Hustlers (Lorene Scafaria, 2019)

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thirtyframesasecond
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Hustlers (Lorene Scafaria, 2019)

#1 Post by thirtyframesasecond » Mon Sep 09, 2019 3:15 pm

Hustlers is getting very good reviews - and with a surprising cast (though JLo was always capable of being good). Any chance you could watch this in a cinema without looking like a creep?

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mfunk9786
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Re: The Films of 2019

#2 Post by mfunk9786 » Mon Sep 09, 2019 3:24 pm

Willing to borderline guarantee there's no actual nudity in it, it's 2019 and movies made for a female demo don't pull tricks like that anymore - not sure in what other way you'd feel like a creep

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swo17
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Re: The Films of 2019

#3 Post by swo17 » Mon Sep 09, 2019 3:28 pm

This says otherwise

But hey, it's by the gal who did Seeking a Friend for the End of the World!

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Re: The Films of 2019

#4 Post by Jack Kubrick » Mon Sep 09, 2019 3:46 pm

thirtyframesasecond wrote:
Mon Sep 09, 2019 3:15 pm
Hustlers is getting very good reviews - and with a surprising cast (though JLo was always capable of being good). Any chance you could watch this in a cinema without looking like a creep?

How much of sexual contact does this differ from other past films centering on sex workers? The reviews from critics are raves which should prevent the stigma of seeing the film without societal pressure.


I wore a Boogie Nights t-shirt at my local town fair once and got no pushback from the mainly family crowds, with a shirt depicting characters in a film about pornography.

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thirtyframesasecond
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Re: Hustlers (Lorene Scafaria, 2019)

#5 Post by thirtyframesasecond » Mon Sep 09, 2019 3:53 pm

I mean, I was watching Striptease for the right wing hypocrisy aspects!

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Brian C
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Re: Hustlers (Lorene Scafaria, 2019)

#6 Post by Brian C » Mon Sep 09, 2019 3:53 pm

Somehow, this conversation about whether or not it would be creepy to go seems creepier than actually just going.

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domino harvey
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Re: Hustlers (Lorene Scafaria, 2019)

#7 Post by domino harvey » Mon Sep 09, 2019 3:58 pm

I think it’s a good idea to remember the oft-misattributed quote about things like this
You wouldn't worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do. Unless you’re going to see that J Lo spankfest movie, in which case u can diaf

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Re: Hustlers (Lorene Scafaria, 2019)

#8 Post by swo17 » Mon Sep 09, 2019 4:05 pm

Brian C wrote:
Mon Sep 09, 2019 3:53 pm
Somehow, this conversation about whether or not it would be creepy to go seems creepier than actually just going.
Yeah, like how I've learned that when you're hanging out at elementary schools it's best NOT to ask if it's creepy for you to be there

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Re: Hustlers (Lorene Scafaria, 2019)

#9 Post by Nasir007 » Mon Sep 09, 2019 4:11 pm

It's just a movie. Who cares? Nobody is going to be judged for seeing a movie.

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Re: Hustlers (Lorene Scafaria, 2019)

#10 Post by Jack Kubrick » Mon Sep 09, 2019 4:12 pm

You just don't hang around Film Twitter enough to understand the sentence you just typed.

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Big Ben
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Re: Hustlers (Lorene Scafaria, 2019)

#11 Post by Big Ben » Mon Sep 09, 2019 4:13 pm

I mean kids at my High School wore Cannibal Corpse shirts (Albeit obscured) alongside Nirvana's famous Nevermind cover too. What could worse than the former? People at some level just don't care.

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Brian C
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Re: Hustlers (Lorene Scafaria, 2019)

#12 Post by Brian C » Mon Sep 09, 2019 4:15 pm

swo17 wrote:Yeah, like how I've learned that when you're hanging out at elementary schools it's best NOT to ask if it's creepy for you to be there
Ok, you got me there, I definitely think it would be creepy to watch HUSTLERS at an elementary school.

