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randall 
"I like to watch."
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 Posted - 09/22/2010 : 02:28:04
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We were underwhelmed by the new WALL STREET movie. Though it�s visually beautiful and has another fast-talking young turk in Shia LeBeouf, it�s flatter and somewhat less urgent than its predecessor. (Director Oliver Stone said after tonight�s FSLC preview screening that he didn�t consider it a sequel; �there�s only one character from the old movie� � actually that�s not so, because Gordon Gekko�s old prot�g� Bud Fox shows up for a sly cameo, and Sylvia Miles is still selling high-end real estate � it�s just another period snapshot of the financial world, this time in 2008.)
I can�t comment on Michael Douglas�s performance as Gekko without revealing a big surprise, and after you see the film you�ll understand why I refrained. Suffice it to say that he�s not the main heavy this time: that role belongs to Josh Brolin as �Bretton James,� honcho of Goldman Sachs � oops, I mean �Churchill Schwartz.� Gekko himself notes that he�s small potatoes compared to these investment bankers, but it�s personal too: James cooperated with the Feds to make sure Gekko was put away for many years longer than insider traders usually get. When he�s finally released in the opening sequence (and the guard returns his shoe-sized cell phone for the film�s first big laugh), there�s nobody there to meet him. You can see all those years, all that resentment, in Gekko�s face, but you have no idea what he�s thinking.
Shia�s in love with Gekko�s daughter, who blames him for desertion. His own mother (Susan Sarandon with a perfect Long Island accent) is trying to make a killing selling real estate, and we all know what�s about to happen to that market. A story does wind through, complete with several implausibilities, but the best part of the picture, like the first one, is eavesdropping on the other half. No �21� club this time, but a lavish tricked-out gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the kind you could never get invited to in a million years. An impossibly gorgeous apartment for Gekko, who�s supposed to have no money (his excuse: �It�s a rental!�). Behind the scenes at the somber conference room of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. And the most beautiful portrayal of physical New York outside of Woody Allen.
It�s clearly made by a professional, but a guy who feels it necessary to use shots of children blowing huge soap bubbles as a motif. Bubbles, get it? We got it.
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Edited by - randall on 09/22/2010 13:29:24 |
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ChocolateLady 
"500 Chocolate Delights"
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Posted - 09/22/2010 : 06:30:25
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| You may have been underwhelmed, but you made it sound like it is still worth seeing. |
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randall
"I like to watch."
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Posted - 09/22/2010 : 11:40:56
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It is. Just because we were underwhelmed doesn't meant we weren't whelmed at all. Had I read my post above, I'd still want to check it out for myself.
P.S.: I've now read two print reviews that blithely give away the plot point I resisted telling you about. Rex Reed, in particular, spoils the entire film, even the end-credit sequence! [He didn't like it so I guess he's doing his best to see that you don't either.] This should be against the bloody law. |
Edited by - randall on 09/22/2010 18:03:38 |
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ChocolateLady
"500 Chocolate Delights"
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Posted - 09/23/2010 : 09:21:06
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quote:
Originally posted by randall
It is. Just because we were underwhelmed doesn't meant we weren't whelmed at all. Had I read my post above, I'd still want to check it out for myself.
Which is what a really good movie review should do. Let you express your opinion and allow the reader to decide for themselves.
quote:
Originally posted by randall
P.S.: I've now read two print reviews that blithely give away the plot point I resisted telling you about. Rex Reed, in particular, spoils the entire film, even the end-credit sequence! [He didn't like it so I guess he's doing his best to see that you don't either.] This should be against the bloody law.
Yes, it should. But you know, you can complain. Many, many years ago I got so ticked off at the English newspaper here that had a film reviewer that never ever reviewed the film, but rather gave a summary of the WHOLE DAMNED STORY, I complained. Apparently, my complaint was taken to heart and that reviewer didn't get to spoil another film again.
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randall
"I like to watch."
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Posted - 09/23/2010 : 11:58:20
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| Actually, I did! Since NEW YORK OBSERVER policy is to print contributors' email addresses, I wrote Rex Reed a polite but stern email in complaint. I can't show it to you because it references the infamous plot point, but it made me feel better, whether Mr. Reed even sees it or not. |
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randall
"I like to watch."
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Posted - 09/24/2010 : 13:21:59
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Tony Scott's review in today's Times is a sterling example of how you can describe it without spoiling it.
September 23, 2010
Movie Review | 'Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps'
The Pride That Went Before the Fall
By A. O. SCOTT
Wall Street is a mess, a morass, a snarl of contradictions large and small � a magnet for envy and indignation, fear and worship. Why should �Wall Street� be any different?
