Wall Street - Money Never Sleeps_______________________________________



Wall Street - Money Never Sleeps
2010
Michael Douglas, Shia LeBeouf, Carey Mulligan

Known as Wall Street, Money Never Sleeps, it should also add, “but some movie patrons probably have”.  There were moments of good acting from the leads, and neat little moments of remembrance for those of us who liked Wall Street 1, but mostly Oliver Stone didn’t have it on this one.  Should have saved us all a lot of time and money and did something else.  The story is there, yes, and the conflict is there to build a good story from, certainly, but the delivery is weak, bad actually. 

If not for the effervescence and attractiveness of our 2 young heroes, Shia LeBeouf and Carey Mulligan, this would have been unwatchable.  The editing was off in timing, too long on scenes that should have been cut, and vice versa.  And the whole special scene-changing, cinema shot, “hey I’m doing retro like Taranteno” thing just didn’t work for this film.  Not to mention that most of it was just unbelievable.

I didn’t buy it when Josh Brolin (not good casting for this part anyway) takes Shia on a man-jousting motorbike ride during the financial crisis to have the whole “mentor” talk scene, and then fires him.  I especially didn’t buy Michael Douglas walking back into the young couple's lives while they’re walking together home and then purchasing back his fatherhood with a $100 million gift, and they KISS of all things.  Uh... no, sorry.  I didn’t buy that our good guy went to the bad guy and actually accepted a job, ever.  There was very little believable about this film.  I especially didn’t like the opening sequence where Shia is on his bike in downtown Manhattan and there’s the split screen thing going on and an attempt at being fast-paced and racy and getting us all pumped like some attempt at teen adrenaline surge.  Bleh.

I didn’t even like the cinematography.  Too much horizontal movement and pixellating.  Bad lighting on some interiors, on and on…..

Ok, this is one movie that's getting only a half star from me, and that half star comes at a great expense.  The only scene I liked was the expensive interior of the huge gala party with all that money floating around.  That was well shot and paced nicely, and got the plot going forward.  That’s it.  So be forewarned, unless you’re just dying to know what happened to Gordon Gecko after he gets out of prison, you’re much better off going to see MegaMind.  What a blast!  Read that review of mine next.

1/2 star barely

Agitatus

Hereafter ____________________________________________________________________

Hereafter
2010 Clint Eastwood directs
Matt Damon, Cecile de France, Bryce Dallas Howard

Motion pictures that attempt to deal with the afterlife on a more formal basis often fail.  Purely spiritual themes just simply do not play well in cinema because they are either preachy and explanatory, cerebral one would say, or they are too unbelievably unearthly and lose themselves in the fiction.  All resemblance to reality is lost.

The one exemption might be The Passion, the more recent telling of Mel Gibson’s highly Catholic and liturgically exacting version of the last hours of the Christ.  That was undoubtably a near perfect film and not likely to be equaled for the subject matter.  All other Christs before his failed in one way or another.

But what of the Hereafter?  There couldn’t be a better director today in Hollywood than Clint Eastwood.  He has come of age with his abilities.  The acting was superbly wrought under his hand, and the cinematography was incredible.  But as much as the team pulled off a great story, it was not a story about the afterlife.  Just as Wings of Desire by Wenders in the 80s was not about angels, so Hereafter manages to really be about the choice of living, and how living in the here and now is very important.

What does the hereafter look like in Clint’s film?  Not much but a shadowy and effervescent white-ish void wherein souls reside in some sort of floating condition, mirky, and also paced apart from one another.  One gets a sense of loneliness there, almost, like drowning in a sea of people all around.

But the theme could not really be more clear here.  Where the theology fails to be at all comprehensible, the humanism does shine through, and a self-interested, self-centered reality blooms.  In fact, regarding the search for the afterlife, there is a sense here that it is not even a desirable endeavor, but rather something not to be sought after, and holding forth potentially damaging information that one should likely shy away from.

The romance in the film is the bulk of the story, and is very well done.  The two main protagonists in the story, and how they meet in the end, is the story.  It is the story of the one seeking, and the one seeking to shed himself of being sought, of jaded experience meeting a virginal heart naively believing.

There could be some minus points in that there are conciliatory body shots of Cecile de France, wonderfully placed no doubt, but not really necessary.  She completely dominates any scene that she is in anyway, so partial nudity is not necessary, although I cannot blame Clint for taking advantage of that with such a completely compelling woman on board.  Something about the camera, men, and beautiful women...hmm.  Those kind of shots are often great at producing a kind of vulnerability in a character that may be a bit cold to us in a business suit, so you could call it character development.  On the other hand, Cecile in a suit…..that's still warm.

There is little I can fault this picture with cinematically, but as far as subsequent meaning, it is vacuous.  If you like Clint Eastwood’s work, as I do, then this is one to be seen for the sake of following a good film maker, and the various story lines in its multi-narrative is compelling and very well done .  But if it’s spiritual answers or a seeking after truth you’re looking for, you’ll find more under a rock.

Agitatus

MegaMind_________________________________________________________________

MegaMind
2010 Will Ferrell, Brad Pitt, Tina Fey
PG

Fantastic animated film!  Very funny.  Constantly funny in fact.  I was laughing so hard at some of the fast and furious humor, that I had to keep interrupting the last laugh with the newest one.  But one thing troubled me.  I was laughing and my kids mostly were not.  I mean there is no way that they were getting the jokes.  They were caught up in the action and the characters, and being kids, all goo-eyed at the huge figures on the screen.  They were taking so much of it seriously.  That’s just kids for you now isn’t it?  They are wonderfully and seriously made.

But there is no way they were going to get the humor of our villain changing into a mock character of Ed Kennedy, lisping away his directives, or the other tie-ins to characters past.  This is expert filmmaking, however.  Everyone knows that us adults are going with our kids to see these movies.  Like Toy Story 3, there was so much for us adults to be delighted with, mixed masterfully with the action and adventure.  It’s a no-lose scenario.

What I found most delightful about MegaMind was the consistent playing against type and the story twists that also went against convention, making it a truly amazing and original story that was fun to follow, and almost always unexpected.  This fairly short feature film is filled constantly with non-stop action and twists aplenty.  A bonus for us all is the light ending that is uplifting and fun.  Good clean fun.

5 stars

Agitatus