Movie Review: "The Big Short" (Adam McKay, 2015)

THE GREAT FINANCIAL GAMBIT by Mo Shaunette

Above: Christian Bale as Dr. Michael Burry.  Photo ©Paramount Pictures.

In 2010, writer-director Adam McKay (late of “Anchorman” and “Step Brothers”) added another comedy film to his resume: “The Other Guys,” a buddy-cop flick starring Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg.  The film was only a modest success, yet one of its central jokes has proven to be prophetic.  In the film, our heroes weren’t pit against drug smugglers or arms dealers, mobs or cartels; they were pit against investors and bankers.  The villains in a high-octane action flick were white-collar criminals.  It was a gag, but Mr. McKay took it seriously, even featuring a series of graphics explaining Ponzi schemes and their role in the 2008 financial crash.

The Great Recession looms large in “The Big Short,” Mr. McKay’s latest feature (which he adapted from a book of the same name by Michael Lewis).  The story begins in 2005, when hedge fund manager Dr. Michael Burry (Christian Bale) realizes that the housing market is headed for a collapse and opts to invest in credit default swaps, effectively betting that the housing market will fail.  

Soon, others pick up on Burry’s plan: fellow hedge fund manager Mark Baum (Steve Carell), trader Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling), and investors Charlie Geller and Jamie Shipley (John Magaro and Finn Wittrock).  Conducting separate investigations, the various players discover that Burry is right—the ship that is the American economy is headed for an iceberg, and none of them can do anything except try to get rich and get out while they can.

It’s striking how “The Big Short” presents this saga.  For most of the film, Mr. McKay goes for a faux-documentary feel, filming with handheld cameras and deliberately awkward zooms that evoke “The Office.”  Yet the film also indulges in unconventional montages and smash cuts, breaks the fourth wall, and repeatedly cuts to scenes of celebrities explaining the ins and outs of investments in layman’s terms for the audience.  I’m not sure I’ve seen a 2015 movie moment more bizarre than the scene where Margot Robbie sits in a bubble bath while drinking champagne and talking to the camera about sub-prime mortgages.

These absurdities can be jarring, though they’re not without purpose.  If truth is stranger than fiction, it’s because fiction requires a sensible plot.  But as a non-fiction chronicle of a frightening and ridiculous economic disaster, “The Big Short” is perfectly right to delve into the bizarre.  It's telling the tale of a handful of masterful con artists manipulating and misdirecting the entire nation, creating a complete clusterfuck of greed, irresponsibility, and ignorance.  

This madness is enhanced by a cast that brings their A-game, with Mr. Bale being worthy of special mention.  He plays Burry as a confident, yet socially stunted and awkward mathematical savant who spends entire days in his office crunching numbers while blasting heavy metal music.  Mr. Bale makes us feel for the man burdened with the responsibility of handling his clients’ money—there’s palpable sadness and dread whenever Burry writes down his company’s plummeting stock prices in the months leading up the crisis, fearing that his scheme to profit off of economic collapse will fail and that he and his investors will lose millions.

Impressive too is Mr. Carrell’s performance as Baum, who is a moral crusader and a raw nerve of emotion, quick to spurt anger, disgust, and sadness.  Baum is a man on the ground, talking to the bankers and brokers who are part of the scheme and realizing, to his horror, just how hard the crash will be when it eventually comes.  His revulsion is matched by Brad Pitt’s Ben Rickards, a retired banker and mentor to Geller and Shipley.

Rickards is portrayed as a sort of financial Obi-Wan Kenobi, a strange old man with odd theories and ideas who is eventually revealed to be most reasonable person in the film.  He helps Geller and Shipley cash in on the housing crash, but scolds them for celebrating the deals they’ve made.  He’s right to.  Geller and Shipley’s success comes off the backs of millions of Americans losing their homes, their jobs, and more.  They, as well as Burry, Baum, Vennett, and their associates, are essentially betting on the end of the world.

Which brings me to the place where “The Big Short” goes from being a solid comedy to being something almost transcendent.  By the end of the film, our heroes realize that the financial system was so, so much more broken than they could have possibly realized.  Not only is it so crooked that they nearly lose their investments due to the big banks scrambling to cover their losses in early 2007, but the banks who engineered the entire debacle end up getting away scot free thanks to a bailout from the government.  Not only did the banks con millions of Americans out of their money, but they got away with it thanks to taxpayer dollars. 

