Margin Call

J.C. Chandor, 2011 (8.2*)

Another spooky film about how flimsy and corrupt western capitalism is at the top levels, those megalithic banking corporations that control everyone’s money and who always start what they like to call “investor panic”, when it’s really just the pros themselves making all the panic moves to cover their own assets.

This story involves massive layoffs at the trading floor of a major unnamed banking corporation. As one departs, he tells an underling he was working on something big and to be careful; the the junior risk analyst checks it out, the ripples become immediate and far-reaching.

Stanley Tucci is the laid off analyst, who unfortunately doesn't have a large enough part here. Dr. Spock look-alike Zachary Quinto (Star Trek) is the junior analyst whose work starts the whole cookie crumbling. Simon Baker (British accent and hair and all) is miscast as a division head bereft of any ethics. Jeremy Irons is credible, though untaxed, as the CEO of the entire corporation, who is, of course, self-serving and short-sighted. Demi Moore is perfect in a small part that added little to the story other than a female actor. Kevin Spacey is seeming a little tired in his too familiar part, as a experience trading group manager, a long time corporate employee with a little conscience remaining, since he came from the old school.

This repeating mistake usually involves someone big basically admitting all the “paper” they’re holding is generally worthless, whether it’s corporate bonds, mortgages, credit swaps, derivatives, and other worthless stuff they seem to invent daily while the feds look the other way - so they decide they have to start dumping theirs, and anything else they're holding, before everyone else does, and salvage what they can in the ensuing debacle.

This is sadly the recurring story of western capitalism: people with too much concentrated money and therefore financial power start taking too much risk for the amount of actual money they have. When they either collapse or start liquidating everything, it has ripple effects throughout all financial markets and millions of people lost trillions in wealth in a few hours. For some reason, this sort of sociopathic insanity is not only endorsed but seems to be allowed to control of nearly every western economy – or more accurately, has gained control of every western economy.

This version of the inner workings of high finance will be boring to many, but I found it quite riveting and totally credible. It is rumored to be the story of Merrill Lynch, who basically became bankrupt and was turned over to Bank of America for resurrection. (We don't allow corporate failures, just millions of individual ones by average citizens).

This story has happened far too often in my lifetime of 60 years. After awhile, you realize this is the scam. You extract as much money as you can from a corporation, then declare bankruptcy. If you an figure out a self-sustaining scam, you'll succeed longer - but remember that the world first corporation, The Dutch East India Trading Company (who are the 'bad guys' in the Pirates of the Caribbean series), also declared bankrupcty after years of success, so the pattern and con is as old as the first time it was pulled off. It's the oldest grift in the west and legal if you can get away with it.

First time director J.C. Chandor (left) won seven awards for this, and received an Oscar nomination for screenplay directly for the screen (it lost to Woody’s Midnight in Paris). For a debut film, this is quite professional, and bodes well for the films of Chandor’s to follow.

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Melancholia

Lars von Trier, 2011 (8.4*)
This is a rarity among films, a science fiction film that has little to do, really, with that aspect of the story. Instead, the fact that a hidden planet has emerged from behind the sun and is heading on a path toward earth really is little more than a metaphor for the characters psychogically complex stories.

Von Trier has created his most mesmerizing film to date, full of dreamy, surrealistic images more reminiscent of painters like Magritte, De Chirico, and Dali, than any film references (see film still at the bottom) – except perhaps early Antonioni. 

Kirsten Dunst won five acting awards for her gutsy portrayal of a newlywed bride mired in her own melancholia, and whose dysfunctional personality seems to deteriorate as the planet, named Melancholia, moves closer to earth. Charlotte Gainsbourg plays her long-suffering sister, who seems determined to take care of her sister in spite of the apparent hopelessness of the situation, as her personal demons seems to have no cause or origin.

Like most of von Trier’s films, this one is also slow to develop, and eerily like a Bergman film of introspection and inner turmoil, and may not hold the attention of the average viewer, but if you stick with this one you will be surprised and rewarded, I believe, especially in comparison to his other efforts. This is the type of film rated higher by critics (80 at Metacritics) vs fans (7.2 at IMDB), but those are often the more unique and unforgettable films, as critics see so many of the mundane variety that it takes something different to wake them up from mediocrity.

