In David O. Russell's flinty comedy-drama Silver Linings Playbook (in theaters now), bipolar Pat Solitano (Bradley Cooper) returns to his childhood home in Philadelphia after a violent episode that ended his marriage and landed him in a psychiatric hospital. Pat's jagged redemptive arc includes a reckoning with his parents (Robert De Niro and Jacki Weaver) and with Tiffany (The Hunger Games' Jennifer Lawrence), a young widow whose courtship of Pat culminates, naturally, in a ballroom-dancing competition.
Winner of the Toronto International Film Festival's coveted Audience Award, Silver Linings is the first collaboration between Cooper--best known for the Hangover films--and Russell, who...