Mini-Reviews of Recent Movies IV

The Big Short: Ok, this is a fabulous film. It is the combination of an amazing screenplay, great direction, and a cool cast. It is all the more amazing because "The Big Short" is all about things like Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDO's) and Tranches. The exposition of these concepts is done in a very funny way by intercutting explanatory clips by people like Margot Robbie and Selena Gomez. What this film is really about is the subprime mortgage crisis that caused the great recession of 2008. It is a true story, following three groups of investors who realize what is going to happen and bet against the bad mortgages by selling them "short." It is amazing because there was no way to do this so the first investor to think of this (Christian Bale) had to invent it. Then two other groups led by Ryan Gosling and Steve Carell hear about it in a bar and by getting a wrong number call. Finally, two young men call in an older retired investor (Brad Pitt) to help them. These groups all sell the mortgages short and then try to hang on while everyone around them tells them that they are crazy and are going to lose their shirts. Well, Spoiler Alert, they weren't wrong. "The Big Short" could have been titled, "Revenge of the Nerds," because the all the people involved are more or less Asperger's. There is a lot of energy that comes from the great performances of Bale, Gosling, and Carell. With "Foxcatcher" and "The Big Short," Steve Carrell is making a great transition from comedy to drama. The screenplay and direction by Andy McKay make this movie fast-paced and entertaining even though the content is all about CDO's and Derivatives. "The Big Short" is funny, suspenseful, and very, very scary. In some ways, this is a horror film. It will be in my Top Ten Movies of 2015 for sure.

Joy: This is the third movie in a row, written and directed by David O Russell, and starring Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, and Robert De Niro. Silver Linings Playbook was sublime, an almost perfect movie, so anything else might pale by comparison. The second movie, American Hustle, was an entertaining mess. Joy is probably the weakest of the three movies. This isn't because of the performances which are strong, particularly by Lawrence. But the story and the pacing of this movie don't seem to work. There isn't a nice flow to Joy. It always seems to be starting and stopping. In addition to his regular cast, Russell has added some great actors, Diane Ladd, Isabella Rossellini, and Virginia Madsen. They are a bit wasted as only Ladd rises above the one-dimensional. Joy follows the "real-life" story of the inventor of the Miracle Mop. Lawrence plays Joy and much of the story revolves around her dysfunctional family, her divorced parents (Madsen & De Niro), her ex-husband (Edgar Ramirez), and her grandmother (Ladd). My favorite part of the movie is that the soap opera that Madsen is always watching stars Susan Lucci! Cooper plays the head of QVC on which Joy eventually becomes a star and sells tens of thousands of Miracle Mops. This part of the movie works best. The rest of it including a long involved subplot about the nasty people who are manufacturing the mop and trying to steal the patent is not very interesting. So go and see Joy just to see Lawrence shine while all is chaos around her. Or maybe just watch Silver Linings Playbook again.

The Revenant: I don't know what to say about this movie. The director, Inarritu, has made some great films including last year's well-deserved Oscar winner, Birdman. The trailer for The Revenant didn't really make me want to see this, in large part due to the star, Leonardo DiCaprio. Sometimes I like him; more often I don't. I hated his last movie, The Wolf of Wall Street. Anyway, The Revenant is a major motion picture that some people say will get Leo his first Oscar. He has been nominated 5 times previously. The Revenant is based loosely on a real person, Hugh Glass. He was a frontiersman in the early 1800's who crawled 200 miles to safety after being attacked by a grizzly bear. And as portrayed in this movie, Glass later went after the guys who left him to die. I have to say that I didn't care whether DiCaprio's character lived or died, and as this long (156 minutes) movie grinds on, the crowd began to giggle with each successful disaster that befell DiCaprio and his fellow characters. In addition to being attacked by a grizzly, he is buried alive, attacked by native americans, shot, stabbed, falls off a cliff, is immersed in freezing water, strangled, falls off a horse, and well, you get the idea. At the beginning of the movie, he is on a fur trapping expedition. Domhnall Gleeson plays the leader of the expedition. He is having quite the year. He is also has big parts in Star Wars, Brooklyn, and Ex Machina. The two fellow trappers who leave Leo to die are played by Tom Hardy and Will Poulter. The reliable Hardy is also having a big year, starring in the new Mad Max and playing two roles in Legend. I'm not saying the cast is bad. They are good, but most of the lines in this movie are uttered as grunts or whispers so it isn't clear what people are saying. But I didn't care much. I don't want to give away any spoilers, but Inarritu is trying to create another film with Magical Realism that worked so well in Birdman, but here not so much. And the cinematography is great. The wilderness has never been more beautiful. This is for DiCaprio the kind of role that gets Oscar nominations and awards. But for me, this is the kind of role where he gets to overact and chew the scenery, which I hate in general and specifically from him. I hope he doesn't win. And as you can guess, I basically hated The Revenant. See it if you must. It will be in the Oscar race.