One of the many surrealistic and artistic images in Melancholia

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Source Code

Duncan Jones, 2011 (7.9*)

Interesting science fiction film that leans more toward the intellectual and less action style, which is a welcome relief on one aspect. However, as usual, you can’t look too deeply at the so-called science aspect of this one.

Jake Gyllenhaal (hey, figure out a better way to spell that, will ya?) plays a man who suddenly comes to awareness on a commuter train to Chicago, but he seemingly has amnesia. As he’s trying to figure out both his own situation and who the woman is that apprarently is his companion, the train explodes, and he awakens to another reality entirely.

He now emerges in a world similar both to that in The Matrix and 12 Monkeys, even Avatar, where a person in one location experiences a digitally based reality through his brain. In this particular case, Jake plays a real life Captain Colter Stevens, a helicopter pilot in Afghanistan, at least in his own memories when they surface - now being used in a top secret experiment in the war on terror. The scientist in control of his world is well acted by Vera Farmiga, but she doesn't have a very demanding part; her character is supposed the be the dispassionate military scientist with only the objective in mind.

This film could have been much better without some useless meandering into pseudo-patriotism that was an unnecessary distraction, and other more sentimental discursions, but it’s still better than most other SF films of 2011 (it was a dismal year for the genre, with dogs like Green Lantern, X-Men First Class, and I Am Number Four).

This film unfortunately reminds one of numerous others, so it’s not very unique. Those who haven’t already should check out 12 Monkeys, Groundhog Day, The Matrix, RunLola Run, Frequency, The Adjustment Bureau, and Sliding Doors (all better than this film) – each of which involves manipulations or alterations of reality in some way.

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The Artist

Michel Hazanavicious, France-Belgium, 2011 (8.5*)
Best Picture (AA, BAA)

Having won 114 awards so far, second only to Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, you would expect this film to be one of the truly great cinematic masterpieces of all time. For me, it’s a good but not great film, not as good a 2011 film as Malick’s The Tree of Life, or Refn’s Drive, but I’d put it in the tier after that (with Midnight in Paris, The Help, Rango, and Ides of March). Most of the film is silent like it’s 20’s film star, George Valentin – even though it’s more like an enjoyable and rewarding romance in the tradition of classic 30’s films like My Man Godfrey, The Awful Truth, and My Favorite Wife (40’s?). Of course, by now familiarity makes this a fairly predictable ‘boy meets girl’ story.

Director Michel Hazanavicious, who also wrote the screenplay, has created a long overdue homage to films of that era which was also shot in the style of those films, including the same 4:3 aspect ratio of 35mm prints, and of course, black and white cinematography. Of course, we're not forgetting Peter Bogdanovich's Paper Moon, which treaded similar ground regarding creating a visual reference to a classic cinematic style of the past.

The story is nothing new – it combines the boy meets girl story with the “rags to riches” and “riches to rags” stories of it’s two stars. Jean Dejardin won an Oscar (and 13 other awards) for his portrayal of fictitious silent film star George Valentin who bears an uncanny resemblance to the story of Douglas Fairbanks (except for a little average dancing), who was a swashbuckling action star and top box office draw in silent films, but, like many others, who never really made the transition when sound pictures arrived.

His real-life girlfriend, Bérénice Bejo, (photo above) steals the film for me as a young extra, and won seven acting awards for her Oscar-nominated performance as Peppy Miller, who catches George’s fancy in a ballroom dance scene in one of his silent films after stumbling into him outside a movie premiere for all the photographers to catch before that. He’s so immediately struck with her that he has trouble completing a simple scene, but the two part when the filming ends and follow their own career paths.

.. but, of course, George cannot shake her from his mind. At the same time, sound arrives to films, at which he scoffs, like many, thinking it will never catch on with the public – just like I didn’t think 3D would after so many failures in my lifetime.

