Entertainment
Way late review: Margin Call
Saturday, February 4, 2012
From the start the tone is ominous. The soundtrack is dark and menacing. An army of HR consultants marches through the floor of the investment bank. The worker bees are alarmed and rightfully so. More than half of them are going home without jobs to return to tomorrow. One of those hit by the layoff is Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci), a risk analyst who was close to breaking open what we now know was one of the horrible truths behind the financial crisis. Investment banks were leveraged beyond reason but that was OK because the math added up – until it didn’t. As Dale leaves the building with an escort, he hands over a thumb drive to his co-worker, Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto). Dale tells Peter to “be careful”. Peter digs into the numbers and starts plugging away. He cracks the code and stares at numbers that show his employer soon losing more money than the firm is worth. the matter is quickly escalated up the food chain. The moments are intense, as the soundtrack never lightens the mood and every character realizes what is at stake, not just for them personally or even as a bank but for the entire US economy, if not world economy.
The cast is stacked. As The Company Men taught me, you can still make a miserable movie with top notch talent. Margin Call doesn’t disappoint. Everyone is on top of their game and no one hams it up, not even Kevin Spacey who plays a sales manager. In fact, this may be one of Kevin Spacey’s best performances in years. Instead of playing the smarmy know-it-all boss, Spacey takes on a multi-dimensional character.
The film is dialogue heavy, not quite at Glengarry Glenn Ross levels though. There are moments where points are being made through conversations between two characters, but never so much so that it feels forced. Writer and director, J.C. Chandor, does a good job of mixing up the scenery, which is a big challenge in a film that revolves around a 24-hour period of time and in a single location. He gives his characters reasons to move beyond the office building and makes good use of that variety.
The tone never changes throughout, for better or worse. It’s a slow burn of a film. Certain characters seem to grow the 24 hour time span while others start a new path in their life that is likely to be filled with regret. The ending is as sad and poignant as one can imagine without resorting to cheap plot twists. Margin Call serves as an admirable tale for our times.
This post is part of my Way late reviews. Read more reviews here.
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Way late review: Buck
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Buck is a documentary focused on Brannaman, the inspiration for The Horse Whisperer. Buck travels across the country, about forty weeks out of the year, putting on horse training clinics. His demeanour is that of a quiet cowboy who appears to possess magical powers when it comes to training horses. People attend his clinics in hopes that Buck can help them train their horse, even when the owners have all but given up hope on their four legged friend. And train them he does, often both the horse and the owner. Buck doesn’t do this in a belligerent manner. He never chastises anyone. We never see him lose his cool. He calmly but firmly trains the horse and provides words of wisdom to the owners in that same way.
We follow Buck around the country putting on clinic after clinic. Along the way we learn more about this horse whisperer. The chilling truth about his horrific early childhood is slowly revealed. By the end of the film we understand that Buck had learned so much from his early years. He learned the kind of man he didn’t want to become from his father and found the type of man he wanted to become through the love and respect he found in his foster parents. The gentle cowboy we see on screen could have turned out much different.
Listening to the horse whisperer dispense advice as he persuades rambunctious horses to follow his every command is mesmorizing. The doc could do nothing more than focus on his training sessions and it would be a success. The director, Cindy Meehl, digs a bit deeper by revealing the hardships Buck has endured and the journey he’s been on. Possibly the only missing links are that we get a surface level view of his relationship with his wife, who he spends most of each year apart from, and always glowing reviews from his friends. There are interview snippets throughout that sing Buck’s praises or feel great sympathy for his plight early on in life but very little in the way that makes one ever believe that Buck is anything apart from a modern day saint. The picture of the man we’re left with feels void of all its colors. Some might argue this same point about another more recent documentary, Senna. The difference here is that Buck dives into quite a bit of the subject’s life while Senna is created completely from archival footage. Buck could be great. Senna reached its fullest potential given the filmmaker’s own constraints. Regardless, Buck is a very good film.
A nicely shot documentary, which is a refreshing change of pace from the run and gun lo-fi docs that dominate lately, Buck excels at putting together an entertaining and informative look at an incredibly gifted man who not only works miracles with horses but does a pretty amazing job with people too.
This post is part of my Way late reviews. Read more reviews here.
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Way late review: Rocky Balboa
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
The boxing world has changed since our favorite underdog champion left the ring. Mason Dixon (Antonio Tarver) is destroying the competition. In fact, he’s destroying it with too much efficiency. Boxing fans and critics alike don’t think highly of Dixon. His attitude is beyond arrogant. There are claims that the young champ only enters fights he knows he can win. Everyone questions Dixon’s heart. No one seems to question his physical abilities.
