auto shop, but after his latest relationship fails, he also shows up at Joy's house to share the basement with Tony. Her grandmother Mimi (Diane Ladd) is the one person who still believes that Joy, who was highly creative as a child, will make something out of her life.

Rudy starts a new romance with the wealthy Trudy (Isabella Rossellini), triggering a yacht trip during which Joy accidentally cuts her hands mopping broken glass. This leads her to invent the self-squeezing, easy-to-clean miracle mop. With financial support from Trudy and disorganized and argumentative help from Rudy, Tony and her half-sister Peggy (Elisabeth Röhm), Joy starts to manufacture her product at a dubious California facility, and connects with Neil Walker (Bradley Cooper), an executive at television shopping network QVC. Joy gets deep into debt to pursue her dream, but achieving sales and success with the miracle mop will still not be easy.

Jennifer Lawrence portrays Joy with an appealing mix of determination and pragmatism. Before she invents the mop, Joy's life is disintegrating around her ears, and she literally has nothing more to lose. Lawrence succeeds in making Joy's fightback towards personal happiness the believable quest of a smart woman tired of living life according to everybody else's rules.

The rest of the film is entertaining without ever threatening to soar towards any peaks of achievement or emotion. Director and writer David O. Russell, again reunited with regular colleagues Lawrence, Cooper and De Niro, is uncharacteristically uneven. The scenes portraying Joy's home life as a madhouse in full swing are good, but there are too many of them. The business oriented narrative, once the mop starts to sell, is slapped together in a rush and remains unconvincing. The film reaches a relatively early highlight with Joy's personal appearance in front of the cameras at QVC. The subsequent events involving a patent battle with unsavoury businessmen in California and Texas are underdeveloped and start to border on glib comedy.

The supporting characters surrounding Joy are more about quirky quantity than in-depth quality. There is plenty to enjoy as Joy's father, mother, grandmother, step-sister, ex-husband and then father's new girlfriend circle her life, either to provide support, peck away at her burgeoning success, or both. Russell accomplishes the difficult task of giving each role its due in relatively few screen minutes, but the abundance of people also means that they all have predictable and linear progressions.

Bradley Cooper as QVC executive Neil Walker suffers the most. Walker's role in Joy's life appears driven more by star pairing than any real conviction, but Cooper does shine in one scene, artistically orchestrating sales behind the live studio cameras. The characters of Rudy, Trudy and Peggy often fall in the cracks between appealingly funny and disruptively conniving.

Joy is an agreeable story of a woman rising from humble roots to achieve success. Ironically, the film itself is better in the disorganized household and less coordinated when it comes to business.

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Movie Review: The Place Beyond The Pines (2012)

An intense character study spanning two generations, The Place Beyond The Pines takes an in-depth look at the complexities of responsibility, destiny and the lingering impacts of today's actions on the long term future.

In upstate New York, Luke Glanton (Ryan Gosling) is a low life drifter, good at only one thing: riding a motorcycle. Luke bumps into former girlfriend Romina (Eva Mendes) and learns that her infant son Jason is his child. Although Romina has moved on and is now with another man, Luke is determined to insert himself into her life to try and be a father. To earn an income he accepts a job at the ramshackle car repair shop of Robin (Ben Mendelsohn). But Luke seeks more money to try and impress Romina and buy things for Jason. He forms a bank robbery partnership with Robin, with Luke's motorcycle riding skills helping achieve smooth getaways.

Luke's misadventures with the law eventually result in a tangle with rookie police officer Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper). A trained lawyer and the son of a respected judge (Harris Yulin), Avery is ambitious, and the incident with Luke traumatizes him. He then stumbles onto a police corruption ring led by officer Deluca (Ray Liotta). Avery's career blossoms into power and politics at the expense of his wife Jennifer (Rose Byrne). Years later, Avery's neglected son A.J. (Emory Cohen) is in high school and drifting into a life of drugs, alcohol and parties. He meets and starts to befriend Jason (Dane DeHaan), now also a teenager at the same school.

Directed and co-written by Derek Cianfrance, The Place Beyond The Pines is long, moody and humourless. It is also a gripping drama, singularly focussed on the ambitions and failures of its central characters. Cianfrance creates detailed portraits of two men grappling with what life has to offer, and finds the compelling threads that connect the actions, motivations and destinies of Luke and Avery. And it's stylishly assembled, Cianfrance finding the neon, shadows, perspectives and camera angles to give every shot dynamic potential.

The film runs for 140 minutes, and it could easily have shed 20 minutes with no loss in quality. Cianfrance is a fan of pregnant pauses and gloomy stares punctuating almost every conversation, and while he goes searching for the rivers of anger and frustration boiling under the surface of dysfunctional relationships, he also stretches the ability of his story to carry weighty loads of profound meaning at every turn.

