There are some films that make you feel good for reasons you can’t explain. They’re the types of films that you watch and have an array  of conflicting emotions throughout. You laugh out loud, you cringe, you shift in discomfort, you smirk. And at the end of the movie, the lights come back on, you pack up your stuff, and you walk away feeling like life is beautiful, limitless in its potential, and there to be conquered.

Silver Linings Playbook is such a film.

This film is something completely new. It’s an unconventional tale of a man and a woman– and really an entire family– that have serious issues. They’re quirky, they say inappropriate things, and their passions certainly don’t come across as normal. And that’s what’s awesome. The not-normalness of this film.  It’s uncomfortable in its realness and forces viewers into a space that’s unfiltered, raw in its emotion, and beautifully touching in unexpected and deeply felt ways.

Bradley Cooper (who always has the happiest blue eyes I’ve ever seen) has deeply melancholy eyes in this film. I don’t know if it was the lighting or special effects of some sort that stripped the sparkle from Bradley’s eyes but it was gone, and it needed to be, for the complex character he plays. This is one of the deepest characters he’s ever taken on. Meanwhile, Jennifer Lawrence is hilarious, believable, and a character who successfully shocks and offends while somehow managing to become one of the most endearing characters in the film. She holds her own amidst seasoned veteran Robert De Niro (who was hysterically funny) and the much more experienced Bradley Cooper.  They both acted their asses off and I’m glad to see this as acknowledged as it has been thus far this award season.

May the awards keep on coming!