“The Big Short” is one of the best films of the year—and one of the most important.  In 2016, when the American financial system (and by extension, the world economy) remains irreparably scarred by the greed of AIG, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers, and countless more, it’s more vital than ever that we understand how the Great Recession was born so we can prevent further financial crises.  “The Big Short” offers understanding and is funny, tragic, poignant, and an overall fantastic film.  Check it out.

2016 Movie Preview

ONCE MORE, INTO THE CINEMATIC BREACH 
by Bennett Campbell Ferguson

Above: Cate Blanchett and Christian Bale in “Knight of Cups.”  Photo ©Waypoint Entertainment, FilmNation Entertainment, and Dogwood Films.

Last year, I pegged Terrence Malick’s “Knight of Cups” as the 2015 movie I was salivating with the most voracity.  Unfortunately, 2015 was the year that “Knight of Cups” was delayed until March 2016.  So here it is, stubbornly, on my most-anticipated movies list of 2016.  And by the way, Bernardo Bertolucci’s “Io E Te” is here again too, even though it was supposed to have been released years ago. 

A movie buff can dream.

“Finding Dory” (Andrew Stanton”)

“Eye in the Sky” (Gavin Hood)

“Hail, Caesar!” (Joel Coen and Ethan Coen)

“Io E Te” (Bernardo Bertolucci)

“Knight of Cups” (Terrence Malick)

“La La Land” (Damian Chazelle)

“The Light Between Oceans” (Derek Cianfrance)

“The Lost City of Z” (James Gray)

“Love and Friendship” (Whit Stillman)

“Midnight Special” (Jeff Nichols)

“Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children” (Tim Burton)

“The Neon Demon” (Nicolas Winding Refn)

“Nocturnal Animals” (Tom Ford)

“Silence” (Martin Scorsese)

“Sing” (Garth Jennings)

“Star Trek Beyond” (Justin Lin)

“Story of Your Life” (Denis Villeneuve)

Untitled Jason Bourne movie (Paul Greengrass)

Untitled Woody Allen Movie (Woody Allen)

“X-Men: Apocalypse” (Bryan Singer)

Movie Review: "Bridge of Spies" (Steven Spielberg, 2015)

ESPIONAGE, SPIELBERG STYLE by Bennett Campbell Ferguson

Above: Tom Hanks stars in Mr. Spielberg’s movie.  Photo ©Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures and 20^TH Century Fox.

With gorgeous finesse, Steven Spielberg’s movie “Bridge of Spies” reconstructs the Cold War as a chess game starring an American lawyer in a porkpie hat.  The lawyer’s name is James Donovan, and he seethes quietly as he watches liberties restricted in the name of security.  Myriad agents of the United States populate the movie, and too many of them brush off the delicacies of due process as if they were crumbs. 

            In the late 1950s, Donovan represented Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance), who was convicted of spying for the Soviet Union.  Abel was sentenced to thirty years in prison, but in the wake of the capture of U.S. pilot Francis Gary Powers (Austin Stowell), the plan for a swap was broached, and Donovan was tapped to journey to East Berlin for the final stretch of negotiations.

            In “Bridge of Spies,” Donovan is played by Tom Hanks who, since his “Sleepless in Seattle” heyday, has puffed up considerably—as a performer.  This is fortuitous, because as seen via Mr. Spielberg’s wiry spectacles, Donovan is not only a noble, suit-wearing shyster, but a righteous truth teller and a gleaming symbol of idealized American individualism.  With a delightful touch of thorniness, Mr. Hanks embodies those lofty qualities, testing himself (and us) by shading Donovan with sheens of slippery canniness. 

            Hence the numerous scenes where Mr. Hanks, bowing his head in a wimpy manner, pulls a scraggly Kleenex from his pocket and showers it with nose mucus.  Once, Donovan gloweringly reminds the Soviet and East German negotiators that he has a cold, and he does (it’s a souvenir of tromping through the East Berlin snow without his gray overcoat).  And yet Donovan craftily wafts attention towards his runny nose with each sniff, as if to say, “Go ahead, underestimate me”—right before he socks his counterparts with a knowing demand.

