{"id":23238,"date":"2022-11-10T09:00:35","date_gmt":"2022-11-10T17:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=23238"},"modified":"2022-10-31T10:22:17","modified_gmt":"2022-10-31T17:22:17","slug":"nics-flicks-amsterdam-just-a-bunch-of-actors-saying-lines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2022\/11\/10\/nics-flicks-amsterdam-just-a-bunch-of-actors-saying-lines\/","title":{"rendered":"Nic’s Flicks<\/em>: Amsterdam<\/em> just a bunch of actors saying lines"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amsterdam<\/i> (2022)<\/p>\n

2\/4<\/p>\n

Despite what is known about David O. Russell as a person, I loved many of his films. American Hustle<\/i> was my favourite movie of 2013; Silver Linings Playbook<\/i> had Jennifer Lawrence\u2019s best performances to date and a really funny script. So when I sat down with my popcorn to watch Amsterdam<\/i>, I had high expectations. Unfortunately, those expectations were slashed when I saw this overwhelming film.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Nic’s Flicks<\/em> is a column about movies (photo by Nicolas Ihmels\/Nexus<\/em>).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I\u2019ll say this much: the cast is trying. I mean, Christian Bale, especially. He was the one bright spot of the movie. His character is quirky in just the right way, and I really appreciated that aspect of the film. Margot Robbie and John David Washington also deliver convincing performances that I quite enjoyed. The costume and art design does a fine job in conveying the film\u2019s time period.<\/p>\n

But everything else sucked.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The main problem with this movie was the script. This is supposed to be a murder mystery but the whole execution and how everything comes together is confusing. I still can\u2019t put together what the movie was going for as far as mystery goes. Another thing that wasn\u2019t clear was the characters\u2019 motivations. Most of them are just there to dump exposition on the audience. I mean, you have a national treasure of an actor and you just waste him. Why? Makes no sense.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s not just the script that is out of sorts\u2014it\u2019s also Russell\u2019s direction. He clearly doesn\u2019t have a clue what he wants this movie to be. Most of the performances lack direction and as a result come off flat. In fact, it\u2019s worse than flat. It feels like Russell wasn\u2019t even on set. It\u2019s just a bunch of actors saying lines for the entire runtime. Seriously, that\u2019s how sloppy the direction feels.<\/p>\n

Also, for a comedy\/thriller, this movie was starved of any laughs, or thrills. My audience never laughed at any joke the film presented us with, nor did we feel any tension or thrills when anything that was supposed to be thrilling popped up on screen. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The movie\u2019s pace also just doesn\u2019t work. This feels like a three-hour movie, when the runtime is really just two hours and fifteen minutes, which is ridiculous. This is due to the numerous nonsensical time skips that could have been cut out of the movie, which would have made everything make a lot more sense anyway.<\/p>\n

Amsterdam<\/i> is a major step down from Russell\u2019s previous films, and it was one of the most disappointing movie experiences I\u2019ve had in a long time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amsterdam (2022) 2\/4 Despite what is known about David O. Russell as a person, I loved many of his films. American Hustle was my favourite movie of 2013; Silver Linings Playbook had Jennifer Lawrence\u2019s best performances to date and a really funny script. So when I sat down with my popcorn to watch Amsterdam, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20923,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,276],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","category-november-2-2022"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23238"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23238\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23239,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23238\/revisions\/23239"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}