Another Movie On Wall Street Greed

Margin Call is a good movie, but not an excellent one. I had in mind the TV movie Too Big To Fail to compare and the latter is a much stronger production in every way.

However, given the low budget and the excellent cast, Margin Call did a reasonably good job in portraying the greed not only of Wall Street, but also of everybody's. There are a few lessons learned from this flick: money can't buy you happiness; the current global economic recession is the outcome of universal greed; and corporate slaves have to be sacrificed when the going gets tough.

Even if you don't like the story, you must like the stellar cast: Kevin Spacey, Paul Bettany, Demi Moore, Jeremy Irons and Simon Baker (from The Mentalist). Paul Bettany has always been a great actor, but he outshines everybody else, even Irons and Spacey, in this one. Well, he plays a gum-chewing, foul-mouthed investment banker who nails why his firm is in the doldrums - these brokers are there to save their bosses' asses and to save the normal people and everybody is the victim of their own greed.

His speech towards the end sums up the destiny of Wall Street: "...People want to live like this in their cars and their big f...ing houses that they can't pay for....I take my hand off and the whole world gets really f...ing fair really f...ing quickly and nobody wants that. They say they do, but they don't! They also want to play innocent and pretend they have no idea where it came from. That’s more hypocrisy than I’m willing to swallow. F... them. F... normal people!"

Demi Moore doesn't have a huge role in this film, but she has aged a lot - not all the plastic surgery in this world could save her from reality. And this movie was shot prior to her breakup with Ashton Kutcher. Cut that waist-long hair and maybe she'll look a bit younger?

If you like this movie, go rent the DVD Too Big To Fail and this will pale by comparison. If you don't like this movie, then all the more you'll have to see the made-for-TV movie starring every good actor under the sun including a cameo role of Christine Lagarde before her ascension to the IMF throne.

Eastwood's Biggest Flop

I went and saw J. Edgar because I always like Clint Eastwood as a director. Unfortunately it's a big disappointment, and probably one of Eastwood's worst movies in my opinion.

Watching this movie is like reading a biography without any punch lines or great quotes. The flick is kind of disjointed with flash backs between Hoover's younger and older days. But there's absolutely no climax, no suspense, no thread sewing all the parts together. And it's plain boring!

Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of fine acting - from Naomi Watts, Judi Dench, Josh Lucas and, particularly, Hoover's love interest Clyde Polson played by the dashing Armie Hammer (the twins in Social Network). I never understood Hollywood's fascination with Leonardo Di Caprio as an actor, and his performance in this movie is once again overdone and exaggerated as he did in his other biographic epic - portraying Howard Hughes in The Aviator. It scares me to think about sitting through another two movies he's currently filming - The Great Gatsby and Sinatra.

I also thought the make-up in this movie is not particularly well done - too contrived and unnatural. But the same happened in Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain and it ended up winning a lot of awards!

Clint Eastwood definitely can do much better!

No Empathy For Sex Addiction In 'Shame'

I can see why the Cannes Film Festival was fascinated by British artist Steve McQueen's Shame. Lead actor Michael Fassbender (Hollywood's It boy this year) won the Best Actor Award at the Festival. McQueen himself won the Festival's first-time director award a couple of years ago with his first movie Hunger, also starring Fassbender.

With its extremely slow pace and artistic shots of New York City - its subway, its dark alleys, its wide extensive highways and its stunning architecture, you almost have to appreciate this movie not because of its content, but art for art's sake. McQueen is best known for making a couple of silent movies and believes that 'less is more' in terms of screenplay. He also represented Britain at the 2009 Venice Biennale.

But other than its art, I just can't build up any empathy for the sex addict in the film. The whole movie is extremely disturbing - polar-opposite brother and sister, Brandon (Fassbender) and Sissie (Carey Mulligan), are both perturbed, self-destructive individuals. The cold yet beautiful architecture in New York City emphasizes Brandon's loneliness. But the whole movie lacks rationale - there are just art and emotion or the lack of emotion in the case of Brandon. The director and writers see no need to explain what brought Brandon to this pitiful state. Everything is subject to the audience's own interpretation, including the movie's ending.

Nobody can resist Fassbender with his sculpted body in a lot of stark nudity, but I can't understand why he won the Best Actor Award at Cannes. I also don't get his pain. In North America, when you have an addiction, you go get treatment, not to forever indulge in your problem. I guess I'm too rational to appreciate this kind of art! The only merit in this movie is Sissie's performance of the song New York, New York in a totally unique way.