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Re: Hustlers (Lorene Scafaria, 2019)

#13 Post by mfunk9786 » Mon Sep 09, 2019 4:51 pm

LQ's going to be away for [funny, no doubt] business until Sunday, which means that between my Regal Unlimited subscription and my lack of absolutely anything to do, it's possible I'll be seeing Hustlers alone. If you'd like to grab your own raincoat and come with me, thirtyframesasecond, you're welcome to

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Re: Hustlers (Lorene Scafaria, 2019)

#14 Post by Never Cursed » Thu Sep 12, 2019 10:47 pm

Hustlers was unfortunately pretty lame, and I feel confused as to why so many big-name publications are falling over themselves to praise an unexceptional female-centric comedy. Scafaria is a talented and witty enough director (though I rolled my eyes a bit at the Important Opening Long Take that only exists to be discussed in laudatory reviews) but man is the script a waste of good source material. The movie has no cleverness or energy to it (the framing device interrupts the more interesting parts waaaay too often), and what few actual jokes there are feel tired and unnatural to the story being told (hope you like the gutbuster about the stripper puking at inopportune moments, cuz you're gonna see it four more times) when they don't feel completely inexplicable (like when the movie stops for an extended pointless Christmas celebration with the entire main cast, or when Usher, playing himself, shows up at the strip club and the movie and all the strippers stop everything and fawn over him because he's Usher). Any movie about a gang of ebullient confidence scamming strippers that can be described as "boring" is a failure, and Hustlers is worse than boring.

Oh, and any members of the raincoat brigade are going to come away from this sorely disappointed - if there was anything I was shocked by, it's how little nudity or sexuality (!) there was.

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Re: Hustlers (Lorene Scafaria, 2019)

#15 Post by mfunk9786 » Sun Sep 15, 2019 2:36 am

I agree with much of the above, but there is enough that compelled me here that I thought it was a very minor success. But really, the middle of this film is bloated - an extended montage for all intents and purposes, alternating between the same three or four locations (We see a grandmother character handed increasingly large stacks of money while sitting in the same chair over the course of around an hour of this film, and the last time we see her in said chair, after the ladies' story takes a turn for the worse, she's dead. Deep!) ad nauseam. (or ad nauseous, eh Never Cursed?)

Scafaria is trying to have it both ways here, and sort of ends up with neither. We see painfully extended scenes of the leads purchasing gaudy items, which all feel joyless but not in a thought provoking way - they aren't executed interestingly enough to be a sort of wish fulfillment for the viewer, but they aren't operating in the same space as the bad behavior on display in something like The Wolf of Wall Street, either. Similarly to the grandmother mentioned above, in a film with a 110 minute runtime, we see so much repetition of the same locations and the same actions. There must be two dozen actors in bad suits sitting at the same seat in the same bar with the leads doing their seduction schtick, followed by said actors in the same seat in the same champagne room with their credit cards being lifted, followed by the celebration of the arrival of some new money - none of this could have been trimmed down? Really? Considering how joylessly these activities play out, how criminal but ultimately rather mundane and sexless they are, they don't necessarily have much of a cinematic quality to them, so why do we see so many instances of the same scam? The center of this film is one long, and dull, montage.

So why do I ultimately sort of put my thumb begrudgingly up? Well, Jennifer Lopez hasn't been this good since Out of Sight, for one. She puts on an athletic display of almost overly realistic stripping - she looks as though not only did she train, but she got too good at it in preparation for the role. It's really quite something to watch her showcased toward the beginning of the film, it's a show stopping moment. And while she's never been the most compelling dramatic actress, she holds her own in the film's more difficult moments - which is the other reason I'd recommend it. Its final act is indicative of what the entire film could have been with the help of some better direction and editing - once it takes a Boogie Nights-esque turn, it becomes frenetic and sad and frightening and thoughtful. Very close to being too little too late, but I'll concede the tie. What a missed opportunity this film was, though!