Enter Rocky. Long retired from boxing we learn that he’s lost Adrian to cancer a few years earlier. Balboa is crushed by this loss but carries on with his life. He runs a restaurant named after his late wife. He also attempts to keep a relationship with his son, Robert (Milo Ventimiglia), who has grown up, has a job where he wears a suit to work everyday and resents being in his dad’s shadow. And, of course, Paulie (Burt Young) is still around with his cigars, drinking and sour yet somehow always entertaining attitude.
On the anniversary of Adrian’s death, Rocky stumbles into the old bar he would hang out at. There he meets Marie, or “Little Marie” as Rocky knew her in the first film. Little Marie was the young girl Rocky walked home in the first movie and was left at the girl’s doorstep with a “Screw you Creep-o!” Marie bar tends and Rocky strikes up a friendship with her. He becomes a father figure of sorts for her son, “Steps”. In previous films, Stallone would have used these new characters as plot devices. Instead of plot devices we get a feel for the genuine friendship Marie, her son and Rocky develop. And it’s clear that Rocky longs for friendship as he misses the love of his life and struggles to maintain a relationship with his only child.
In the midst of all this day-to-day getting on with life, there is an interest by the media in comparing Mason Dixon to boxers of the past. ESPN runs a special where boxing experts discuss how they think an in-prime Rocky would do against the current heavyweight champ. The verdict is deafening to Dixon. All but one expert feels that Rocky would win the bout. To make matters worse, a computer simulation of the fight shows Rocky crushing Dixon. This causes Dixon to seek advice from his old trainer, who was pushed out by Dixon’s entourage once Dixon became successful. It’s in this moment that we see a softer side of Dixon, which is maybe the only problem I had with the film. We see this humbled young man go to his mentor and seek honest advice. Dixon is almost too likeable in this scene, which makes his transformation back to the egotistical punk he becomes later hard to process.
All this talk of boxing and the glory days of boxing has Rocky itching to get back in the ring. Nothing big, just some local fights. The board doesn’t want to approve Rocky for readmission even though the former champ has cleared all the medical tests. After a passionate speech by Balboa the board concedes. It doesn’t take long for Dixon’s promoters to pick up on this news. They’re after a Rocky Balboa vs. Mason Dixon fight in Vegas. They convince both fighters it’s a good idea and the date for an exhibition in Vegas is set.
In probably one of the more emotionally honest moments since the original, Robert and Rocky have it out. All that pent up frustration from both of them in regards to their relationship (or lack thereof) is fair game, including a defiant Rocky pleading with his son to stop making excuses for why his life is the way it is. The message sinks in for Robert and he finds himself supporting his dad in training for the big fight.
Yes, there is the typical training montage. And then the fight is on. The current champ can’t stop talking trash. The cinematography of the fight scenes has never been better. It’s all believable even when taking into consideration Stallone’s age. The ending is satisfying. It’s a sweet farewell to a character we’ve seen battle both in and out of the ring over thirty years.
Somehow Stallone managed to pull off the biggest Rocky upset of all by making Rocky Balboa a very good movie. In fact, I would argue it is second only to the original. An amazing feat.
This post is part of my Way late reviews. See more reviews here.
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Way late review: Quigley Down Under
Monday, January 30, 2012
Matt Quigley answers Elliot Marston’s ad for a sharpshooter. Professor Snape…errr…Marston (Alan Rickman) is a rich Australian who says he needs someone who can pick off dingoes from great distances. Quigley eventually shows Martson in person just how good of a shooter he is. He hits a bucket three-fourths of a mile away several times until the bucket disappears in a dust cloud.
From the start we see that Quigley is a man of great honor. He teaches a gruff man a lesson when that man tries to shove aside an older couple to beat them onto the boat for Australia. Just minutes after getting off the boat, Quigley sees some men mistreating a woman and intercedes on her behalf. The tone of these first couple scenes has a light hearted, almost slapstick feel to it, which isn’t problematic until further into the story where the tone changes rapidly between light comedy and melodrama. Making matters worse is the character Crazy Cora (Laura San Giacomo) who is the woman Quigley valiantly steps in to protect. As one might deduce from the name, Crazy Cora is not quite right in the head. In the beginning she is played for laughs. The second half of the film she’s played for drama. It’s as if her whole purpose is to make crystal clear the tonal changes.
Quigley makes his way to Martson’s and learns that Marston has hired Quigley to kill aborigines, not dingoes, off his property. Quigley responds to this little twist by punching Marston through the wall, outside Marston’s home, not once but twice. Quigley is eventually overtaken and he and Cora are left to die in the dessert several days away from civilization. Except Quigley doesn’t go down without a fight and gets just enough energy to kill the two Marston henchmen. This leads to a very watchable tale of an odd couple (Quigley and Cora) fighting the odds and eventually seeking justice not just for themselves but the aborigines.