You should stay away from this movie if you can't stomach darkness and self-destruction!

No More Alohas Please

Here's where I once again disagreed with professional movie critics. George Clooney in Hawaiian shirts in The Descendants just doesn't work for me.

First of all, the movie is so slow. It takes a while for the plot to really unfold. The bottom line about the story is a dysfunctional American family achieving harmony after a major tragedy. Well, how novel is that? Apart from a few witty lines here and there, mostly from the kids and teenagers in the flick, everything else is predictable.

Director Alexander Payne has a good track record - I like About Schmidt and the Oscar-award-winning Sideways. I also like his ex-wife Canadian actor Sandra Oh. For such a fine screenplay writer to come up with this movie just puzzles me. He's consistent with his style of focusing on adulterous relationships in married couples, but I don't like a predictable movie. I'm in the cinema to be wowed, surprised and entertained. The Descendants didn't accomplish any of that.

There's one saving grace for this movie - Shailene Woodley who plays Clooney's 17-year-old daughter is a good actress with a fresh, angelic face. There are also talks about Clooney getting an Oscar nomination for this role, but I really don't think that's going to happen. He's beginning to bug me immensely in both his private and professional lives lately. The whole emphasis on his handsome looks is really overdone. He's never a good actor because he always plays himself in all the movies.

What's most annoying about this film is the irritating Hawaiian-themed music throughout the movie. I guess it all depends on how much you like Hawaii - I can't stand the place, not to mention its music.

Call me prejudiced, but anything about cheesy Hawaii is just not for me!

Movie Star Versus Actor

I've read  mixed reviews about My Week With Marilyn but the movie turned out to be an exquisite delight for me today when I finally saw it. Without being a spoiler, this Weinstein/BBC production adapted a true story from the memoirs of documentary maker Colin Clark about his week spent on- and off-set with Marilyn Monroe when she was in the U.K. filming The Prince and The Showgirl directed by Sir Lawrence Olivier in 1956.

The movie is about infatuation, innocence, celebrity, jealousy, insecurities, vulnerabilities, and competitiveness among famous actors. Moreover, it explores the ultimate question: is bombshell Monroe a dazzling movie star or a serious actor or both? As with all BBC productions, the film was shot with such nostalgia, beauty and subtlety that we boomers just can't help but fall in love with it.

Kudos go to British film director Simon Curtis who until recently has been making TV movies and programs for 20 years before this debut feature film. He's also married to the American actress Elizabeth McGovern who currently has a prominent role in the renowned TV series Downton Abbey. Curtis disclosed in his interview with The Toronto Sun that his parents actually met in Toronto which was considered a very glamorous city during the post-war era when England was recovering.

I was never a big fan of Michelle Williams's, but I have to give her credit for having done an amazing job in portraying Monroe. There might be another actress who looks more captivating than Williams, but she did it with such ease and natural charm without overdoing it as other actresses have done in the past - no high-pitching voice but enough giggling and femininity to remind us of the film goddess. She's not as voluptuous and attractive as the character she's portraying, but it's her vulnerability that makes Williams the ultimate Monroe. She also has amazing skin and complexion in the movie and boy, she can sing! I don't know what Williams has done to her voice training since her Blue Valentine role, but she is definitely a much better singer this time round. I can't even recall that Monroe herself could sing that well.

But the rest of the cast is equally amazing particularly Kenneth Branagh who plays Sir Lawrence Olivier, Julia Ormond who plays his wife Vivien Leigh and Eddie Redmayne who plays the 23-year-old Clark. Dame Judi Dench is her same magnificent self in every role she plays but Emma Watson as Lucy is totally replaceable. The fact that this is a true story makes the movie even more mesmerizing. Monroe's inner demons and the everlasting loneliness drove her men both crazy and infatuated. This also applied to her director Olivier. There are talks about Williams nominated for an Oscar for her role in this film. I, for one, would not be unhappy if she won.

Is Shakespeare A Fraud?

In spite of a couple of bad reviews about the new movie Anonymous, my girlfriend and I, who both majored in Shakespeare at university, went and saw it on its first day of screening and actually love the controversial flick!

First of all, two thumbs up to the bold German-born director Roland Emmerich who had the guts to question the authenticity of the Bard's works. He must have already foreseen the numerous Shakespearean scholars who would be up in arms after seeing this movie - including James Shaprio, English Professor, Columbia University, who also wrote a negative op-ed piece in The New York Times - when he shot the film with a screenplay that was written some 10 years ago. It's also hard to believe that this is the same director behind such Hollywood epics as Independence Day, 2012 and The Day After Tomorrow.

