In this comic fictionalization of the Abscam scandal in the 1970s – in which the FBI gleefully and unethically entrapped more than a dozen politicians including six members of the House of Representatives and a senator – David O. Russell has made his best movie, and he’s the guy who gave us The Fighter and…
I don’t think that 2013 was much of a year for movies, since I spent a long, long time trying to find 10 that I could unreservedly say I loved. And in the end I chose seven because the other three slots kept getting filled with movies that I had problems with even if I…
Dianna Agron and John D’Leo in The Family After seeing Robert De Niro in Silver Linings Playbook last year, I was hopeful that he had turned a corner. Once considered the great actor of his generation, for almost twenty years, he was mostly phoning it in. But in Silver Linings Playbook, he worked his ass…
dvd of the week When I read that Silver Linings Playbook was about two psychologically troubled people, I was initially concerned. So many film depictions of crazy are just crazy awful. I wasn’t encouraged when the first few scenes of the film took place in a mental hospital. But shortly after Pat Solitano (Bradley Cooper)…
I saw about 75 movies in 2012, and while I saw a couple dozen that I liked a great deal, very few movies about LGBT people or queer themes were given a wide release. And that is disappointing in general, but particularly for a critic writing for a paper called San Diego LGBT Weekly. This…