But the themes explored by the film are elaborate and often fascinating. Luke is desperate to find some meaning to rescue his sorry life, and unexpectedly finds it in Jason. His attempts to do good only lead to worse conflicts. Avery is also looking to define himself as something separate from his father, and without looking for it finds himself at a crucial fork in the road of life. He steers towards public good, but falls victim to insidious arrogance. Both men find elaborate ways to damage the most important relationships in their life, and hurt the people they love most. The sons inherit and then amplify the emotional bruises inflicted by their fathers, either propagating or repeating behavioural patterns with the added ferocity of a new generation.

In a movie fixated on its characters the performances have to be good, and the cast delivers. Ryan Gosling has the meatier role and creates in Luke a memorable tragic loser, who will find a way to make the wrong move at every opportunity. Bradley Cooper is more reserved as Avery, but does pull off a smooth transition from shaky rookie police officer to smarmy and power-hungry politician. Gosling and Cooper share just the one scene together, as they sequentially hand-off the first two thirds of the movie.

Eva Mendes gives Romania plenty of spirit while Rose Byrne takes Jennifer to more passive aggressive territory. The final third of the film loses star power and transitions to Emory Cohen and Dane DeHaan as sons unknowingly living in the shadows of their fathers, and they are adequate.

Delving into some of the essential predispositions of the human condition, The Place Beyond The Pines is a rare combination of ambitious and intimate.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: American Sniper (2014)

An impressive story of war and its brutal impacts, American Sniper celebrates the most lethal sniper in the Unites States military history, but also examines the lasting and far-reaching damage caused by war at the most personal levels.

Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper) was brought up in Texas, and demonstrated an aptitude for hunting at a young age. He drifted into adulthood and a potential career as a rodeo cowboy before finding his calling and enlisting in the Navy SEALs. While undergoing the brutal training program and honing his skills as a military sniper, he meets Taya (Sienna Miller), and soon after their wedding Kyle is deployed to Iraq as a sniper in the post September 11, 2001 world.

In the urban carnage created by the US invasion of Iraq, Kyle's mission is to protect on-the-ground troops by eliminating threats from elevated vantage points. He kills and kills again, including enemy combatants and men, women and children readying grenades and improvised explosive devices. Kyle establishes himself as a legend for his sharp-shooting skills, but all the killing takes its toll. Back in Texas, with a growing family, Kyle is detached, unable to cope, and exhibits PTSD symptoms. His only escape is to repeatedly re-enlist and return to the war zone. By the time he embarks on his fourth tour of duty, his home life is in tatters. his emotions are bottled up and his nerves are shattered.

A relentless descent into the battle zone and into the human damage caused by war, American Sniper is a brilliant exploration of the stress and dysfunction spawned in battle and embedded into the sturdiest of souls. Director Clint Eastwood creates unrelenting tension on the streets of Baghdad, and then carries the mental destruction (in the case of Kyle) and the physical disability (suffered by many other veterans) to the heart of the United States. The modern psychological cost of war in individual human terms has rarely been as well conveyed on the screen.

Based on Kyle's autobiographical book of the same name adapted by Jason Hall, American Sniper portrays Kyle as the perfect soldier. Taught to be a "sheepdog" from a young age, Kyle's views of the world are simple, and this allows him to pull the trigger while aiming at anyone who falls into the "wolf" category. Kyle is unconcerned with the complexities of war and its causes and is happy to serve his country by killing hundreds of enemies, and the film derives its power by portraying the horrible mental devastation suffered by the most straightforward of soldiers. If even he can fall victim to battlefield trauma, how high is the cost among more complex men and women who pause to think about the purpose of war and the families of their targets?

American Sniper also addresses the hero-worship culture, and portrays Kyle as a man whose exploits are quick to earn plaudits from fellow soldiers, but whose achievements mean very little back at home. Between his tours of duty Kyle rages that the Unites States appears oblivious to the war going on in Iraq, and in Texas he is just a husband and dad who can't seem to focus on either job. It's back on the dusty streets of Iraq that he is now in his element, and a life of heroically facing danger, violence and death becomes the only life that he can properly function in.

Eastwood relentlessly builds the tension within American Sniper, the film piling on the pressure with expertly executed battle scenes that promise death at any instant, Marines kicking down doors and going house to house to search for insurgents while Kyle keeps watch through his scope, every local Iraqi a potential target. The film is awash with sudden bullet impacts, intense fire fights, and the nervousness that comes with knowing that things are about to go very wrong, but not knowing exactly how, when, and where. Kyle's actions do lead to innocent victims getting hurt and badly, and as many kills as he does register, he is most distressed by the Marines who got hurt on his watch because he was unable to neutralize enough enemy threats.

