REVIEWS: ‘American Hustle’ Shimmies to the Front of the Race

At of right now in this year’s astounding awards season, which I am hereby dubbing The Great Race, I don’t know whether 2013’s crop of superlative films is an anomaly or marks the dawn of a golden era of film. My feeling is what we are experiencing is the new normal. For those who don’t follow the trade press, quite a few of the elders of the insular tribe of filmmakers made speeches during the height of the recession a few years ago about necessary changes to the way we make films. They basically declared that the solution to our slump was simple: