WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS

Excessive but bullish entertainment. Michael Douglas is at once a reformed and the same old Gordon Gekko in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, which throws in newly introduced characters rather than recycling old ones. The original “Wall Street” (1987) is the most brilliant and shrewd of all big business films. Oliver Stone has returned to co-write and direct the sequel, and he restores all the juicy jargon. Stone lets his characters get sucked into greed and there’s lots of talk on big numbers and big losses. There are shares of relationship turmoil, too, much of it integrated suitably, but the surplus of conflicts turns this into a long movie.

The film is likely to receive lots of negative reviews by pretentiously cerebral critics that want to trump it in order to make themselves look like brighter, more tech market academic geniuses. The film is likely to be disliked by any audience that has a preemptive dislike for anything that is by Oliver Stone. Also, you may ask, does the select brainy material get compromised by a few patronizing commercial elements? Well duh.

With a prologue opening in 2001, Gekko is released from prison after an eight year sentence on insider trading and securities fraud charges; he has retrievable items such as a silk handkerchief, money clip, Rolex gold watch and an ancient mobile phone as heavy as a barbell. A limo pulls up and we think, along with him, that it is for him. The snide joke is that the limo and an entourage are meant for a rapper also released on the same day.

Jump forward seven years and we are in 2008, and – beware the hokey intros and cumbersome David Byrne soundtrack – young trader Jake Moore (Shia LaBeouf) is smooching it up with Winnie (Carey Mulligan), the estranged daughter to Gekko. Jake’s mentor is his boss Louis Zabel (Frank Langella) of the investment bank Keller Zabel investments that is supposed to resemble the real Bear Stearns, and its collapse. After the bumpy exposition, the movie starts to get good again as soon as we start seeing the PowerPoint graphics and boiler room madness, although this boiler room has changed its appearance into something sleeker in comparison to years previous. Within a few well-played scenes, Louis becomes a fallen man and Jake blows his huge commission earnings after playing the stock market on margin.

The nemesis Bretton James (Josh Brolin, a swarthy, thrill-seeker rich man performance) makes sure Louis doesn’t get a bailout so his financial empire can buy it up for fractions of its worth. Jake is ruined, too, and he hates Bretton for all that is merciless and unfeeling. But when Jake gets a job proposition from Bretton, he takes it, mostly out of self-preservation (who else will hire him after his last job’s fiasco?) Meanwhile, Jake seeks out Gordon Gekko on advice on his impending wedding to his daughter and on finance, and they develop a “trading” favors relationship.

Tucked into two hours and ten minutes is a lot of savvy financial talk that incorporates contemporary issues of bailouts and sector bubble bursts, of a nation addicted to borrowing on credit and a nation with nothing left to sell, of banks selling illusions of an idea and selling unproven technology for fast boom bucks. Jake though thinks he is ahead of the curve on fusion technology and seeks capital investors. He also thinks he has won Bretton on his side but there are no moral allegiances only moral hazards when it comes to money and investment, and the film explores that meaning of economic self-interests.

The movie stuffs in a lot while attempting to be a social mirror to recent economic history. Gekko gives a lecture not to Teldar paper on how “Greed is good” but instead to a forum of college students on how “Leverage is bad.” In order to create believable transitions to explain and justify character, Stone just adds new scenes and new developments on top of old ones. His writing is not redundant, just extraneous. Added annoyance: Jake too quickly forgets the burn of losing his big commission in the first act of the film.

There is a perceptively snotty charity banquet halfway into the film. Rich men from all over seem to attend in order to find their rivals and cut them down to size. Rich women are competing with each other in fashionable appearance. The feeling is a certain egomaniacal vacuity in the sense that nobody cares what the charity is actually for. Stone dramatizes how the charity benefit is just an excuse for a Gatsby party soaking in greed and narcissism. It also entrances Charlie Sheen, the best cameo in the film and his transformation after twenty-plus years sums up to more than just a conceit.

Outshining the rest in charisma and swagger, Douglas gives a performance that should prove durable with passing years. He is beyond caricature. Another sequel could easily put him front and center, although good box office returns or not, this is probably the last “Wall Street” movie.

