After thinking so more about Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (and getting more annoyed), I have updated my first assessment of the movie.
The screenplay keeps raising the issue of moral hazard (whether to bail out people from the consequences of risks that they knew they were taking). Yet, at the end, the two flawed main characters each get exactly what they wanted at the beginning of the film despite making risky or evil choices throughout. The movie’s payoff (things turn out OK no matter how badly or foolishly you behaved) is exactly opposite of the movie’s sermonette.
Mademoiselle Chambon is the year’s best romance, and very worth seeking out; The lovers are beautifully acted by Vincent Lindon and Sandrine Kiberlaine in two of the very finest performances of the year. I’m still pushing the hardhitting documentary The Tillman Story. There’s also the George Clooney arty thriller The American. If you can still find them, there are also two excellent crime dramas – Mesrine: Killer Instinct and Animal Kingdom. For a date movie, there is the charming and relatively smart romantic comedy Going the Distance.
Without strongly recommending them, I can say that The Town is a satisfying Hollywood thriller and the silly A Woman, A Gun and a Noodle Shop has its moments. You can skip Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.
My DVD of the Week is one of the year’s best so far: The Ghost Writer. Don’t miss another of the year’s best, The Secret in Their Eyes either. For my recent DVD choices (including trailers), see DVDs of the Week.
Movies on TVinclude lots of good choices: Seven Days in May, Badlands, Boxcar Bertha, Leave Her to Heaven, Twentieth Century and The Earrings of Madame de…, all coming up on TCM.
If you’re a baseball fan, there’s Ken Burns’ The Tenth Inning on PBS.
Again, Oliver Stone makes the movie equivalent of one of those glossy fashion editions – kinda fun to page through, but really nothing there. But it is glossy.
Stone sets this drama at the onset of the 2008 financial collapse, but really doesn’t have anything much to say about it, other than Josh Brolin’s character is an especially bad man.
Here’s what really ticks me off (modest SPOILER in this paragraph only). The screenplay keeps raising the issue of moral hazard (whether to bail out people from the consequences of risks that they knew they were taking). Yet, at the end, the two flawed main characters each get exactly what they wanted at the beginning of the film despite making risky or evil choices throughout. The movie’s payoff (things will turn out OK no matter how badly or foolishly you behave) is exactly opposite of the movie’s sermonette.
Michael Douglas is excellent in another delicious turn as Gordon Gekko, but he isn’t the main character. The protagonist is played by Shia LaBeouf. Will someone explain to me why Shia LaBeouf seems to be a movie star? I just can’t figure it out.
Once again, Carey Mulligan is good as the moral center of the story. Unfortunately, the power of her performance is undermined by the improbable and inconsistent happy ending.
Another problem is Stone’s use of nuclear fusion as an example of renewable energy that would save the planet if the bad money guys would only invest. There are very promising alternatives in renewable energy, but fusion ain’t one of them. It’s an insult to folks who are serious about being Green.
Now that Tony Blair is flogging his memoir, it’s a great time to watch the far juicier The Ghost Writer, which is a fictionalization of the writing of Tony Blair’s memoirs. It’s a first class paranoid political thriller by Roman Polanski. Ewan McGregor and Pierce Brosnan lead an excellent cast, and Olivia Williams stands out.
In 1994 documentarian Ken Burns came out with his history of baseball, told in nine “innings”. This week Burns updates his Baseball with The Tenth Inning on PBS. The Top of the Tenth is this week, followed next week with The Bottom of the Tenth.
In Baseball, Burns used a delightful array of talking heads (players and observers), the most compelling of whom were Buck O’Neil, Stephen Jay Gould and Bob Costas. I would expect the same style – and the same quality – in The Tenth Inning.
Edward Norton corrects Edward Norton in Leaves of Grass
I’ve just updated Movies I’m Looking Forward To. We’ve got Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, It’s Kind of a Funny Story, Howl, The Social Network and You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger all coming out in the next two weeks. Here are some new entries:
You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger: Woody Allen’s latest comedy about romantic entanglements and human self-delusion. Stars Naomi Watts, Anthony Hopkins, Antonio Banderas and Josh Brolin. Releases October 1.
Tamara Drewe: Steven Frears (The Queen, The Snapper, Dangerous Liaisons, High Fidelity) brings us a sex comedy. A writer’s colony in the English countryside is disrupted when a local woman returns with a nose job that has made her into an irresistible hottie. She enjoys being irresistible. Releases October 8.
Leaves of Grass: A college professor is tricked into returning to Oklahoma by his pot-dealing identical twin brother. Hilarity ensues. Edward Norton plays both twins. Strong supporting cast with Susan Sarandon, Richard Dreyfuss and Tim Blake Nelson. Rolling out slowly across the country.
Tabloid: A reputedly very funny Errol Morris (The Thin Blue Line, Mr. Death, Gates of Heaven) documentary tracing the story of a woman who had her dead dog cloned; it turns out that, years before, she was accused of manacling a Mormon missionary as her sex slave. Debuted at Telluride; wide release not yet scheduled.
That’s a pretty famous football quote, often attributed to Vince Lombardi. Lombardi did say those words as early as 1959. But the quote was originated by UCLA football coach Red Sanders in 1950.
It turns out that the famous line was also spoken in a 1953 movie – by John Wayne! In Trouble Along the Way, Wayne plays a gleefully corrupt football coach who buys players in an attempt to build up the football program overnight at a small Catholic school.
I’ve added Trouble Along the Way to my discussion of football movies in my Best Sports Movies.
You would think that I wouldn’t have to write this. But, indeed, when I saw The Town, there in my row was a mom and her three-year-old. What was she thinking? Was it too much trouble to watch the trailer? How was she going to explain the armed robberies, abduction, murders, head shattering battery by rifle butt, spraying AK-47s, the two scenes of sexual intercourse and the threatened rape. Oh, and how about the castration by pistol shot? And the car torchings – do you really want your three-year old to learn how to set your car on fire?
Now I’m not a prude. I often criticize movie ratings as too restrictive. I think that high schoolers can handle more sex than many parents are comfortable with. I don’t like cartoonish movie violence without consequences, but I often think that even tweens can handle realistic film violence. I like to challenge kids with films.
But, GOOD GRIEF, show some common sense. What is a toddler going to gain from an adult-themed movie? Yikes!
Mademoiselle Chambon is the year’s best romance, and very worth seeking out in the next two weeks. The lovers are beautifully acted by Vincent Lindon and Sandrine Kiberlaine in two of the very finest performances of the year.
I’m still recommending the hardhitting documentary The Tillman Story, the George Clooney arty thriller The American and the two gritty crime dramas – Mesrine: Killer Instinct and Animal Kingdom. For a date movie, there is the charming and relatively smart romantic comedy Going the Distance.
Without strongly recommending them, I can say that The Town is a satisfying Hollywood thriller and the silly A Woman, A Gun and a Noodle Shop has its moments.
Well, here’s some grand news – Roger Ebert is bringing back At the Movies as Roger Ebert Presents At the Movies. The co-hosts will be respected film critics Christy LeMire and Elvis Mitchell. Ebert himself will appear with the aid of computer-generated speech in the “Roger’s Office” segment. The show will also include movie bloggers Kim Morgan (sunsetgun.com) and Omar Moore (popcornreel.com). Ebert and his wife Chaz have gone back to the show’s roots and are producing the show for public television stations.