There may be some eye rolling moments and certainly some miscast characters, but it’s hard not to at least like Quigley Down Under.
This post is part of my Way late reviews. Read more reviews here.
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Way late review: Moneyball
Sunday, January 29, 2012
The Oakland A’s lose to the New York Yankees in the 2001 postseason. Worse, they are set to lose at least three big name players to free agency. Beane pleads with the team’s owner owner to up the budget. The A’s are a small market team. They do not have the luxury of $100M+ per year to spend on players. They have less, far less. Try under $40M. In what is a great scene, Beane meets with his staff. They’re analyzing their options, desperately seeking replacements for their star players. The talk is so subjective it’s funny. Comments on potential candidates range from speculation about what makes so-and-so a good player on the field to the status of that player’s love life and what it says about his ability to win. The look on the general manager’s face turns from subtle frustration to total disbelief. He points out that there is no point in trying to beat the Yankees, Red Sox, and other big market teams at their game. The A’s can’t compete. They don’t have the budget. Plain and simple. This leaves Beane’s staff flummoxed. Beane is no better off.
Beane meets with the Cleveland Indians. After a peculiar meeting discussing trades, he sets his sights on Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), a recent Yale graduate and lowly worker bee for Cleveland. Brand doesn’t so much care about baseball as he does about the metrics he believes everyone else is missing that could change the way major league baseball teams are assembled. The Oakland A’s general manager takes Brand away from the Indians after he calls the economist major and asks if Brand would have drafted Beane as a high school prospect. Brand stumbles around until Beane drags it out of him – Brand wouldn’t have drafted Beane in the first round and definitely wouldn’t have given him a signing bonus. Brand would’ve taken the well hyped prospect in the ninth round. This seems to convince Beane that the young economist graduate is onto something, which is telling. Throughout Moneyball we’re shown flashbacks to a young up-and-coming Billy Beane who all the pro scouts love. He can’t seem to reconcile how badly those scouts missed on him (and so many other prospects over the years) and how he isn’t going to fall into the exact same trap. He places his hope in Brand’s controversial allegiance to the Bill James invented sabermetrics. Turns out James’ ideas were not highly respected within mainstream baseball and Moneyball goes on to show how unconventional those ideas could be when implemented in real life by the Oakland A’s.
While Billy Beane is a calm figure in all situations we sense that he’s only moments away from self-imploding. He can’t watch an A’s game, not even on TV. He struggles to tune the game in on the radio. He’s aloof with his players, never getting close as to avoid the awkwardness that arises when moves need to be made. Never mind the fact that Beane was once a player and could probably relate better than most in the front office with the players. Even in his personal life we see Beane as appearing calm but never comfortable. In one scene he sits and waits for his daughter in his ex-wife’s home. The ex-wife and her new husband try to strike up some small talk. It’s awkward and clear that Beane is doing his best to hold back his true feelings in that moment. He plays a passive aggressive game with his ex and her husband when he learns that his 12-year old daughter now has a cell phone.
There is a point in the film where the GM goes “all in” with his plan. The drama is not so much on the field as the A’s struggle early in the season and many call into question management’s wisdom in replacing star players with has-beens and no names. The real drama is that of Billy Beane and his struggle to reconcile the contrasts of his days as a golden prospect who turned out to be a bust, his new role as baseball’s contrarian general manager, and his superstition (never attending games for fear he brings bad luck). Brad Pitt’s performance is so finely nuanced that it’s easy to forget we’re watching one of the biggest names in Hollywood perform.
If there is anything bringing Moneyball down it is the second act where the Oakland A’s turn things around. That act drags on a bit too long, bringing too much focus to the on the field play which is not a strength of the movie. There are some special moments and scenes as we watch the team start to put it all together and go on a historic win streak but the overall length detracts.
Watching Billy Beane struggle, even after he experiences a wild amount of success, makes Moneyball a special film. Most would have had the Oakland A’s GM triumphantly proclaiming his loyalty for his team and ended it in a great David vs. Goliath story. Instead we get Billy Beane the always appearing calm figure who is never quite sure what to make of this game of baseball. Even in success he is unsure. His final decision to stick with the underdog feels like it’s filled with doubt. As if Beane’s decision to stick with the A’s or go with the incredible offer from the Red Sox is lose-lose. To Billy Beane, there is no sure thing. The obvious first appeal of anything cannot be trusted.
This post is part of my Way late reviews. Read more reviews here.
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