Go to the official site at http://www.wallstreetmoneyneversleeps.com/
 
Grade: B

WAITING FOR SUPERMAN

Director Davis Guggenheim actually shoehorns in some archival footage of the 1950’s Superman in Waiting for Superman. The focal outrage of the documentary is why the public school system in the United States has disparagingly fallen. Of the 30 major developed countries, the U.S. ranks 25th in math and 21st in science. The children in America might actually rank number one in confidence. Educators and chancellors might say that we are overconfident.

Guggenheim (Oscar winner for “An Inconvenient Truth”) likes to cut often to Geoffrey Canada, a longtime educator and president of a special school that flourishes in Harlem. And why not? Canada is a completely charismatic speaker and he speaks fast, keeping this doc moving with urgency! Lots of information and diagnoses are courtesy of him. Bill Gates, yes the Gates of Microsoft, explains why we outsource employees from other countries to work tech. It’s because there are not enough educated students in America qualified to work the high tech jobs.

If there was a person closest to being Superman it might be Michelle Rhee, the chancellor of the Washington D.C. public school system whose first move was to fire a hundred-plus inadequate principals and close 23 ineffective schools. She would fire bad teachers, too, but it’s against national law which gives intractable rights to tenured teachers. The tradition of tenure has dubious origins, as explained. They can only discipline bad teachers (how often does that really happen!), but your jaw will drop when you see how New York deals with them.

In addition to the educators, Guggenheim tracks the lives of five young elementary school students. Guggenheim doesn’t explain why he happened to choose these five case studies, but never mind. All of their parents, of course, want their children to be served a better education. Their children are enlisted into the lottery which promises them a better, more attention-friendly small school which is better than the local “dropout factories.” In a mini-climax, Guggenheim cuts back and forth between various lotteries where there are more applicants than available spots.

The tech credits are bright, with Guggenheim once again implementing multimedia devices such as diagrams and animation graphics to inform points and statistics, as well as clips from “The Simpsons” and, why not, “School of Rock.” That part is thorough. But what is not given imperative is how education begins in the home, and in life experience, and that bad parents are not given as much the blame as bad teachers. How do you draw statistics out of that?

Go to the official site at http://www.waitingforsuperman.com/
 
Grade: B-

YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER

Woody Allen movies in the 1970’s and the mid-80’s, not to mention the mid-90’s too, are classics that will never die. But in the last ten years his work as writer-director is almost arbitrary, averaging one stale movie a year (although there might be a couple of exceptions). Many of his movies feature a sterling performance or two, or contain a fair number of good gags, that elevate expectations a bit. You want to like his stuff. But his movies are simply embarrassing and out of touch. You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, a title that also feels plucked arbitrarily, presents multiple characters falling out or recuperating from bad marriages and switching to new partners, a majority of these characters dealing with occupational failure and situations of financial dependence.

Josh Brolin, Naomi Watts, Antonio Banderas, Lucy Punch, Freida Pinto are not exactly a cast of players as much as they are Woody’s game pieces. Of the entire cast, Anthony Hopkins might actually portray the film’s most intriguing character as a Viagra-popping, Ralph Lauren sweater-wearing geezer named Alfie, searching for young sex in order to feel young again, after he dumped his wife Helena (Gemma Jones) of many years. He’s obsessed with perfect genes, and he finds his counterpart not an Ivy League grad but with a juicy call girl (Punch from “Dinner for Schmucks,” is hysterically crass). Intriguing, but it’s too bad Hopkins is only in the movie for about 15 minutes.

Woody’s main focus is the hardship marriage between Brolin and Watts, as Roy and Sally. Seven years ago Roy had a breakout hit with his first novel but has been cold since, with several consecutive manuscripts rejected from publishers. In the interim, he attempted work as a chauffeur, and in one of Woody’s rare quick cutaway flashbacks, he crashes the limo while on the job. Sally takes full-time work as an assistant to art gallery boss Greg (Banderas), and overtime, develops a crush on him. Helena, mother to Sally, pays a majority of the rent checks.

Adultery and other deceptions ensue and yet the film is strangely devoid of tension. It also, like many recent Woody efforts, fails to be consistently entertaining. You want to know what happens next, but at the same time, you can’t wait for Woody to cut to the next scene already. The blabbering by all actors is incessant, and while Watts does get to perform an authentic neurotic freak-out, only Pinto (“Slumdog Millionaire”) says her lines without making you feel like it’s just Woody-speak.