I can fully understand why there's such an uproar. Not only was Shakespeare, the greatest writer and playwright of all times, portrayed as a total fraud, but he was an illiterate buffoon, a scheming blackmailer and murderer, and a whoring commoner with no scruples. This is not the first time that the authenticity of Shakespeare as the real author of his plays is being challenged. Sigmund Freud, Henry James and other notable greats have also raised the same doubts. But Emmerich explored the big question mark in great depths.

But whether you agree with this premiss at all, the strongest merit of this movie is that it's so well done and written in such a witty way that even the Bard himself would have approved in spite of the atrocious defamy of his reputation! I love the Shakespearean themes of the 'play within the play';' the use of the Prologue with Sir Derek Jacobi; the female roles played by male actors in the Elizabethan era; the interactive nature of the plays being staged; a quick glance at some of the most famous scenes from Shakespeare's plays being staged in the movie, including Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet, Henry V, Richard III, Hamlet, Macbeth, Julius Caesar and many others; and The Globe Theatre filmed in its full glory.

Also, who could dispute the excellent English cast? Vanessa Redgrave played the older Queen Elizabeth while her daughter Joely Richardson (of Nip, Tuck fame) played the younger monarch. But the most pleasantly surprising performance came from Welsh actor Rhys Ifans (best remembered as Spike in Notting Hill) who played the middle-aged, but still dashing, pensive Duke of Oxford. By playing such credible characters who are distinctly different from movie to movie, Ifans's acting excellence should be admired.

I don't believe the plot has any truth to it, but I would highly recommend this movie because like all other admirable works of art, this film is both provocative and irresistibly attractive and entertaining at the same time. The greatest line in this movie is, "All art is political, otherwise, it's only decorative." The flashbacks and the many characters in their young and old forms can be confusing at times; so, try to go see this movie when you're in top form!

A Movie That Connects With You Emotionally

Earlier this week, I attended an advanced screening of the movie The Way starring Martin Sheen (of Apocalpyse Now and West Wing fame) and was written and directed by his son Emilio Estevez (Bobby). I'm not a very easy audience to please, but I have to admit that there are no words that can possibly do justice to this movie - the flick is close to perfection!

Pilgrimages have long been the subjects of movies, but this Christian pilgrimage to El Camino de Santiago is different. This is a journey of life - as the movie's promotional tagline sums it all up: "Life is too long to walk it alone."

The four pilgrims who are the protagonists of this film all embarked on the journey for different reasons. Tom, the Californian ophthalmologist (Sheen), wanted to walk it alone because he wished to remember his deceased son Daniel (Estevez) with whom he never managed to get along. The father never understood the son's "the life you live and the life you choose" philosophy. Along came Dutchman Joost (Yorick van Wageneingen) who's innately kind, but could be annoying because he was stalking Tom and chose to embark on this pilgrimage only to try to lose some weight because his wife refused to sleep with him. Then there's the bitter, chain-smoking and self-deprecating Canadian Sarah (Deborah Kara Unger of Spider and Combat Hospital fame), who went on this trip to run away from her abusive former husband and the pain of aborting her baby. Her resentment of the boomer generation explained why she kept calling Tom 'Boomer' throughout almost the entire journey. And about three-quarters of the way, the three of them met Jack (James Nesbitt), the Irish writer who had a writer's block and was looking for inspiration and material.

The movie is full of metaphors and ironies - of life, relationships, love, family, friendship, racial tolerance, inter-generation conflicts, motherhood, religious faith and many others. There are many breathtakingly beautiful shots of the Spanish scenery, but it's the emotional connection that the movie makes with its audience that becomes a flawless memory. This is a movie that will make you laugh and cry many times during the two hours.

After Bobby, which earned a long standing ovation at its debut in the Venice Film Festival in 2006, nobody will ever doubt Estevez's ability to write and direct a good movie. But The Way has just made him one of the most respected writers-directors of North America. At the question-and-answer session after the screening of the movie, Estevez said that he's glad that the audience liked his movie because he felt this was a great story of his own life and family that he needed to tell. And what a story - one that connects with us on many levels. The audience at Varsity Cinema was also classy enought that nobody asked Sheen and Estevez any questions relating to Charlie Sheen.

I understand that this movie will be shown in Canadian cinemas next week. Please do yourself a favour and don't sit on the couch and wait to see it on DVD - go to the cinema and share Estevez's passion! It will make you a happier and more fulfilled person!