You may have heard positive things about Margin Call, a new bankster suspense drama loosely based on the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers. I just saw the film, and my advice: Don’t waste your time and cash, not unless you want to spend a Jackson and 107 valuable minutes of your life hate-watching poorly scripted/directed banker-propaganda that tries to make you believe that, despite their obvious flaws and all, deep down those Wall Street bankers are complex human beings, just like you and me. Margin Call gives the same bullshit “once in a lifetime event!/never coulda seen it coming!” snowjob that Wall Street’s been laying on us since 2008, swearing that the crash was one of those “Black Swan” events that no one could have possibly predicted. (more…)
True Grit is a big hit for the Coen brothers, giving them their best opening weekend ever. Their growing popularity cues two inevitable reactions: 1) the claim that they’re improving as filmmakers, finally learning how to do it right, “it”…
This will necessarily be a short article. The Academy Awards are so great because they keep us in touch with the ratty old values of our forefathers and foremothers. We no longer know how to churn butter, or why it’s…
I wish I knew how to quit you I admit I enjoyed Pineapple Express more than I expected. Turns out it’s much more wholesome than Knocked Up and Superbad and other Judd Apatow Factory products, because Apatow & Co. have…
So I’m just back from watching The Dark Knight with an audience of about five hundred reverent teenagers, some of them urgently muttering, “Yeah! Yeah!” during the more violent action sequences, and I can confirm that this film has indeed…
