There's more to the Sandman than just Punch Drunk Love
There are a lot of injustices in the world right now, but one of the biggest is that Adam Sandler didn't even get an Oscar nomination for
Uncut Gems.
The exhilarating thriller, set in Manhattan's Diamond District, sees Sandler play jeweler Howard Ratner, who makes living supplying gaudy pieces to rappers and NBA stars. It is a film about a man constantly making the wrong decisions, and slowly getting into more and more shit. It is both riveting and excruciating at the same time, and confirms young directors Josh and Benny Safdie as real talents to watch out for.
Howard is whiny and annoying, yet also strangely endearing and despite your better judgement, you end up rooting for him - a lot of which is down to Sandler's staggering centerpiece performance.
For many critics, it is the long-awaited follow-up to Paul Thomas Anderson's 2002 film
Punch Drunk Love - the other critical darling in which Adam Sandler won over his haters and picked up award nominations. Sandler is wildly reviled by the critical establishment, and many film fans see him as wasting talents in mainstream comedies and baffled it has taken him this long to build on
Punch Drunk Love's promise.
But those people are wrong. Everything that makes both
Uncut Gems and
Punch Drunk Love great is right there in films like
The Waterboy,
Big Daddy and
Happy Gilmore, if you just look for it...
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