![]() The Safdie brothers teamed up with legendary sound mixer Skip Lievsay (winner of the Academy Award for Sound Mixing for Gravity) to build the soundscape of Uncut Gems. As they yell over each other and even get physically confrontational at times, Uncut Gems relishes leaving viewers trapped in increasingly uncomfortable situations. The cast members race around one another in constant conflict. The experienced actors and newcomers work together with such fascinating chemistry that you would never guess some of them have never been in a film before. Their relationship is as disastrous and tense as the film happening around them. Julia Fox, another newcomer to feature film acting, stuns as Howard's mistress who acts as a perfect companion and foil to him. Richards was plucked right off the street for this first experience as an actor, an incredible fact to consider when his menacing performance feels like something that could have been pulled right out of a Martin Scorsese movie. Sandler is masterful, and uplifts a powerful ensemble which is assembled from a mix of seasoned performers like Eric Bogosian, Judd Hirsch, and LaKeith Stanfield alongside inexperienced actors like Garnett or Keith William Richards, who portrays a terrifying loan shark. While this is not a revelation for those who have seen his performances in Paul Thomas Anderson's Punch-Drunk Love, or Noah Baumbach's The Meyerowitz Stories, Sandler's performance in Uncut Gems is such a richly captured role, so perfectly suited to his comedic sensibility and dramatic chops, that it rises above all his other work. ![]() Despite the slump of critical flop comedies he had made in the years leading up to Uncut Gems, Sandler came out in full swing to prove that he has incredible acting ability. ![]() Sandler gives one of his best performances, and it's one that was critically acclaimed and awarded in the independent circuit, but shamefully overlooked by the Academy. The tragic layer of the character comes through the few moments where he does show a version of himself as a family man, a caring person, and an intelligent and charming individual who continually gets in his own way. Howard himself is an uncut gem, a character with a rough exterior who keeps vulnerability and sincerity buried beneath layers of self-sabotaging and compulsive behavior. Howard Ratner is a complicated character, with an intoxicating mixture of annoying and endearing qualities, untapped potential, tragedy, and comedy all spinning wildly like a basketball atop Kevin Garnett's finger. In scenes where he is required to yell or exert a lot of physicality, there is something that is difficult to qualify but nevertheless funny about watching him work. Sandler's comedic persona is incredibly heightened, and the genius of his Uncut Gems performance is that he still manages to tap into that goldmine when he goes big as Howard. In 'Uncut Gems,' Adam Sandler Bolts Around New York at a Frenetic Pace
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