The onset of everything that happens starts with Roy, a liar and hypocrite, who does his damndest to mask his desperation and low self-esteem. “I’ve been feeling depressed” and “I’m a nervous wreck!” are among Roy’s grumbles. But wait, this is Josh Brolin (“No Country for Old Men,” “W.”) we are talking about here. Why did Mr. Good Ol’ Dude take this part? And what’s with Brolin’s 1977 discotheque hair? His hair runs berserk and his belly flab sticks out like a gorilla clad in corduroys.

In the elapsing story, Roy has been having anxiety about his latest manuscript which is under evaluation from a publishing house. During this time, he beckons the attention of Dia (Pinto), a guitar-playing beauty, seen in the window in the building across from his. It’s one of Woody’s eavesdropping themes that we have seen countless times from him since “Another Woman” (1988) and nearly every movie since. Then, as Roy’s professional life succumbs to disillusion (“disillusion” a recurring Woody theme), he decides to steal a publish-ready manuscript from a dead man. When this happens you wonder if Woody has seen “Morvern Collar.”

It is not impossible to admire some of the plot-evolving developments, but as hard as the actors work, they are not whole people. They are not whole individuals. Woody has said during interviews that he does not want to see his actors perform (he says he can’t stand that), but he wants to see them natural on-screen. Yet every bodily movement of the actors, every movement of the camera, feels overformal and constricted. In other words, unnatural. That’s the problem. Forgiving Woody fans will not care as much, and might find something to like. But it’s no “Match Point,” nor is it a “Vicky Cristina Barcelona.”

Go to the official site at http://www.sonyclassics.com/youwillmeetatalldarkstranger/
 
Grade: C

THE TOWN

Fierce entertainment. In a leap career improvement, Ben Affleck turns in a sturdier and shrewder lead performance than his usual. Affleck as director makes head-banging efforts to make the bank robberies in The Town different from other larcenies we’ve seen, and he makes Boston his own degenerate cesspool. Double-crosses, twists, the binds (and snaps) of loyalty exceed expectations – it is more than a one-note crime movie. A few warts keeps the movie from becoming a total triumph. But all the familiar elements of robbery movies are ecstatically amped up dispensing regularly satisfying thrills.

This is an actor’s showcase. Affleck feels (Boston) rooted in his part as bank robber Doug MacRay, Jeremy Renner is Jem, his hothead cohort ready to unload his weapon on innocent people if need-be, Blake Lively is the trashy and easy girl, Pete Postlethwaite is the florist who moonlights as the crime architect, Chris Cooper is the dad in a one-scene showstopper, and Jon Hamm is the dilligent FBI man who enjoys nabbing scumbags.

Hamm is the only refined character of the film. This is a fresh career move for the actor known, with raves, for the award-winning TV series “Mad Men.” Hamm is a stiff, straight-arrow lawman, but while stiff sounds like a criticism, it should serve more as a compliment. He is rugged enough for the field, but a stiff no-nonsense interrogator. He even gets a few scenes with the ladies. But he is dealing at the core these Boston bad boys led by Affleck and Renner. These are the kind of hardened guys who will get themselves into a brutal street scrimmage just to retain self-respect.

The script has one shameless, far-fetched stretch: Rebecca Hall (just fine), as Claire, is abducted by the guys during the first robbery of the film, and when the guys learn of her Charlestown residence from her driver’s license (which is their hometown) they want to surveillance her. Only that during the tailing, Doug runs into a consoling dialogue with her, and within a few scenes, falls for her. Once you suspend your disbelief with this development, you can accept the rest of the story.

Of course, Jem doesn’t like Doug’s involvement with Claire one bit. He is ready to rub her out if any corroborating evidence spills to the FBI. Claire is the first normal, non-trashy, non-bad girl and dignified romantic relationship in his life. Doug, of course, doesn't want to be slummin' all his life and Claire represents, err, a new flowering. Doug continues to set up and execute robberies while lying to Claire about his extracurricular activities. Will Claire ever find out that she is going with a man who held her at gunpoint? Claire finding out his real identity is inevitable, whether it be real life or just Hollywood plot mechanics. “I was never going to hurt you,” he confesses.

