review Archives - Page 52 of 65 - Ramblin' with Roger

Movie review: The Big Short

The Big Short is based on a Michael Lewis book that he was frankly surprised that was optioned to be a movie.

I walked into work at the same time as a colleague and told him I had seen The Big Short the night before. As it turned out, so had he, at a different cinema. I asked him what he thought of it. He said, “It pissed me off.”

I could quit there, I suppose, but need to mention that the movie is about that very real credit and housing bubble that collapsed the economy, and not just in the United States, in 2008. The big banks were greedy and lacked foresight. The government failed to do oversight. The characters here not only predicted it, but they also profited off of it.

The Big Short managed to take an amazingly dense, inherently boring topic and make some detailed sense of it, in part by using folks such as chef Anthony Bourdain, singer Selena Gomez, and Australian actress Margot Robbie (in a bubble bath) to explain some basic concepts. And, in spite of being often infuriating, the film was also rather funny.

This is an imperfect analogy, but it’s like how John Oliver will take a topic such as net neutrality (SNORE) and make you entertained enough to actually care.

There is great acting by Christian Bale, Steve Carrell, Ryan Gosling, and Brad Pitt, among others. There are odd little vignettes of Pharrell videos and “real life”, there, I think, as a palate cleanser between big concepts, and to show how the world was going on as usual while the system was undermining people’s lives.

The Big Short is based on a Michael Lewis book that he was frankly surprised that was optioned by Brad Pitt and others to be a movie. I’m told Lewis does a great job at making a dense subject understandable and human, though a very different animal. Adam McKay, the writer/director of Will Ferrell movies such as Anchorman and Talladega Nights directed this film and co-wrote the screenplay with Charles Randolph.

The tags near the end suggest that we may not be safe from this disaster happening again. In fact, Michael Burry, Real-Life Market Genius From The Big Short, Thinks Another Financial Crisis Is Looming.

And now for some venting

On December 30, I went to my favorite venue, the Spectrum Theatre in Albany, specifically to see SPOTLIGHT for the 6:15 pm showing, meeting my wife right after work. But, for some reason, it was preempted by another showing of the new STAR WARS, a movie already showing there. Some group had apparently rented out a theater.

Don’t know where this fact was noted, but I felt blindsided, as did others. The ticket seller did not even know until he was told by another unhappy patron. I know this situation wouldn’t have happened under the previous ownership, who would have noted it on their weekly broadsheets well in advance.

And preempting for STAR WARS? I could almost see some special local film. But a film that has grossed domestically, as of that date, $629,034,583, and over a billion worldwide?

Landmark Theatres, you have really ticked me off. The fact that I found a decent film to see in lieu of SPOTLIGHT does not mitigate the dreadful customer service in this situation.

Movie Review: Joy

I was curious whether David O. Russell could pull off a third film with Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper (and technically, Robert DeNiro).

This is how I ended up seeing the movie Joy. The choices at the Spectrum in Albany, my favorite movie venue, were showing Joy, The Big Short, The Danish Girl, Spotlight, Carol, Brooklyn, and Youth.

Oh, yeah, and some space opera thing that seems to be somewhat popular. I would have seen any of them, though especially Spotlight and The Big Short.

But we weren’t IN Albany, we were in Oneonta, about 75 miles away, on Christmas weekend. The only crossover between the mall theater in Oneonta and the Spectrum was Joy.

I was interested in seeing this movie in part because it was based on the real story of entrepreneur Joy Mangano, who invented a better floor mop. How can that be a compelling story?

Also, I was curious whether David O. Russell could pull off a third film with Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper (and technically, Robert DeNiro) after they had appeared in Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle. I’m thinking that it feels somewhat rather like the troop of actors who used to show up in Woody Allen films.

This is a pretty solid 100 minute-film. Unfortunately, it ran 124. There’s a lot of nice bits: real soap opera actresses (Susan Lucci. Donna Mills) as the soap opera that Joy’s mom, Terry (Virginia Madsen), though the joke went on too long. As a business librarian, I found the parts with QVC rather interesting; Melissa Rivers played her mother Joan.

I appreciated the actors, including Édgar Ramírez as Joy’s ex-husband/still friend Tony; Diane Ladd as grandma Mimi, the narrator who seemed to disappear for large portions of the film; and Isabella Rossellini, as Trudy, Joy’s financier and the girlfriend of Rudy (DeNiro). But the character of Joy’s half-sister Peggy (Elisabeth Röhm of Law & Order) is a movie contrivance, unrelentingly negative.

There IS a good film there, I’m convinced, and Jennifer Lawrence carries much of it. But it’s muddled, and the transitions from scene to scene often didn’t work. I’m not quite sure I “believed” the ending. All of that said, I did enjoy it at the moment, though – and this is always a bad sign – I checked my watch 2/3s of the way through.

MOVIE REVIEW: A Ballerina’s Tale

Misty Copeland’s potentially career-ending injury was also a major focus.

I was rather familiar with the story of Misty Copeland, largely from this 60 Minutes clip, about how the ballerina, who didn’t even dance until she was 13, became the first African-American woman to be named principal dancer of the legendary American Ballet Theater.

