LEKHA SHANKAR

                                        Inspite of  the Oscars, this is the  Best Movie of the Year!

 Forget the Oscars. This is easily the best movie of the year. And Bradley Cooper is easily the Best Actor, and the  amazing ‘discovery’ of  the year.

 What an awesome performance,  as the  crazy, volatile,  sensitive, loving, confused  ‘bi-polar’ . There are so many such people ,with  personality disorders, but it’s never been so realistically, harrowingly ,movingly portrayed on screen.

 ‘ Pat’  Bradley has that ‘look’ that never leaves him- and never leaves the audience either.

 Kudos to him, and to director David Russel  for  a  rivetting screenplay ( it was based on a book, but the Director said that  Pat’s character was  based on his bi-polar son). Robert de Niro and Jacki  Weaver , as Pat’s  frustrated, confused parents, could not be better cast too.

 Too bad that Bradley was pitted against  Abraham Lincoln,in the Oscar-race. Fortunately, Jennifer Lawrence didn’t face such an adversary. She was good, but Bradley was awesome.

 It was the only ‘real’ film, in a year  of  ‘fictionalised’  political dramas.  They were exciting stories. This was  rivetting drama.

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