Bradley Cooper delivers another excellent performance, bulking up into the muscular body of a dedicated SEAL but maintaining the innocent spirit of a soldier serving his country as best as he knows how and unsure how to deal with the distorted aftermath. Sienna Miller anchors the US-based scenes as the young wife and then mother abandoned by a husband who is absent either physically or mentally. Miller's highlight comes early, Taya's initial barroom meeting with Kyle establishing her credentials as a woman who will demand to set the agenda.

Explosive, tense and thoughtful, American Sniper hits all its targets.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Wedding Crashers (2005)

A raucous comedy, Wedding Crashers thrives within a clever premise that feeds themes of friendship, growing up, and meeting your match.

In Washington DC, John and Jeremy (Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn) are best friends and colleagues at work, where they mediate between married couples going through nasty divorces. Well into adulthood but still acting like college fratboys, they get their kicks by crashing weddings, enjoying unlimited food and drink, dancing the night away and picking up women revved-up by the idea of idyllic romance for hot one-night stands.

After a hectic season of wedding crashing, John begins to question the juvenile lifestyle. But Jeremy insists on one last wedding: the daughter of William Cleary (Christopher Walken), the very wealthy Secretary of the Treasury, is getting married. Despite John's protestations they crash the wedding and a subsequent Cleary family weekend, and unexpectedly get entangled in complex relationships with two of Cleary's daughters. John falls in love with the free spirited Claire (Rachel McAdams), who is already in a relationship with the insufferable Sack Lodge (Bradley Cooper). Jeremy seduces the wild youngest daughter Gloria (Isla Fisher), not knowing exactly how much trouble he is getting into: she is more lustful than he is, and plays him like a cheap fiddle. Meanwhile, Cleary's wife Kathleen "Kitty Kat" (Jane Seymour) is prowling all available men to get her cougarish kicks.

Wedding Crashers is often hilarious. Director David Dobkin quickly establishes the unique yet rational premise, and allows his two lead actors to let loose. John and Jeremy behave like teenagers who have found the magical key to a life of unlimited partying and casual sex with beautiful women. But the film succeeds well beyond its title. After the initial montage of wild crashing, the story settles down to what's next for the two men, and the challenge of finding their way out of unevolved and circular habits to launch into something resembling adulthood.

Vaughn and Wilson make for a terrific pair of underdeveloped men, John and Jeremy unwilling to let go of their youth despite John's growing doubt that they should really be beyond immature antics. Wilson gets the more thoughtful role, and imparts sensitivity to go along with fading boyishness. Vaughn is more driven to hang on to the past, Jeremy living his life according to an arcane code of caveman behaviour developed by the legendary Chazz (Will Ferrell, who makes a late, uncredited appearance).

John is therefore more open to fundamental change and once he sets eyes on Claire he can start to see his way to a different and better future. Jeremy is generally blind to any life that compromises his instinctive need to have uncontrolled fun, and it takes a large wallop to the side of the head in the form of Gloria to knock him off his default path. The shifting dynamics between the two men is at the heart of the movie, as their deep friendship is tested by diverging expectations.

Rachel McAdams is her usual appealing girl next door, although in this case a very rich girl next door, and McAdams tends to smile too much throughout the film. More fiery is Isla Fisher who creates in Gloria a borderline nymphomaniac, an impulsive, uninhibited, and fun-loving woman, the kind who can singe Jeremy with her own afterburners.

The script by Steve Faber and Bob Fisher populates the Cleary family with weird and wonderful members, including an uncensored grandmother (Ellen Albertini Dow), a creepy artist son (Keir O'Donnell), the lustful Kitty Kat and, most troublesome for John's pursuit of Claire, her intended beau Sack Lodge. In a pre-stardom role, Bradley Cooper goes all out to make Sack a loathsome rich jock full of self-entitlement and just enough social talent to fool many people most of the time. They combine to create a madcap family with enough pitfalls to trip up the best that John and Jeremy can offer in terms of infiltrative deceit and subterfuge.

The Wedding Crashers are definitely uninvited, but prove to be spectacularly funny and successful guests.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: American Hustle (2013)

A celebration of the American Dream's slimy underbelly, American Hustle is a wild ride through 1970s glitz with five fascinating characters.