Hateful Eight: The name, Hateful Eight, refers to the number of films directed by Tarantino. The other seven are, Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill Vol. 1, Kill Bill Vol. 2, Inglourious Bastards, and Django Unchained. I don't hate these movies and I loved Pulp Fiction and Django Unchained. But I really hated Hateful Eight. It is over three hours long and for no good reason. The worst things about this movie are that it is boring, and I didn't care whether any of the characters lived or died which, spoiler alert, was a good thing because they mostly all died. Hateful Eight is typical Tarantino fare in that buckets of blood are constantly thrown across the screen. There is a nice cast that is completely wasted unless you enjoy seeing their brains exploding. It has Kurt Russell and Samuel L. Jackson as bounty hunters, Bruce Dern as an ex-Confederate General, Tim Roth as a Hangman, and Channing Tatum, Michael Madsen, and Jennifer Jason Leigh as various outlaws. Leigh is nominated for Best Supporting actress. It is very nice to see her, but her performance consists mostly of getting punched many times and getting drenched in blood and brains. Hateful Eight starts slowly, very slowly, with a stage coach driving through a snowy landscape. Russell is transporting Leigh to be hanged for various crimes. This fact drives the story but really who cares? They arrive at a way station for the night but then are trapped by a blizzard with all the characters who haven't already been killed. Then they start to die. This takes a very long time and occurs without the usual witty repartee that we expect from Tarantino. Jackson can read from the phonebook and still be interesting which is basically what he seems to be doing here. The point of this pointless film seems to be that no matter how good or bad you are, no matter what your motivations or dreams are, none of that matters because someone is going to put a bullet in your head and you will be dead.  I just wish Tarantino had delivered this message in under three hours.

Mini-Reviews of Recent Movies III

Star Wars, Episode VII: NO SPOILERS. First of all, it is really great. It has a 95% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes and I agree. JJ Abrams, who did such a good job of bringing back Star Trek, has teamed with Lawrence Kasdan, who wrote The Empire Strikes Back and The Return of the Jedi, to make everyone forget the abomination of Episodes 1, 2 and 3, and get back to the Galaxy, Far, Far Away that we know and love. We should all thank Disney for buying the rights to Star Wars from George Lucas. They have done a great job with this movie. The look and feel of Episode VII are just right, and the return of some familiar characters made me smile. Thirty years have passed both here on Earth and on Tatooine when the action begins in Episode VII. There are some nice new characters, and this is yet another movie with a female lead, Daisy Ridley, who plays Rey, a scavenger for junk. She is joined by a sometime stormtrooper (John Boyega), and a fighter pilot (Oscar Isaac). This film stands on its own, but it is also a paean to the original trilogy. Many scenes hearken back to the original films and warm the heart. I won't say anymore except what Han Solo says in the trailer, “It’s true. All of it. The dark side, the Jedi, they’re real.” Everyone should get out and see this movie as soon as possible.