The guys start taking swings at each other and the grudges turn into suspicions about who will sell out whom. Doug wants out of the business but the livelihood of others becomes threatened so he has to stick with it. This leads to the final big score robbery, a set piece assembled with bravado. The ads promised robbers in nun masks, but the costumes vary each time, and better yet, what also varies is how much tougher these guys get on the bystanders. The final shootout is a real viciously charged street battle, although, one wishes that guys with double-barrel shotguns didn’t miss from ten feet away.

The camerawork bursts with energy during the big action scenes sprawling over a lot of spontaneous, anything-can-happen territory. The film ends on a satisfying, more than half believable note. Affleck is so good that he nearly gets to forget his career garbage like “Pearl Harbor” and “Daredevil.” He is also becoming a real legitimate director coming off the heels of his debut “Gone Baby Gone.” Maybe the permanent 5 o’clock shadow is working for him, or his Nike leather jacket is working for him (street cred!). Renner also deserves props for injecting sleaze and a violent mean streak into his wild card character. On a double bill, “The Town” should be the opening act and “The Departed” should be the main event.

Go to the official site at http://thetownmovie.warnerbros.com/
 

Grade: B+

HEARTBREAKER (L'Arnacoeur)

The French romantic comedy with Heartbreaker (L’Arnacoeur) should be a guilt-free joy if you are already predisposed for love conquers all stuff. It borrows “Ocean’s 11” jazzy rhythms but instead of a heist film it is a love hijack. Romain Duris (“The Beat That My Heart Skipped”) is Alex, a professional couple-wrecker who drops in to seduce and save women before they take the plunge with the wrong guy. Overprotective fathers are often the clients that pay Alex and his team to intercept. On his latest assignment, Alex falls in love with the bitchy heiress Juliette (Vanessa Paradis).

Like other popular imports “Priceless” and “The Girl from Monaco,” this is another high-gloss comedy set at a five-star French Riviera hotel. Luxurious setting, perky performers and more garter belts than in an American film. For a touch of cute, Juliette has a soft spot for “Dirty Dancing” which means that Alex must brush up on Patrick Swayze moves, imitate the swagger and slide of a legend. Also means he must sing like George Michael.

Alex has a week to break up Juliette’s wedding before she ties the knot to a supposed boring guy. Alex will pose as her bodyguard so he can follow her every shopping and spa salon move. On his side are two surveillance experts, his brother Marc (Francois Damiens) and his wife Julie Ferrier (Melanie). Damiens is a goofball – not a ladykiller like Alex, and his key role is to play the A/C repairman who deliberately puts the cooling system on the fritz. As for Ferrier, she has a fetching cougar quality. Her character slips into hotel receptionist, cleaner, waitress, etc.

Juliette has one of the biggest suites in the hotel, and Alex the would-be bodyguard is right next door. Just when Juliette dismisses Alex from duty, she gets attacked by a (would-be) thief, and Alex saves the day. Things start to look rosy, but then Juliette’s fiancé shows up. It becomes harder to predict in how Alex is going to be able to pull this off but if he can steal Juliette away for a few minutes in a cool yellow sports car and make the bachelorette party about him…

As the love interest, Paradis has a stiff face that somehow can look pretty once she gives Alex the time of day, which she is not so willing. If you have ever found beauty under a hard shell of woman then Paradis will make your day. As for Duris, he is like a cheeseball Colin Farrell trying to be John Travolta or Patrick Swayze. The movie itself is suave, snobby around the edges, and a smidgen delightful by the climax.

Go to the official site at http://www.heartbreakermovie.com/
 
Grade: B

THE AMERICAN

In response to the new film The American, some audiences are going to find its meditative distance and ambiguity to be mesmerizing and some will find that because it slows its pace down to the rituals of real life, it is boring. George Clooney, in full undeterred grimace, is a hitman trying to get away and stay low. The methodical pace lets you concentrate on the realities of a hitman’s life rituals, and if you accept, the frequent pauses benefit the style and atmosphere of the story.

