By Adam Nayman Paul Thomas Anderson loves start-up entrepreneurs and fly-by-night schemes: you could run a straight line between There Will Be Blood’s (2007) oil magnate Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) and Punch-Drunk Love’s (2002) humble toilet-plunger impresario Barry Egan (Adam Sandler) just as easily as you could imagine the latter signing up for one of…

By Adam Nayman The amateur-hour pas de deux that climaxes Silver Linings Playbook is the best indicator of  what the film’s director thinks he’s doing the rest of the time. Led by a series of plot contrivances that raise the term “Byzantine” by several minarets, recently institutionalized history teacher Pat (Bradley Cooper) and manic-depressive pixie-dream-girl/black-eyeliner-widow…