What was interesting about the documentary A Ballerina’s Tale was less about the dancer herself, and more about the social context of her achievement. It wasn’t just her race but her “muscular” body that had precluded someone who looked like her to be the swan. Her potentially career-ending injury was also a major focus, and she showed tremendous resolve getting through it.

I also enjoyed learning about the history of black ballerinas. Her interaction with the apparently legendary Raven Wilkinson – who I had never heard of – was fascinating, in part because Misty too was learning about her dance roots. A group of successful older black women took Misty Copeland under their wings and helped her feel less alone, and that was touching.

This was a Kickstarter film from Nelson George, who I know best as a writer of the book Hip Hop America, and Where Did Our Love Go?, a book about Motown. Before that, he was a critic of the black music scene for Billboard.

Here is the movie trailer.

A Ballerina’s Tale was playing at the nearby Madison Theatre. We thought the Daughter would want to see it the day before Thanksgiving, but she declined. So the Wife went to the 5 pm show, and I the 7 pm viewing; we were the ONLY persons to watch it, and that was a shame because it was worthwhile.

Yet there’s an arm’s length distancing from the film’s primary subject which made her somehow less compelling. The Variety review says it best: “She’s immensely humble and focused on her goals, which makes her an excellent performer and an equally strong ambassador for dancers of color, but a tougher nut to crack as a documentary subject.”

MOVIE REVIEW: The Martian

What got me was the true optimism of The Martian, a can-do attitude pretty much throughout without being too nerdy.

Despite generally positive reviews for The Martian (93% on Rotten Tomatoes), I was a little worried about watching a long movie (144 minutes) with Matt Damon as an astronaut, after seeing a long movie (166 minutes) LAST year with Matt Damon as an astronaut. That previous film was the nearly impenetrable Interstellar.

Or maybe it’d be an isolating film, like Tom Hanks and a volleyball in Cast Away. Or, since I understand the science of The Martian was reported to be pretty much spot on, based on a very wonkish book, that it might be boring as all get out.

It is none of the above. You’ll laugh out loud! You’ll cry! You’ll believe a man can grow potatoes in an inhospitable environment! You’ll be amazed how appropriate the unlikely soundtrack is; the choice for the end credits is inspired.

The cast is quite excellent, with Jessica Chastain as the astronaut commander who feels guilty, but not depressingly so; Michael Peña (who I saw in Ant-Man) as another astronaut; Jeff Daniels as the politics-balancing NASA administrator; the fascinating Chiwetel Ejiofor, Kristen Wiig, Mackenzie Davis, the surprising Donald Glover, and especially Aksel Hennie as various NASA staff; and Benedict Wong as the overwrought Jet Propulsion Lab guy.

The one really false note was Daniels’ character taking about a small margin for error, followed almost immediately by some problem.

But what got me was the true optimism of The Martian, a can-do attitude pretty much throughout without being too nerdy. Damon’s Watley keeps himself sane by trying to “science the s@#!” out of his resources, countries negotiate how to work together, people around the world sharing a single vision. THAT was what made me teary-eyed in this Ridley Scott film, a united planet when we don’t seem to have it right now. In some way, the politics are more utopian than the science.

I wish The Wife had gone to see this with me Sunday night, as I walked home from the Madison Theatre through the London-like fog.

MOVIE REVIEW: Brooklyn

Brooklyn was the first film The Wife and I saw at the Spectrum Theatre since it was taken over by Landmark Theaters.

The very first time I saw Saorise Ronan on screen in the wonderful The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), I realized I’d seen her before, as a much younger actress. It’s those eyes. As it turns out, she was in Atonement (2007).

In the movie Brooklyn, though, she is the protagonist Eilis Lacey, a young woman in her native Ireland, who has few prospects in her hometown. Her beloved sister Rose encourages her to leave her and their widowed mother and move to America. Specifically, she’ll live in a certain NYC borough in a boarding house with other, mostly beautiful women, and their crusty but caring landlady (the wonderful Julie Walters).

Eventually, Elias finds love with a plumber named Tony (Emory Cohen). But a tragic turn forces Eilis to deal with changing realizations about her homeland and her own sense of self-worth.

There were only 2 negative reviews at Rotten Tomatoes out of 152. One read: “Wonderful performances but do we really care about a teenager from Ireland trying to decide between guys?” This person is right about their performances but has totally missed the point of this film, which is that leaving home is sometimes exquisitely difficult.

There are LOL moments involving the boarding house dinner table and at Tony’s home. Jessica Paré played Miss Fortini, Eilis’ supervisor at a fancy department store not unlike Macy’s of the 1950s with a nice mix of sternness and compassion. But you may be inclined to hiss at the screen when Brid Brennan’s crotchety Miss Kelly, Elias’ part-time employer in Ireland appears on the screen.

I’m not familiar with the work of director John Crowley, but writer Nick Hornby was executive producer of two films I liked, About a Boy and An Education, and screenwriter for the latter.

Not incidentally, this was the first film The Wife and I saw at the Spectrum Theatre since it was taken over by Landmark Theaters, on Black Friday night. One change: those cards we used to buy, 10 for $80, are now gone, replaced by a booklet one can purchase, 25 tickets for $200. Also, they don’t take Discover, but they do accept American Express.