The title of the original novel was better apt. Martin Booth’s 1990 novel “A Very Private Gentleman” was the name, and it probably contained terse conversations and internalized anguish as well. For the book to be adapted, it must have needed star power to attain commercial purposes. Clooney is a star that happens to be an actor first, and here he makes silence magnetic with his protagonist Jack, who sometimes goes by Edward. Father Benedetto (Paolo Bonacelli) is his only regular speaking buddy in the first half of the film. If you are enrapt by the film’s visual storytelling and by the mystery of Jack’s enigmatic background, then you will probably wish that there were even less speaking scenes between these two.

The story begins with a shocking ambush. The title cards tell us that Jack and his lover are in Sweden. But how serious can a guy like Jack, in his line of work, take love? “Make no personal friends, Jack. You used to know that,” is what Jack’s shadowy contractor Pavel (Johan Leysen) tells him. Jack abandons his lover like he abandons tube socks with holes. When Jack relocates to Castle del Monte, a region in Italy, he accepts another job. “You don’t even have to pull the trigger,” he is told.

The glacial, no facial tics mood of the film can be captivating. You wonder, “Who is going to double-cross who in this small Italian village?” We wait for Jack to be contacted about the details and necessities of this latest job. A mysterious dirty-blonde haired man starts to follow him but mostly hangs out in his car.

This film by Anton Corbijn, his second film, is a film steeped more in tenseness than intensity. He lets the film breathe and saunter in anxiety. He creates a mood, a space, wandering languor, and then surprises us with sudden bursts of action and excitement that come out of nowhere. On a television screen, Corbijn shows “Once Upon a Time in the West” (1968) but not “Le Samourai” (1967, French) as a homage. Corbijn has made a lone wolf art film, like the aforementioned ’67 French classic. But it is one with certain fatalistic noir pleasures: sex and bang-bang.

During all of the hushed cinematics, the story interjects a sexual relationship between Jack and a whore named Clara (Violante Placido, rendering complexity out of a potentially thin role) which takes place in a sleazy cathouse saturated in red lighting. Jack has the money to pay more for a tastier, hotter girl like Clara (her breasts are even prettier in the natural sunlight away from cathouse stench) although we can only guess how much extra a john would have to pay. During the sex scenes where money is exchanged, Jack and Clara’s bodies slosh each other in graphic rhapsody. They have bedroom chemistry. Jack temporarily fulfills his sex needs without making any committed attachments.

Clara is a very beautiful girl, with possible well-groomed religious roots. But with no other industrial talents she somehow ended up as a whore. But she does have the talent of manipulation. Clara sees Jack as this tall handsome stranger who tips big, behaves in worldly self-confidence, and decides that he could be a candidate to help her exit out of her sordid lifestyle. She doesn’t know what he does for a living, but surely whatever it is, his occupation is awesome. Clara knows if there has ever been a man, Jack is the right person to trick into having a date outside of the cathouse. No money exchanged, she is thinking, let’s just see what he can do for me.

As the film develops, we suspect there are spies or amateur spies plunking around. Father Benedetto and Clara are trustworthy allies to Jack, because they are simple people. But Clooney has a magnificent scene where his distrust is so incandescent that you can see his expert foresight into lies and deceit within a clench of an eyebrow. Why is Father Benedetto so insistent about talking about the sins of lives during the most seeming remissive morning hours? Why is Clara so willing to get so full-frontal nude – is it because she wants Jack nude and defenseless, too? And what is the symbolic meaning of the butterfly? Is the key answer supposed to be revealed in the final shot of the movie? You bet. If you find “The American” entertaining it is probably because you enjoy guessing motives of ambiguous and emotionally enfolded characters.

Go to the official site at http://www.focusfeatures.com/film/the_american/
 
Grade: B+

GOING THE DISTANCE

You have to be in the right time of your life to enjoy Going the Distance, a long distance rom-com with Drew Barrymore and Justin Long (a real-life couple). You also have to be willing to accept bawdy foul language. Long’s character Garrett is a music biz guy in New York City, Barrymore’s character Erin is a six-week stint newspaper intern who returns to San Francisco to finish up Stanford studies. The rapport between lovers and buddies is sometimes over-scripted, sometimes natural as bunny love.


Flick is bound to get prevailing negative reviews by critics who already decided they don’t like romantic comedies. This is not Alexander Payne, it is a better than usual Generation X crowd-pleaser and fairly comes off as socially relevant. And if you are a guy reading this, the Liv Tyler-like girl next door will probably like this movie. It has recognizable moments for anyone who has ever been in an impractical relationship but struggled, compromised and waited to make it work.