            Mr. Spielberg has no such pretensions of concealing his own craftiness.  Aided by the indomitable cinematographer Janusz Kaminski (his creative partner on the justly legendary “Schindler’s List,” and a mountain of other movies), Mr. Spielberg cloaks the film’s streets, restaurants, and offices in entrancingly sinister shadows.  There is grace in this menace (Mr. Spielberg appears to view the divide between cinema and poetry as tenuous at best), and also in the moment when Powers is torn by wind and gunfire from his U2 spy plane, thousands of feet above the planet.  The camera doesn’t just film his descent—it swivels downward to take in Powers’ legs as they dangle over green-tinged earth beneath, drawing us dizzyingly (and exhilaratingly) into the frame.

            But is “Bridge of Spies” truly gasp-worthy?  Not always.  The film unfolds in the sonic lap of composer Thomas Newman, whose music is sometimes bafflingly clownish (a menacing choral fanfare played during Powers’ hallucinatory interrogation in a grimy Soviet prison screams “X-Men,” not torture and imprisonment).  What could be worse?  Perhaps the film’s ludicrous coda, during which a stateside Donovan cheerily watches three children leap over a fence—a mirror for an earlier image of three Germans being shot while scaling the Berlin Wall.  Ah, America.   

And yet “Bridge of Spies” still holds you.  That’s partly because of its visual pleasures, but it’s also because of its ideological force.  Early in the film, a CIA agent asks Donovan to violate attorney-client privilege and divulge information about Abel; Donovan refuses.  The only thing that makes him and anyone else an American, he says, is the constitution, or as he calls it, “the rule book.”  That might sound obvious, but in a world of prejudice and paranoia, it’s anything but. 

It’s actually quite radical.

Movie Review: "The Hateful Eight" (Quentin Tarantino, 2015)

COLD WEATHER, COLDER HEARTS by Mo Shaunette

Above: Samuel L. Jackson stars in Mr. Tarantino’s latest.  Photo ©The Weinstein Company

As will surprise absolutely no one, being both a) a film enthusiast, and b) a guy, I’m a fan of Quentin Tarantino.  “Kill Bill” remains one of my favorite movies ever, I’ve seen “Pulp Fiction” more times than I can count, and for me, “Inglorious Basterds” and “Django Unchained” are some of the finest films of the past few years. 

Having now seen Mr. Tarantino’s latest effort, “The Hateful Eight,” I’m not entirely sure what to make of it.  “Hateful” feels like the director is both retreading old ground and striking into new territory.  That’s partly because the film mixes Mr. Tarantino’s signature labyrinthine conversations and sudden violence with a slow-burn, almost avant-garde style of storytelling.

Yet “Hateful” also nods to the neo-western aesthetic of “Django,” the ‘hostile strangers locked in a room together’ set-up of “Reservoir Dogs,” the 'stories as weapons' theme from "Basterds," and the sliding scale of morality of “From Dusk ’Til Dawn” (while also pulling elements from “The Thing,” “The Evil Dead,” and “Persona”).  Yet despite all these disparate ingredients, it’s still a Tarantino Stew, and much like Major Marquis Warren, I can always recognize the taste of a familiar stew.

“The Hateful Eight” (which is set in the late 1800s) takes us to Minnie’s Haberdashery, a general store near Red Rock, WY.  There, a blizzard traps eight strangers in the store for the night: the aforementioned Major Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), a Union army veteran turned bounty hunter; John “The Hangman” Ruth (Kurt Russell), a fellow bounty hunter known for ensuring his prisoners see the gallows; Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a wanted murderer and Ruth’s latest quarry; Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins), a former Confederate raider and the new sheriff of Red Rock; Bob (Demáin Bichir), the Mexican caretaker of Minnie’s; Oswaldo Morbray (Tim Roth), a genial Brit; Joe Gage (Michael Madsen), a quiet cowherd; and General Sanford Smithers (Bruce Dern), a former Confederate soldier.  As the night goes on, tensions run high, ideologies clash, old grudges are brought to light, liars are revealed, and many a bullet is fired before the sun rises again.

What will strike pretty much everyone about the movie is the length of it.  “Hateful” (or at least the 70mm “Roadshow” version I saw) clocks in at over three hours and features both an overture and a fifteen-minute intermission.  You could be forgiven for calling the first half of the film overindulgent, as it mostly concerns characters drifting around Minnie’s, talking to each other, explaining philosophies and back stories.  However, it still manages to be entertaining thanks to the writing, the direction, and the caliber of the actors.  Mr. Tarantino is pushing himself as an artist here, going for a more deliberately-paced story as opposed to his usual higher-energy action romps.  In other words, “Hateful” isn’t so slow that it’s boring; “Hateful” is so slow that it’s art.