Oh, and I should add, I guess - sexuality really isn't what strip clubs trade in, Never Cursed. It's a detail that the film gets very right - these are women who are doing a job, and aiming all of their efforts at separating customers from their money (even without the extracurricular scam at the center of this picture!) Although it would've been unsurprising for there to be time taken out to let the viewer leer, that wouldn't necessarily feel like a realistic depiction of what a strip club would look like to an outside observer who isn't being actively seduced (and this film doesn't take place from the perspective of the club's patrons the way moments in, say, Magic Mike do). That being said, there is a ton of nudity in this movie (not sure what film you saw!) and it's not the PG-13 big name actress stripping in a tank top and tastefully conservative boyshorts stuff, either. Plenty of deliberately unglamorous conversations between women in all states of undress, in a way that seems quite realistic for the most part. Only Lopez really gets to take a big show-offy victory lap for the purposes of enticing the protagonist and the audience into taking notice of her talent and her body. Which seems to fit what the film is trying to do.

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Re: Hustlers (Lorene Scafaria, 2019)

#16 Post by MichaelB » Sun Sep 15, 2019 3:46 am

swo17 wrote:
Brian C wrote:
Mon Sep 09, 2019 3:53 pm
Somehow, this conversation about whether or not it would be creepy to go seems creepier than actually just going.
Yeah, like how I've learned that when you're hanging out at elementary schools it's best NOT to ask if it's creepy for you to be there
A Facebook post from five years ago:
A trip to the 10:30 matinee of 'Paddington', which for various parking-related reasons demanded that I stayed with the car while everyone else went in, prior to me buying a parking ticket as close to the start of the film as I could get away with (since there was a strict two-hour time limit) and then sneaking furtively into the auditorium just as the lights went down. And then, as the credits started to roll, I had to sneak out equally furtively in order to get back to the car in time to prevent us getting a parking fine. It didn't occur to me until later that all this surreptitious sneaking into and out of a children's film without an actual child in tow made me a dead ringer for the kind of person that the tabloids start campaigns about.

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Re: Hustlers (Lorene Scafaria, 2019)

#17 Post by Luke M » Wed Sep 18, 2019 10:39 am


Never Cursed wrote:Hustlers was unfortunately pretty lame, and I feel confused as to why so many big-name publications are falling over themselves to praise an unexceptional female-centric comedy. Scafaria is a talented and witty enough director (though I rolled my eyes a bit at the Important Opening Long Take that only exists to be discussed in laudatory reviews) but man is the script a waste of good source material. The movie has no cleverness or energy to it (the framing device interrupts the more interesting parts waaaay too often), and what few actual jokes there are feel tired and unnatural to the story being told (hope you like the gutbuster about the stripper puking at inopportune moments, cuz you're gonna see it four more times) when they don't feel completely inexplicable (like when the movie stops for an extended pointless Christmas celebration with the entire main cast, or when Usher, playing himself, shows up at the strip club and the movie and all the strippers stop everything and fawn over him because he's Usher). Any movie about a gang of ebullient confidence scamming strippers that can be described as "boring" is a failure, and Hustlers is worse than boring.

Oh, and any members of the raincoat brigade are going to come away from this sorely disappointed - if there was anything I was shocked by, it's how little nudity or sexuality (!) there was.
I think the "extended pointless Christmas celebration" is the most important scene in the movie.

I suppose I got more out of this movie than maybe most viewers. I thought this was one of the better films of the year

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Re: Hustlers (Lorene Scafaria, 2019)

#18 Post by mfunk9786 » Wed Sep 18, 2019 10:49 am

Do you mind elaborating? Aside from its pretty transparent representation of these criminals as having formed an extended family out of the fractured components of their own families, I'd be curious as to what additional meaning you found in that scene.

He came out on this a bit more harshly than I ultimately did, but I agree with literally everything in Glenn Kenny's 1.5 star Letterboxd review, and he said some tough things that, in my view, needed to be said regarding some of the reception this film has gotten from people who sort of... know better? Just about cinema in general?:
Glenn Kenny wrote:A flat script, poorly directed. Every frame is all about whatever's in focus, in foreground; there's no background action, no production design; it's like they shot in a series of vacant lots. Jennifer Lopez's Terry Molloy impersonation is kind of funny, but anyone seeing Constance Wu for the first time in this movie might well wonder how she became a working professional actor. Julia Stiles shines as "Concerned Woman." The fact that this is getting so much praise indicates we are fully in the age of people making up the movie they want to see in their heads as the picture unspools, and gushing about that as they exit.
I have to imagine some of the reactions to Joker are going to exhibit that effect he describes in the last sentence, either positively or negatively depending on the source. Some critics have become unreliable narrators moreso than I ever remember them having been in the past.