In all of these kinds of rom-coms, the leads get support by built-in friends and family. Garrett’s friends are played by Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day. Erin’s family support and friends are played by Christina Applegate, Jim Gaffigan, Natalie Morales and Oliver Jackson-Cohen and maybe a few others. This supporting cast gets more than the usual chances to impromptu their idiosyncratic gifts.


Variant segments of the film deal with their separation on both coasts. The movie deals with online travel quotes, and when tickets go for the $2,000 ballpark it means that they will miss a major holiday together. Text messages come up in animated bubbles. Energetic and thoughtful moviemaking starts to run itself into the pits in the third act by just a tad. An example of a misfire segment is the split-screen phone sex: it goes for awkward miscommunication which will be uproarious for some viewers and just merely awkward for others.


When Garrett and Erin do get together, lots of hand-holding, live band music, joking about sex, having sex and then the eventual argument of who will leave what job behind so they can relocate to be together. The movie also works in slob humor, how mustaches can be a sexy attribute, “Centipede” the video game, bar trivia, “The Shawshank Redemption” and “Top Gun” as favorite movies (“I like all homoerotic fighter pilot movies.”), and bong hits.


I repeat, this movie contains slob humor, dirty sex jokes and other sexual situations. The actors make all of this acceptable by having something of a balanced wit. Sometimes smart people like to slosh around, drink beer and talk about stupid stuff to counterbalance the rigidness of their everyday work-for-a-paycheck lives. Besides Applegate and Gaffigan, none of these characters are rich. It is never said aloud in the film, but economics and politics is what keeps young hard-working and sharp-thinkers down and is what keeps many unable from elevating the status of their relationship. Characters like Garrett and Erin have to deal with the frustration of being three-thousand miles apart – if this was a sane world Garrett and Erin would be able to move next door to each other tomorrow if they could without encumbering tremendous sacrifices.

Go to the official site at http://going-the-distance.warnerbros.com/

Grade: B-

A WOMAN, A GUN AND A NOODLE SHOP

Zhang Yimou, China’s best filmmaker (“Raise the Red Lantern,” “Ju Dou”), is so sure he has come up with such a hip idea that he doesn’t realize how he has negated it to cheese. A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop takes the Coen Brother’s classic “Blood Simple,” their 1985 debut that played like a Southwest honky tonk noir, and spits it out into a Chinese western where they use guns and bows and arrows. Yimou puts together a really annoying gallery of quirky and loud characters all dressed in gaudy kimono silk, and one badass crooked lawman who doesn’t say much at all. You have to really have a neverending fever for Chinese exoticism to get wrapped up in this flick.

Just like the Coen’s tale, the suspense concoction involves a missing loot, dead bodies that need hidden, a bury-a-person-alive scene and other assorted methods to cover tracks. The witless beauty (Yan Ni, nice slutty lips) is two-timing her husband (Ni Dahong) with a klutzy coward (Xiao Shenyang) who works at their noodle shop. The police roam the desert lands, but that doesn’t stop the cuckold husband from hatching a plan to knock off his wife. The story takes place in a desert land in a time long ago (no surveillance, no witnesses should make this easier than it is as long as hubby has an alibi).

One remorseless cop (Sun Hunglei, he thinks he is starring in “Westworld”) is hired to do the killing, but he wants more money, so his greed triggers a series of events that result in tireless bloodshed. Not only are the poorly named and poorly defined characters less interesting than they were in the Coen’s work, but the plot is harder to follow in the scrabble-mad approach that Yimou has come up with. For some reason, Yimou found it important to put in some very loud horse galloping, and the sounds effects of foot running are also needlessly hyperactive.

The best one can do to get through this is to fake half-hearted amusement until it’s over. If you are looking for Yimou’s crucial miscalculation, in the worst film that he has ever made, it’s this: When you set a film in a time and place that is not remotely real then nothing that happens in the story is going to matter. What we see is caricatures set against a cardboard abstraction of a time period.

Go to the official site at http://www.sonyclassics.com/awomanagunandanoodleshop/
 
Grade: D+