Much of the film’s power arises from the strong showing by its cast, and special mention has to be given to two performances in particular.  Walton Goggins is a fascinating watch as Chris Mannix, who struggles to balance his pride in the South, his shame at losing the war, and his willingness to move on from the past and bury the hatchet when surrounded by folks who have no love for rebels, all the while acting the part of the big, dumb country boy.  Jennifer Jason Leigh, meanwhile, runs the gamut of emotions as Daisy Domergue—we see her scorn, her defiance, her fear, her anger, her confidence, her vulnerability, and her humor, as she watches (and takes part in) the madness happening beneath Minnie’s roof.

Which brings me to the most uncomfortable aspect of the film.  Daisy begins the movie with a black eye and suffers countless more indignities and injuries before the credits roll, all of them at the hands of violent men.  Daisy is no angel—she’s surly, racist, and goes out of her way to antagonize everyone around her—but watching “Hateful,” I got the same sense of collar-tugging discomfort that I get when watching “Game of Thrones.”  It’s the feeling that you’re watching the work of a filmmaker who doesn’t condone violence towards women, yet enjoys seeing female characters being beaten a little too much (in spite of said characters’ agency, strength, and personality). Maybe I'm being overly sensitive here—nearly everyone in the haberdashery is an utterly despicable monster (including our purported hero Major Warren) and is punished for it, so there's little reason why Daisy should be made exempt—but her treatment still got to me.

Still, despite that unpleasantness (on a similar note: whatever hang-ups you might have about Mr. Tarantino’s continued use of the N-word, I’d argue that it makes sense in the context of “Hateful,” given that the movie is not only partially about racism, but takes place in a time when people remembered owning blacks as property), I’d still give “Hateful” a recommendation.  It may be a long slog through nigh-endless talking and bloody brutality, but it’s a hell of a ride; a singularly unique entry from one of America’s premier auteurs.  Mixing art house-style pacing with splatter-house violence, all with a gorgeous Western-style score from Ennio Morricone, “The Hateful Eight” is a film that demands to be experienced.  Check it out.

Movie Review: "Joy" (David O. Russell, 2015)

CAUTION, WET FLOOR by Bennett Campbell Ferguson

Above: Ms. Lawrence stars in her third Russell movie.  Photo ©20^TH Century Fox

The Joy in David O. Russell’s “Joy” is Joy Mangano, the inventor of the Miracle Mop.  She’s played by Jennifer Lawrence, who Mr. Russell often casts as a shrieking, hyperactive temptress (see “American Hustle” and “Silver Linings Playbook”).  Yet in “Joy,” Ms. Lawrence is oddly dour.  In an early scene, someone tosses an airplane ticket in her face; she barely blinks.  Apparently, Katniss forgot to bring her bow.

            In Mr. Russell’s movie (which was loosely adapted from Ms. Mangano’s life), Joy’s quest to invent a “self-wringing mop” is no easy feat.  She has to manufacture the mops in father’s grungy auto shop (true to Ms. Russell’s penchant for spurts of violence, the shop stands next to a scraggly gun range) and persuade a business slicker named Neil Walker (Bradley Cooper) to swing his corporate might in her direction (like Ms. Lawrence, Mr. Cooper seems to be operating on sleeping pills; when he meets Joy, he stares blankly at her from across a gray office table while delivering a belittling, dead-sounding monologue). 

            Eventually, Joy faces Neil’s ad cameras to sell the Miracle Mop to the masses.  And as Ms. Lawrence smoothly strides across a stage, pointing emphatically and insisting that the world hungers for her invention, the film acquires a zesty rhythm (“You’ll never need another mop,” Joy declares early in one scene).  Yet “Joy” also prays on its heroine’s slipups, from her misplaced trust in her family to the money she bleeds as she ascends like a phoenix of finance.  Her losses stab at the balloon-like buoyancy that the movie strives for, transforming the project into a sudsy downer.

            What “Joy” could have used was a cameo by Rosalind, Ms. Lawrence’s character from “American Hustle.”  Rosalind, after all, was the woman who partially incinerated an oven, kissed Amy Adams, and rocked a pair of lemon-yellow dish-washing gloves like they were medieval gauntlets.  Imagine if she had been in “Joy.”  She wouldn’t have just mopped it up; she would have wrung it out.