Trumbo: I hate to say it but America needs to see this movie. The Hollywood Blacklist and the House Un-American Activities Committee happened in my lifetime and they could happen again. Unfortunately everyone in the theatre was old enough to remember Joe McCarthy. Ok, it's Star Wars weekend. But Trumbo is also a good movie. It stars Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad) as Dalton Trumbo, a screenwriter, ok not just a screenwriter. After he was blacklisted for being a member of the Communist Party, he won two Oscars while writing under pseudonyms. He wrote Roman Holiday, Spartacus, and Exodus. The supporting cast is also great including Diane Lane as Trumbo's long suffering wife and Elle Fanning as his daughter. John Goodman shines as the producer of B-films who hired Trumbo and various other Oscar winners to write movies such as The Alien and the Farm Girl. Then people like Kirk Douglas and Otto Preminger start showing up at Trumbo's home. This one is worth seeing.

Legend: My first introduction to the Krays was through the Piranha-Brothers sketch on Monty Python. Doug and Dinsdale Piranha led a gang that terrorized East London in the 1960's. The only difference between the Piranha brothers and the real-life Krays is the giant hedgehog named Spiny Norman. Legend tells the story of identical twins Ronnie and Reggie Kray both played by Tom Hardy. This an entertaining movie with a fair amount of blood and gore. The brothers, particularly Ronnie, are sociopaths who,like the Piranha brothers, rose to fame and power by terrorizing East London. The state of CGI today is such that you don't even notice how seamlessly the wonderful Tom Hardy plays the two brothers, who are frequently onscreen together. He does a great job of making Ronnie and Reggie very different characters. Emily Browning plays the young woman who makes the mistake of falling in love with Reggie. Legend is written and directed by Brian Hegeland. He won an Oscar for Best Screenplay for L.A. Confidential, and wrote and directed A Knight's Tale, one of my fav movies. Tom Hardy makes this a fun movie to watch even if you have to close your eyes once in a while. 

Youth: The average age of the actors in Youth is pretty high. Youth stars Michael Caine (age 82), Harvey Keitel (age 76), and Jane Fonda (age 78). I wanted to see this movie because of the cast, also including Rachel Weisz and Paul Dano, but I was surprised at how good and, well, interesting this movie is. Youth tells the story of a retired composer and conductor (Caine), and his lifelong best friend, a film director (Keitel) who is working on his latest script. They meet each year for a holiday at a swanky Swiss resort. Caine and Keitel have been friends for 60 years but as they say, they only tell each other the good things. Youth is about working out some of the bad things that have been ignored and repressed. Caine is trying to repair his dysfunctional relationship with his daughter (Weisz), and Keitel is struggling with his latest project and his star (Fonda). Paul Dano plays a well-known actor who is chilling at the resort before his next role as Adolf Hitler. One of the joys of this film is all the other guests at the resort, including a levitating Buddhist monk and Miss Universe, and how they interact with the main characters in unexpected ways. The ending is very unexpected as well. Youth is worth seeing.

Carol: The director of Carol, Todd Haynes, seems to like this kind of story. A few years ago he directed "Far From Heaven," the story of a woman in the 1950's with marital problems. This is also the plot of Carol but with the added frisson that the married woman, here played by Cate Blanchett, is having an affair with another woman played by Rooney Mara. Blanchett's husband played by the reliable Kyle Chandler is not very happy about it. In fact, Mara is Blanchett's second girlfriend. The first played by Sarah Paulson is still around and is tolerated by the husband, but when Mara arrives on the scene it is just one lesbian too much, and the husbands decamps with their young daughter. You can guess the rest. That's the one weakness of this film which has a great cast. The plot is pretty predictable and it isn't breaking any new ground. Carol isn't meant to be a happy film but everyone is pretty dour throughout. And they smoke a lot. The people against smoking in movies must be going crazy this Christmas. In the last four movies I have seen, other than Star Wars, Trumbo, Youth, and Legend, as well as Carol, everyone is smoking all the time. Most of the smoking takes place in the 1950's, and so is realistic, but it makes you realize how much things have changed from then to now. Anyway, Carol is worth seeing but don't see it if you are having a down day.