His studio mogul, played by John Goodman, welcomes the new format but decides to can Valentin, thinking the new younger audience will also want new personalities talking, not aging silent stars. At the same time, Peppy Martin starts moving up the ladder to the stars, and her vivacious personality is a big hit, both within the story, and for Bejo in real life – in fact, for me, her energy, smile, and optimism steal the film as well as Jules/Georges heart.

Uggie is a Jack Russell terrier saved 

from a pound by trainer Omar Von Muller

There’s also a wonderful Jack Russell terrier named Uggie, claiming an award above, who adds welcome comic relief to what could have been a dreary story of the fall of a legend, from wealth to destitution. Uggie was also in Water for Elephants (2011), and What's Up, Scarlett (2005, comma required, lol). He obviously reminds most cinema fans of Asta, the spunky scene-stealing dog from the Thin Man series who starred in 14 films himself in the 30’s and 40’s, including My Favorite Wife.

For me, the one failing here is that half an hour into the film, Georges attends his first sound picture, because it stars Peppy Martin. At this point, director Hazanavicious should have introduced sound into this picture; unfortunately he did not, so we see an early talkie in silence, and we also do not hear the onscreen audiences reactions to the star-making film of Martin’s. By this point in The Artist, the gimmick of silence is wearing thin, and is not helped much by a dream of George's in which he hears the sounds of life but cannot talk himself. The only other sound in the picture is at the very end. I kept thinking that this would be a classic 30’s style film, but those all had sound, so instead this is more like an average 20’s film, very much like a Charlie Chaplin story, with lots of tear-wrenching pathos that keep it on the verge of tragedy, when it could have been more light-hearted and effervescent. It’s touted as a comedy, with a couple of dance numbers that are obviously not Astaire and Rodgers (though still fun in spirit), but spends 90% of it’s time as a tragic drama, relieved by a few humorous touches, mostly in the beginning of the story.

Definitely worth seeing, and an enjoyable if predictable story, but also overrated with this many awards. Malick's The Tree of Life (60 awards, including the Palm D'Or at Cannes) was a bigger hit with critics, and Drive (40 awards) was perhaps the sleeper of the year, both of which seemed closer to unforgettable cinematic art to me. But The Artist was definitely better than the dreariness of The Descendants, and was about on par with The Help, the two other films winning the most awards for the year; also with Take Shelter (31 awards), Woody's Midnight in Paris, and George Clooney’s overlooked The Ides of March.

Let’s hope that for Hazanavicious’ next film, he moves forward with time and adds sound so we can hear the laughter, the dialogue, and the dog barking.

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The Ides of March

George Clooney, 2011 (8.4*)

This is an intelligent political thriller with a few unpredictable twists. One would say the acclaim is due George Clooney, since he co-wrote the screenplay, directed the film with himself in a lead role.

His character is a new presidential candidate, whose idealistic follower Steven Myers, brilliantly underplayed by Ryan Gosling, is second-in-command of the campaign, which is headed by veteran campaigner Paul Giamatti. None of these men are saints, and over the course of the story we get to see each character in a more revealing light.

It’s hard to describe the film without giving away some important plot turns, but place this film on a short list of intelligent and adult political films, each revealing something about the process of government: Advise and Consent, All the President’s Men, The Queen, Executive Suite, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

This is one of the better films of 2011, for me in that "second tier", with Rango, The Artist, and Take Shelter.

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Rango

Gore Verbinski, 2011 (8.8*)
Academy Award, Best Animated Film

I loved this trippy, clever, irreverent film! You know you’re into something heady when a family's pet chameleon character, hilariously voiced by Johnny Depp, falls off the family car on a highway,  and  gets blown by traffic smack into the windshield of the convertible driven by Hunter Thompson with Dr. Gonzo in the back, and Hunter and the lizard are wearing the same shirt ! That’s an indicator right there that this film may be a little induced by altered states.

Director Gore Verbinski directed the Pirates of the Caribbean series, and once again he seems to have fun directing this wacky stuff.

After falling off the car, he meets various desert dwelling critters that give him advice, with Alfred Molina as an armadillo telling him he needs to find the town of Dirt, out there somewhere. When he does, it’s inhabited by an odd assortment of western dressing animals. He meets a snotty girl, tho tells him, after mutual insults, "strangers don’t last long here", but when he discovers the town needs a sheriff and a hero, he volunteers, being lost and having little choice. He picks up his name in a bar, but I won’t spoil how he gets it, it’s mostly visual.