The full title of Oliver Stone�s hectic new chapter in the Gordon Gekko cycle � a conventional sequel that is also a corrective, a parody and a sly act of auto-homage � is �Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps,� and the movie has an insomniac restlessness that is by turns thrilling and enervating. It is as volatile as the Dow Jones on a day of seesaw, high-volume trading, as Mr. Stone and the screenwriters (Allan Loeb and Stephen Schiff) scramble to capture the cacophonous cultural rhythms of right now, not so long ago and some vaguely recollected bygone age when things were different.
Evoking most directly those clammy, vertiginous weeks in the late summer and early fall of 2008, when the much-prophesied Crisis of Capitalism appeared to be at hand, �Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps� displays a grandiose ambition appropriate to its subject. In other words, Mr. Stone, never much for modesty, subtlety or the careful calculation of risk, has written a much bigger check than he could ever hope to cash.
The real story of modern financial calamity is so enormous, so intricate and so confusing that any fictional distillation of it is likely to fall short and ring false, and even casual readers of �The Big Short� by Michael Lewis or the business section of The New York Times will find factual nits to pick with the new �Wall Street.� But there are also moments of astonishing insight, and a sweeping sense of moral drama that feels true in spite of inaccuracies and implausibilities. This movie is by turns brilliant and dumb, na�ve and wise, nowhere near good enough and something close to great.
If the film were a college course it would be Economics for Poets. Money is not really Mr. Stone�s theme. In itself it is too abstract, too cold and impersonal for his romantic, Hollywood-Shakespearean sensibility. His best movies, the first �Wall Street� among them, are preoccupied with the more primal matter of power and its corollaries � honor, loyalty, hubris and disgrace.
In the person of Gordon Gekko, played both times with leonine bombast and reptilian cunning by Michael Douglas, Mr. Stone has conceived one of the definitive heroic villains of modern pop culture. John Milton, a dutiful Christian seeking to justify the ways of God to men back in the 17th century, made Satan the most vivid and interesting character in �Paradise Lost,� so much so that, according to William Blake, Milton was �of the Devil�s party without knowing it.�
Similarly, Mr. Stone, a heterodox, occasionally hyperbolic leftist, has conjured a capitalist bad guy whose dynamism and charisma � whose relish at the sheer, ruthless fun of predation � leaves a much deeper impression than his duplicity or his greed. Back in 1987, �Wall Street� may have been intended as a cautionary tale, but it has also always been an irresistible advertisement for the excess it condemns.
In any case, Gekko�s appearance at the beginning of �Money Never Sleeps� � on his way out of prison in 2001, where he has finished an 8-year stretch � is welcome. Surely, if anyone can give us a good angle on the madness of the present, it would be this guy. Most of the action takes places seven years later, when Gekko has reclaimed a share of public attention with a book that takes a harshly and presciently critical view of the state of the markets. Among his fans is a young investment banker named Jake Moore (the always wired Shia LaBeouf), who also happens to be living with Gekko�s estranged daughter, Winnie (the always understated Carey Mulligan).
To this little knot of drama � will father and child reconcile? Will young Jake fall under the malign sway of his would-be mentor? Can a lizard change its spots? � the filmmakers add many more. An Oliver Stone hero is often torn between two paternal figures (Charlie Sheen in both �Platoon� and the first �Wall Street,� for instance), and so Jake is long on mentors, turning to Gekko after the death of the benevolent old-school broker (Frank Langella) who had been like a father to him.
And since Gekko has been on ice all these years, another seductive villain, more in keeping with the times, is required, perhaps to evoke Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs or Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase in the way that Gekko in his prime recalled Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken. So Josh Brolin, who was the best thing in Mr. Stone�s curiously restrained �W,� rides in, elegantly coiffed and tailored, as Bretton James, a new snake in the garden of finance.
James is at once smoother and more vulgar than Gekko was back in the �80s, an indication of how the image of wealth has mutated in the past quarter-century. He shares Gekko�s taste for ostentation � showing off his Goya painting and his Ducati motorcycle, wooing Jake with visions of the good life � which may also be a reflection of Mr. Stone�s aesthetic inclinations. Visual extravagance has always been among this director�s calling cards, and here he aims his eye squarely at the spots where material excess intersects with genuine beauty.
Manhattan has rarely looked so persuasively gorgeous. Mr. Stone and the director of photography, Rodrigo Prieto, turn the city into a dazzling jewel box � sometimes literally, as when the camera, gliding through a gala soiree, surveys the sparkly, dangly earrings of the women in attendance, alighting finally on the plain and tasteful pearl studs Ms. Mulligan is wearing.
Her character works at what is described as �a lefty Web site,� and its function in the plot is more wishful than persuasive. And the narrative sprawls and buckles as �Money Never Sleeps� tries to find a dramatic shape that might be both comprehensive and coherent. The story lines that worked in the first �Wall Street� no longer seem available. There is no real struggle for the young man�s soul, since Jake�s business aggression is never really at odds with his niceness.