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Re: Hustlers (Lorene Scafaria, 2019)

#19 Post by Never Cursed » Wed Sep 18, 2019 11:11 am

I don't usually agree with Kenny, but wow he is dead on there (though Scafaria isn't that bad a director) - thank you for sharing! That point on Joker is all too true as well, and it's why I've decided to ignore every word written about it online except for here till I've seen the film.

And I second that, Luke M - I'd love to hear what you got out of the Christmas scene. It just seemed to me a too-lengthy rehashing of the obvious message of the movie (something that the framing device already unambiguously states at torturous length) set alongside more unnecessary scenes of the leads gawking over designer clothes. Do we really need more than one short scene of Wu and crew raiding the mall and adding to their wardrobe?

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Re: Hustlers (Lorene Scafaria, 2019)

#20 Post by mfunk9786 » Wed Sep 18, 2019 11:20 am

I think he was more saying this film is poorly directed than making broad assertions about Scafaria in general.

Also, to your point above, the film keeps at this (hacky, coffee mug) line that "motherhood is a mental illness," that these characters are doing this for the well being and benefit of their young kids - and then delivers scene upon scene of them blowing all the money on stuff that has substantially reduced value the moment it leaves the department store. Instead of addressing or even really implying that the film is aware of this contradiction, it's sort of instead delivered as some kind of second hand wish fulfillment, as though the film is assuming it knows what its mostly female audience would like to see. And the idea that the female equivalent to Belfort's excesses in The Wolf of Wall Street is just buying bags and shoes is pretty reductive.

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Re: Hustlers (Lorene Scafaria, 2019)

#21 Post by Never Cursed » Wed Sep 18, 2019 11:28 am

I didn't think this film was as poorly directed as he said either.

And yes! That's something that bothered me a lot, too, how the "justification" for our leads' criminal actions is totally ignored in favor of these scenes of indulgence. So much is made of Constance Wu's precarious financial situation when she decides to return to stripping/start scamming, how she's poor and doing this for her kid's sake, and then she blows her ill-gotten gains on Louis Vuitton bags. The excess presented in The Wolf Of Wall Street (a movie that I too thought about a lot during this one) works because that movie is both riotously entertaining and unapologetic towards, even scathingly critical of, Belfort's materialism and criminality. This movie tries to function both on that level and as apologia for its leads' criminal actions, and what you get is an unfun movie populated by characters too materialistic and flippantly amoral to really get behind.

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Re: Hustlers (Lorene Scafaria, 2019)

#22 Post by Luke M » Wed Sep 18, 2019 12:09 pm

When I was watching the scene I was thinking how many other movies have scenes where thieves are laughing together giving gifts to each other with the money they stole? I'm sure there are some but it was a nice alternative to the paranoid gangsters of typical heist movies. To me the scene resonated with me more than others.

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Re: Hustlers (Lorene Scafaria, 2019)

#23 Post by mfunk9786 » Wed Sep 18, 2019 12:32 pm

If there were anything compelling going on in that scene, I would agree with you. But I'd hardly call Jennifer Lopez calling Constance Wu's grandmother her "spirit animal" because she's doing horny old lady punchlines the sort of thing I find compelling.

And Luke, for the record, I am not trying to shout you down in the slightest - I would love to hear you elaborate on what works well for you in that scene and the film in general.

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Re: Hustlers (Lorene Scafaria, 2019)

#24 Post by MongooseCmr » Tue Oct 08, 2019 7:39 am

I think the superior version of the Christmas scene here, and movie in general, is the Britney karaoke in Spring Breakers. The difference is that movie puts its cultural criticism way before characters, so it’s genuinely moving to finally see the children behind the criminals, while this is so in love with its characters that it’s the post-recession anger and Goodfellas arc that feel tacked on. The Christmas scene becomes self indulgent.

I’ve yet to see Joker, but for all the complaining about Scorsese imitation there this is just as bad. Any time Scafaria isn’t openly aping his camerawork, editing, narration, music cues, etc. this has no visual style or rhythm of its own. It’s copy+pasting the right moves at the right time and nothing in between.

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