Much of this film is like that, references to classic westerns like A Fistful of Dollars, High Noon, even the later Quick and the Dead. There are also scenes paying homage to Chinatown and Apocalypse Now, and likely others that escaped me.

Ned Beatty gives his best John Huston (a la Chinatown) voice, as the mayor, who may or may not be involved in a plot involving the town’s water supply. British actor Bill Nighy is a dead ringer for the voice of Jack Palance as the villain Rattlesnake Jake. The plot is eerily similar to that of Chinatown, a parched town needs water, it never rains, and for some reason the town’s supply faucet has gone dry, spewing out mud and no liquid, so everyone is about to die of thirst like the crops already have.

Depp is perfect for this, delivering lines like "and stay out of my peripheral vision", and  "we should follow the pipe to it’s hydraulic origin, capture the criminals and solve this aquatic conundrum".

If you like classic westerns, as well as Depp’s irreverent, inebriated style, this will be right up your alley. Perhaps more enjoyable for adults than kids, it’s still a G-rated comedy that the entire family can watch together with many guffaws – though I’m sure the kids will often ask “what did he say?”, just like the background characters do.

There’s an uncanny scene by Tim Oliphant as the voice of Clint Eastwood, delivering the film’s best line.
Depp: “The Spirit of the West. Hey, is this heaven?”
Spirit of the West (as Eastwood): “if it was, we’d be sharing Pop-tarts with Kim Novak.”

I’m sure all the kids are asking, who’s Kim Novak? Well, she and Clint Eastwood are 60’s stars that both live in Carmel, California now – that should clear that up somewhat, and of course, Pop-tarts imply breakfast, which insinuates.. er, the hokey-pokey – that’s what it’s all about!

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Bolt

Byron Howard, Chris Williams, 2008 (7.8*)
Another enjoyable Pixar-Disney animated film, with some incredibly realistic graphics, at least the landscape portions (the humans look a little stiff and plastic). Bolt is a small Swiss shepherd who is rescued from an animal shelter in the beginning, when he is being appropriately cute with a rubber carrot toy. His person, as he calls her, is a little girl named Penny.

The story inexplicably then skips forward five years, at a point when Bolt and Penny are the stars of a kids tv show, in which Bolt rescues Penny from various perilous situation, most involving a green-eyed man (voiced by veteran actor Malcolm MacDowell).

The only problem with Bolt is that in order to make the show work, he has been fooled into thinking that Penny is really in danger, he has no idea that it's all a TV show, and everything is make believe. Mistaking Penny to be really in danger while he's trapped in his studio trailer, he manages to escape and immediately gets packed up and shipped away.

He runs into an alley cat named Mittens (Susie Essman, perhaps the weakest cast member - I'd have rather heard a pro comedienne like Joan Cusask in this role), and a hilarious hamster in a running ball, named Rhino.

Perhaps the lead roles could have been better cast. John Travolta is just ok as Bolt, he was actually funnier in real action comedies like Get Shorty. Miley Cyrus was just ok as Penny, no doubt selected for her young fan base.

Filmed just after The Incredibles, this has a lot of similar action, but the screenplay isn't quite as good, but it was certainly more entertaining to me than Up, which was Pixar's worst film to date to me, losing their best character in the first 10 minutes, and sticking us with two unlikeable characters for the rest of the film.

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Take Shelter

Jeff Nichols, 2011 (8.5*)

An intense young man, brilliantly portrayed by Michael Shannon, begins having apocalyptic dreams, leading him to think a huge storm is coming. He slowly drifts toward his vision and away from his everyday duties. He begins to spend more time and money building a safe tornado shelter for his family behind their house. 

This descent into obsession could have been ineffective without a performance such as Shannon’s, in his most intense role since his Oscar®-nominated part in Revolutionary Road.