The vendettas simmering among the various titans of the Street seem like shabby Mafia stuff when measured against the scale of ruin these petty rivalries are meant to explain. Even ostensibly real values, as opposed to the notional riches confected by credit default swaps and other derivatives, are expressed in monetary terms. To the question �What went wrong?� the film offers an answer that is both irrefutable and unsatisfying: human nature.
And yet something vital here works. There are, come to think of it, a lot of little things: buoyant yet haunting songs sung by David Byrne, whose vocal timbre brings back the �80s all by itself; deliciously overdone supporting performances, especially from Vanessa Ferlito as one of Jake�s rivalrous colleagues, and Susan Sarandon, as his mother; a smattering of real-life characters evoked, impersonated or dragged onto the set. And, above all, a mood that is anxious, despairing, angry and yet exuberant. Oliver Stone is not the man to explain Wall Street, or to stoke public indignation at its crimes. But no one else could turn it into a show like �Wall Street.�
�Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps� is rated PG-13. Obscenity and obscene wealth.
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damalc 
"last watched: Sausage Party"
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Posted - 10/05/2010 : 23:44:05
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i liked until the very end.
typing anything more would be spoiling. |
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Sludge 
"Charlie Don't Serf!"
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Posted - 07/04/2011 : 19:28:53
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I finally caught this, and on the same weekend I have viewed HBO's "Too Big To Fail". The films share a virtually identical scene tied to the considered bailout of a failing company. This was an actual event in 2008 and the sources were out there, so I don't believe one film copied from the other.
Now for a big aside. I once visited New York for a Free Burma conference, and it was the opening week for Beyond Rangoon. Of course, we all sauntered over to a theatre one night to catch the film. And there, having bicycled to the same theatre to watch it themselves, were David Byrne and his wife, Adelle Lutz. Lutz portrays Aung San Suu Kyi in Beyond Rangoon and it was sure nice for us to be able to say hello to them there. The whole coincidence was rather surreal to me, but I say all of this to recognize Byrne as a true New Yorker.
He's also a musical genius. Still, using Byrne and Byrne only for music throughout Money Never Sleeps just threw it for me. It was too strong an echo of the original Wall Street, in which the design of Bud Fox's new pad is supervised by Darien (Daryl Hannah) to the catchy tune "This Must Be The Place". The song's subtitle says much about its moment in Wall Street and what is to come: "Naive Melody".
Stone must have been tempted to do a film like this in the wake of the dot-bomb ten years ago. Was the mortgage crisis an excuse to cash in on a remake, or the backdrop for a reasonable plot line? I would say both.
From his release from prison at the beginning to the final minute, one doesn't have to see Gekko a changed person. Neither does one have to accept him either way. For me, the final moments of Money Never Sleeps, which roll finally into the Naive Melody, are neither surprising nor redeeming. It felt like Stone and the writers had found a suitable backdrop for a dramatic story, but as is the curse of most sequels, how to end it was merely an afterthought. |
Edited by - Sludge on 07/04/2011 19:30:24 |
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randall
"I like to watch."
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Posted - 07/07/2011 : 11:05:33
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quote:
Originally posted by Sludge
I finally caught this, and on the same weekend I have viewed HBO's "Too Big To Fail". The films share a virtually identical scene tied to the considered bailout of a failing company. This was an actual event in 2008 and the sources were out there, so I don't believe one film copied from the other.
Now for a big aside. I once visited New York for a Free Burma conference, and it was the opening week for Beyond Rangoon. Of course, we all sauntered over to a theatre one night to catch the film. And there, having bicycled to the same theatre to watch it themselves, were David Byrne and his wife, Adelle Lutz. Lutz portrays Aung San Suu Kyi in Beyond Rangoon and it was sure nice for us to be able to say hello to them there. The whole coincidence was rather surreal to me, but I say all of this to recognize Byrne as a true New Yorker.
He's also a musical genius. Still, using Byrne and Byrne only for music throughout Money Never Sleeps just threw it for me. It was too strong an echo of the original Wall Street, in which the design of Bud Fox's new pad is supervised by Darien (Daryl Hannah) to the catchy tune "This Must Be The Place". The song's subtitle says much about its moment in Wall Street and what is to come: "Naive Melody".
Stone must have been tempted to do a film like this in the wake of the dot-bomb ten years ago. Was the mortgage crisis an excuse to cash in on a remake, or the backdrop for a reasonable plot line? I would say both.
From his release from prison at the beginning to the final minute, one doesn't have to see Gekko a changed person. Neither does one have to accept him either way. For me, the final moments of Money Never Sleeps, which roll finally into the Naive Melody, are neither surprising nor redeeming. It felt like Stone and the writers had found a suitable backdrop for a dramatic story, but as is the curse of most sequels, how to end it was merely an afterthought.
I asked Stone after the screening whether the use of Byrne and Brian Eno's music [from an an album current in 2008, except for that part you mention] was meant to suggest the Eighties. In a remark typical of him, he said, "No, I just liked the album." |
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Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps
