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JT (287 KP) rated American Hustle (2013) in Movies

Mar 10, 2020  
American Hustle (2013)
American Hustle (2013)
2013 | Drama
6
6.6 (8 Ratings)
Movie Rating Watch
There’s a lot of love for American Hustle and with a cast such as this it is easy to see why. It’s a film that oozes glitz and glamour and has a slick sense of stability with shades Scorsese as an attempt at a crime caper.

Bale is top draw, an opening shot that requires no dialogue sees Bale’s stomach bloating Irving Rosenfeld carefully craft a balding comb over. Then in walks his partner throughout this initial sting, Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper) with a beautiful perm – and this is just the male cast.

The film is loosely based on a true story. Bale’s con man falls for Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams) and the pair look to collude together before being nabbed by the FBI and forced to help bring down a circle of corrupt politicians as a way to avoid prosecution. This is no heist from the Soderbergh play book, but a slow churning plan that involves fake sheikhs and mafia bosses and is the brainchild of agent DiMaso who targets Mayor Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner) as one of the many poor unfortunates looking to make change in a growing 70s society.

Supporting cast are exceptional, none more so than Jennifer Lawrence, as Rosenfeld’s long suffering wife who during proceedings threatens to blow the whole plan wide open. That’s not to say that Amy Adams isn’t well worth her role, but the wardrobe department must have been short on ideas for her if all that was around were dresses with plunging necklines.

Overall it plays out well but does suffer confusion as you wonder who is playing who during the whole affair. All the way through I felt that something wasn’t quite right with it. For me it didn’t have the lasting impact that The Fighter had or even Silver Linings Playbook, but as a film that wants to capture everything the 70s were about it does a stupendous job.
  
    Miffy at school

    Miffy at school

    Book and Education

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    Reading together, playing and learning Miffy is at school where she learns how to count and write,...

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tapestry100 (306 KP) rated The Marsh King's Daughter in Books

Aug 2, 2017  
The Marsh King's Daughter
The Marsh King's Daughter
Karen Dionne | 2017 | Fiction & Poetry, Thriller
9
8.0 (4 Ratings)
Book Rating
Originally reviewed on http://www.frommybookshelf.com

Helena Pelletier's life is more or less exactly what she wants: a husband and two daughters she loves deeply, a home business that keeps her busy during the days, her past a secret that she keeps hidden from everyone. Helena has worked hard for these things and she prides herself in her accomplishments, until the day her father escapes from prison and she immediately understands that her past is going to catch up to her, whether she wants it to or not. She also knows that the only way to keep her family safe and put her father back in prison is to find and deal with her father herself, since he was the one who trained her to live in the marshes of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, where he was keeping her mother captive after he had kidnapped her as a young girl.

With the main part of the story taking place over 24 hours "real time" with Helena tracking her father, the actual meat of the story all takes place in flashbacks as Helena thinks back on her childhood in the marshes of the UP and how her father treated her and her mother, who her father kidnapped as a young girl and made his wife. As she closes in on her father, she goes over various aspects of the only life she knew as a child, until her mother's past starts to catch up to her and Helena realizes that much of her life has been a lie perpetrated by both her father and mother and isn't exactly what they told her it was. As she grows older and finally starts to understand that even though this is the only life she's ever known, it may not be the life that either she or her mother deserves, and when she finally escapes her father's control she discovers that there is in fact an entire world she never knew about outside the marsh.

To be honest, the story of Helena's childhood is what really makes this book. Personally, I felt the entire portion of the book that is taking place in "real time" where Helena knows that she's the only one who can find her father, regardless of the large police force searching for him, and that she knows exactly where to look for him in the entire area surrounding her home and the prison he escaped from all seemed far to convenient, and only plausible in order to make this portion of the story move forward. Helena's memories of her childhood and the psychological aspects of being a child who has been raised in an extreme situation, but one that seems normal to her only because it's all that she knows, was fascinating. Her recollections of her father teaching her how to hunt and live in the wilderness, and her childhood idolization of him in this respect juxtaposed against her later feeling towards him as she starts to mature and gain some sense of adolescent independence, and her eventual discovery that her whole life has been based on lies and the kidnapping of her mother, was remarkable storytelling, and Karen Dionne delivers this entire sequence of events deftly and with sharp storytelling. While the "real time" story requires quite a hefty amount of suspension of disbelief, the background story well makes up for this and creates a truly mesmerizing and atmospheric story that will keep you up late into the night, turning the page for more.