His wife is played by Oscar-nominee Jessica Chastain, who had an amazing list of films released in 2011: her nominated performance in The Help; the updated Shakespeare play about the Roman military, Coriolanus, directed by Ralph Feinnes; and perhaps her best acting, in Malick’s The Tree of Life. In my opinion, she was likely nominated for her least unique and most predictable performance.

Director Jeff Nichols handles this with a subtle hand, and the film won 31 awards for 2011, most of them at film festivals. Critics have rated it higher than fans, 85 from Metacritics, 76 from fans at IMDB, far too low, in my opinion – I’m with the critics on this one.

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The James Bond Films

The James Bond Films (aka 007)

The James Bond series of films is based on the wildly successful series of novels by British author Ian Fleming, which helped popularize the genre of espionage novels by creating a fictional intelligence agent whose adventures resembled those of swashbuckler films of the 30’s.

The novel Casino Royale was author Ian Fleming’s first, and introduced the world to his glamorous and amorous debonair spy, James Bond. He is given the code name 007, the double-ought series of agents being those with a license to kill in the line of duty. This novel largely revolves around the high-stakes casino card game of baccarat, in which two players go head-to-head like a duel, with money rather than blood at stake. This novel being more cerebral and involving less action and womanizing, it was not filmed until 2006 – more on this film follows below.

The first novel transferred to film was Doctor No, and made an international star out of little-known Sean Connery. Producer Albert Broccoli’s wife had noticed Connery in the film Darby O’Gill and the Little People and suggested to her husband that he would make a dashing and attractive spy. Broccoli wisely followed his wife’s advice, and Connery created a handsome and macho hero equally attractive to both genders. The film also introduced a bikin-clad Ursula Andress to the world and she became the archetype for the subsequent series of what are now called Bond Women.

The second film, From Russia With Love (1963), remains my favorite, as Bond is assigned to woo a secretary at a Russian embassy in Istanbul, Turkey, who has agreed to help the British obtain a Russian cryptology decoding machine, which she will turn over to Bond. To me, this is the most realistic of all the Bond films, and introduced the now famous props of spy gadgets that became a mainstay of later 007 films. In this film, it took the form of a briefcase that had disabling gas, hidden money, and weapons, all of which weren’t obvious to the unsuspecting examiner.

After a series of successful Bond films with Connery up through 1968, including the highly popular Goldfinger, he tired of being typecast and let his contract expire. A rather critically successful film was then made with unknown Australian actor George Lazenby, On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969). This film has some terrific action sequences in its favor, Telly Savalas as the evil villain, and a beautiful post-Avengers Diana Rigg as a Spanish count’s daughter, and who becomes Bond’s only onscreen wife to-date. The film-going public didn’t take to Lazenby in the role, however, and he was cast aside after just one film, which ironically remains superior to any starring the successors to Connery.

The studio, not willing to kill the golden goose, then cast a rather bland and unexceptional Roger Moore as Bond, after an exhaustive series of auditions, one of whom, Pierce Brosnan, was rejected only to be later hired as Moore’s successor. These films are forgettable compared to the Connery vehicles. When Moore became too old, the series was continued with Brosnan, with similar results: a few more un-stellar efforts with more action than plot, usually involving a typical Cold War enemy, some Russian with designs on wreaking havoc with nuclear missiles, or holding the world at ransom using weapons. These were not from novels written by Ian Fleming, which is one reason the plots are lame and stereotypical in comparison.

The series almost died out until the first novel, Casino Royale, was filmed in 2006 after the sudden revival of interest in high-stakes poker on tv. (The title had been previously used in a comedic satire starring David Niven and Woody Allen, but the story had nothing to do with the novel or the series).

Daniel Craig in Casino Royale

That first Bond novel, was devoid of gadgets and violence, and most of it revolved around the high stakes European casino card game baccarat, similar to blackjack in that the player’s goal is a point total that one can’t exceed. In this game a player becomes the bank, and goes against another player head-to-head, so it is the ultimate card game of machismo, much like a medieval duel, with wealth and not blood at stake. The studio re-wrote the story to include lots of action, and the rugged, everyman look of actor Daniel Craig revived the Bond series in popularity.