It's the late 1970s in New York, and Irving (Christian Bale) is an overweight and balding small time con-artist. Irving is no longer living with his volatile wife Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence) but he maintains a relationship with her for the sake of their son. Irving meets and immediately falls in love with scrappy stripper Sydney (Amy Adams). They team up, and with Sydney expertly adopting the haughty persona of the aristocratic Lady Edith Greensly, they move up a league in the con game, convincing investors to give them money in return for phantom lines of credit with non-existent banks.

Irving and Sydney are eventually nabbed by FBI agent Richie (Bradley Cooper), who is intent on making a name for himself by going after larger fish. Richie is instantly smitten with Sydney, and recognizes her talent at convincing people to part with their money. In exchange for leniency, Richie pressures Irving and Sydney to participate in an Arab Sheikh con designed to snare corrupt politicians, and they go after popular New Jersey Mayor Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner). But the con unexpectedly spirals to include congressmen, senators and the mob, while Rosalyn's clueless interference threatens to unleash chaos before Irving and Sydney can find a way to extricate themselves from unwanted entrapment charades.

Loosely inspired by the FBI's actual ABSCAM operation, American Hustle cares less about the madcap plot and more about desperate people trying to elbow their way to a better future. The screenplay by Eric Warren Singer and director David O. Russell shines in evoking sympathy for characters that should not deserve any. This is the pursuit of a promised dream in all its guises, and while the crooks, cops and politicians of American Hustle won't make too many dinner invitation lists, over the course of 140 minutes they become remarkably well-rounded personalities true to their own convictions.

Irving knows who he is: a small time con-man, fortunate to have Sydney by his side and content to milk the gullible out of relatively small amounts of money. Sydney is always too smart for Irving, but perhaps too ambitious for her own good, not as aware of her limits and willing to gamble to find out if she can do better.

Richie must be near the bottom of the FBI totem pole to go after characters like Irving and Sydney, and he knows it. He wants to move up and aim higher, an adventure that eventually makes him susceptible to Sydney, who can spot vulnerabilities from across town. Once the Arab Sheikh con is launched Richie wants to believe that he is in control, but Irving is the con artist and Sydney is the master conniver, and Richie is really only getting in the way. But Irving's blind spot, and the one variable that he cannot control, is Rosalyn. Despite her doltish ditziness Rosalyn knows that the control she has over Irving is her one card in life, and she plays it for all its worth, having fun while steering everyone into much deeper trouble.

And then there is Mayor Carmine Polito, a politician genuinely wanting to do good for the people of New Jersey, and who believes that a bit of grease is just part of the process. Carmine is an old fashioned populist, a booster for his state and his people, exploring opportunities for new investments and just a bit wary when suspicious characters like Irving and Richie start sliding briefcases his way.

David O. Russell stylishly packages the film with the garish excesses of the 1970s, where the wild hair and fashions matched the desperation of the clueless. Bathed in yellows and reds, American Hustle is gorgeous to look at, and visually hilarious, with Irving's comb-over, Richie's curls, and Sydney's gowns all committing crimes worse than any of the cons.

The five central performance are exemplary, Russell assembling a remarkable cast of top talent to enjoy the prevailing absurdity. Adams stands out as the most hustle-hungry of the hustlers, while Bale and Cooper bounce of each other as two potentially resourceful men both dangerously close to being labelled losers. Lawrence plays Rosalyn with understated showiness, the woman always ready with all the answers to blame everyone else for everything going wrong, and quick to push the buttons that keep her man properly manipulated.

And in a crucial role Renner provides Polito with impressive good but oily intent, the Mayor's inherent character crucial to undermining the basic premise of the scam. In a small but sharp single scene supporting role, Robert De Niro makes an uncredited appearance to revive the ghosts of all his mobster movies.

Richie's rush to go big means that he is aiming at a dubious target. Irving recognizes in Polito a better version of himself, and builds a genuine rapport with the Mayor. When the con-man and his mark become friends the risks only multiply, and watching it all unravel is boisterous fun.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

The Movies Of Bradley Cooper

All movies starring Bradley Cooper and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Wedding Crashers (2005)

Failure To Launch (2006)

Yes Man (2008)

He's Just Not That Into You (2009)

The Hangover (2009)

Case 39 (2009)

Valentine's Day (2010)

Limitless (2011)

The Words (2012)

The Place Beyond The Pines (2012)

Silver Linings Playbook (2012)

American Hustle (2013)

Serena (2014)

American Sniper (2014)

Aloha (2015)

Burnt (2015)

Joy (2015)

10 Cloverfield Lane (2016, voice only)

War Dogs (2016)

A Star Is Born (2018, also Director)

The Mule (2018)

Licorice Pizza (2021)

Nightmare Alley (2021)

Maestro (2023, also Director)

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.
The Movie Star Index is here.