I watched American Hustle this past week, and it is a very good movie. The story was well written, the acting is great, and it has a wide range of emotions throughout the film. I was surprised how funny the movie was. Not in a jokey-comedy kind of way, but just in how the characters are at times. The events felt like they took place somewhere between small-time and big-time crime, but not all the characters could agree at the same time where on the scale it was at any given moment. Everyone did a great job, and not a moment of screen time felt wasted, even at a little over 2 hours long.

On the flip-side of that, we have another movie I recently saw: Prisoners. It wasn't a bad movie, and held many of the same characteristics of American Hustle. The story was interesting, and the cast did not only a good job in their roles, and a realistic one at that. It's much more of a dark crime-drama compared to American Hustle, but that wasn't it's drawback. No, I thought Prisoners fell short with it's pacing. Given it's about parents searching for their abucted children, you'd expect they wanted the days to feel like they dragged on for months, but maybe they did a little too good of a job at that. I still wanted to get to the end of the movie and see what happens, I just wanted it to happen before the movie let it happen. Overall I did like the movie, but I don't think I'll ever watch it again. It has however gotten me interested in watching another movie by the same director: Enemy.