In fact, this spurred a renewal of interest in casino card games worldwide as the Bond series became popular with a new generation of fans. Those who wondered where Bond got his wealth, which was apparently far above the salary of a government employee, had apparently not read this novel, for his luxurious lifestyle is largely funded by his winnings at baccarat.

Like most games that combine chance and skill, such as the now popular Texas Holdem form of poker, it behooves the average player to first develop a strategy that employs the use of mathmatical odds. Baccarat is not for the novice for it is usually the highest stakes game in any casino. In the Casino Royale remake, Craig as Bond has his card duel with Danish actor Mads Mikkelson, in an intense showdown that will leave one of them financially scarred and with designs of vengence.

If you’re thinking of emulating Bond when playing in any casino games, I highly suggest you first educate yourself with strategies and techniques by reading a lot of baccarat strategy articles. Those who don’t will be at a disadvantage to those who have and those with more experience.

My capsule review of this excellent film is posted at 1000 Dvds to See, Casino Royale (2006)


It’s said that the debonair Bond is based on the real life of agent Sydney Reilly, an émigré from Russia to Ireland at the beginning of the 20th centlury, who created his persona before becoming a spy for England, achieving results for them in getting oil leases in Arabia, and stealing German battleship plans before World War I.

In the PBS miniseries, Reilly: Ace of Spies (1983), we see an international traveler of similar sophistication and a womanizer wherever he goes, often obtaining the affections of women like a bored countess, especially if it can help him gain intelligence needed by the British government. This series made an international star out of Sam Neill, who has gone on to have a fine film career.

If looks as if Jame Bond is here to stay, a superhero in the guise of an everyman, covert intelligence agent. He fuels the imagination of those of us stuck in mundane jobs in one locale as we envy anyone who gets employed to be a globe-trotting adventurer leaving a trail of dead villains and broken-hearted beauties in his wake.

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Drive

Nicolas Winding Refn, 2011 (9.0*)

Ryan Gosling plays a man we see in the beginning of the film driving a getaway car for men pulling a heist. The audience is immediately sucked into this film by having it start in the middle of some tense crime action. We later find out that Gosling also works in a garage, and performs driving stunts part-time for films.

Early in the film we learn a little of his personal side as he helps a young mother, Carey Mulligan, who also lives in his apartment building, when she needs a ride after he car breaks down. (Mulligan's character has little acting to do in this compared to her brilliant role in An Education.) We slowly see Gosling as more than a heartless criminal, and realize his character may be more dimensional than most in crime films.

Interspersed with scenes involving Gosling’s character, we also learn a little about some small time organized criminals, a business owner played by Ron Perlman, and Gosling’s garage manager, played by Bryan Cranston (without the same passion and strength as his role on Breaking Bad). Cranston gets a shady mogul, superbly played by Albert Brooks in a rare dramatic part, to invest in a race car to be driven by Gosling. Brooks has won eight awards for supporting actor for his performance, but was skipped over for an Oscar® nomination.

The audience is slowly drawn into Gosling’s world, as he is drawn into that of Mulligan’s, whose husband is said to simply be away – we later find he was in prison after he is released. On top of that, he became connected with some rather despicable men while incarcerated, and to whom he is now in debt.

For me, this film has enough similarities to George Stevens’ western classic Shane to be inspired by it. It has an heroic outsider, Gosling, coming to the aid of a family facing criminals they can’t control, largely due to his attraction to the wife and her young son. His past is murky, like Shane’s, he may be a criminal himself, but not by choice, and at all times he tries to do the right thing, like a samurai warrior. He’s a warrior, but with a code of ethics and personal honor.

The pace is well maintained by Danish director Nicolas Refn. It never seems forced, slow, or too action-packed, there’s just enough of each element to make it a well-crafted film. In fact, I’m a bit surprised (and peeved) that it wasn’t nominated for best picture since they came up with nine, it could have just as easily been ten. I’m willing to bet without having seen but a couple so far that it was better than at least five of those nine. This is going to be considered a quiet, understated classic over time.

It’s currently ranked #237 on the IMDB top 250, and has won 38 awards out of 94 nominations. Only a handful of other films has won this many awards for 2011: The Artist, The Tree of Life, The Descendents, The Help.

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