Money Monster
by George Wolf, MaddWolf.com
Hard to believe it’s been 7 years since Jon Stewart reduced CNBC’s Jim Cramer to a pile of mush on The Daily Show, taking him to task for a brazenly reckless attitude toward the consequences of overly confident stock tips.
Money Monster is built on the premise of Stewart’s outrage, as the desperate Kyle Budwell (Jack O’Connell) hijacks the set of a money management show and takes its high-flying host Lee Gates (George Clooney) hostage on live TV. Kyle was one of the countless investors burned by Gates’s confidence in Ibis Clear Capital, which somehow lost $800 billion overnight. Kyle wants answers, and confessions.
Director Jodie Foster sets up the hostage drama quickly, then does her best to effectively polish the frequently clumsy attempts at social commentary.
The closed-circuit communication between Gates and his trusted director Patty (Julia Roberts) keeps the standoff intriguing, but it never feels as if Gates is in any real danger. There’s little shading to Kyle’s sympathetic nature, and little doubt that Gates and Patty will take up his cause to root out the mystery of the $800 billion “glitch.”
The script, from a team sporting lowlights such as Dear John and National Treasure on its resume, seems more ready for prime time than the big screen. Its points about financial corruption and weak journalism are well-intentioned but already well known, and while the film doesn’t pretend there are easy answers, it tries to satisfy the need for them with a crowd-pleasing finale that falls into place much too easily.
There are moments, such as Foster’s handling of Kyle’s mid-standoff conversation with his girlfriend, that reach a nicely subtle level of humanity. The performances, Roberts in particular, are customarily solid and Foster’s direction is crisp, but Money Monster emerges as much too blunt an instrument.
It wants us to think it’s mad as hell, when it really just wants to entertain.
The Darkness
by Hope Madden, MaddWolf.com
Back in 2005, Aussie filmmaker Greg McLean set the genre world ablaze with his merciless Outback horror Wolf Creek. An amazingly disturbing and well-crafted film, it seemed to mark a strong new presence in horror.
Nearly a dozen years later, McLean hasn’t been able to reproduce that success, although he tries once again with this PG-13 terror starring Kevin Bacon.
Bacon is Peter Taylor, and while Pete and his family were vacationing in the Grand Canyon, his autistic son picked up a handful of ancient Anasi demons and brought them home.
Back at the ranch, family members turn on each other while the dog next door barks incessantly, and a once promising director falls back on tired clichés and unconvincing FX. All this in an attempt to lead us to the conclusion that something supernatural is afoot.
Once the drama in the house sets in, The Darkness becomes a wearisome riff on Poltergeist.
Since it is now mandatory in all “is it evil or am I crazy” storylines, you can expect close-ups of computer screens as the concerned and beleaguered google ridiculous phrases and uncover incredible evidence. The mom (McLean favorite Radha Mitchell) googles “strange smells” and finds a link between autism and the spirit realm. I swear.
This is the filmmaker who once taught us that we do not want to play “head on a stick,” and he is now contenting himself with diluted, formulaic, toothless scares? WTF?
That’s not to say that you can’t make a good horror movie without an R-rating. The Ring was the scariest movie of 2002, PG-13 tag and all. Heck, the MPAA gave Jaws a PG and that film scared every person who saw it.
It can be done, and ten years ago I would have believed a talent like McLean would be the next filmmaker to succeed.
I would have been wrong.
High-Rise
by Hope Madden, MaddWolf.com
Set inside a skyscraper in a gloriously retro London, Ben Wheatley’s adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s High-Rise is a dystopia full of misanthropic humor.
Laing (Tom Hiddleston) narrates his own story of life inside the “grand social experiment” – a high rise where the higher the floor, the higher the tenant’s social status. Laing lives keenly alone, somewhere in the middle floors. Socialite Charlotte (a fantastic Sienna Miller) lives one floor above; put upon wife and philandering husband Helen and Wilder (Elizabeth Moss and Luke Evans, respectively) live near the bottom. And at the tippy top, The Architect (Jeremy Irons, magnificent as always).
The film treads some of the same ground as Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, only Ballard’s feelings were less respectful of the lowly. The author’s interest was always in peeling that last layer that separates civility from savagery in every member of every class. No one is blameless, no one is incorruptible. It can make his material difficult because no character is entirely sympathetic, which is certainly the case in High-Rise.
Our protagonist holds himself at a distance from all tenants, seeing himself as that singular soul that can fit almost anonymously within every strata, when, in fact, he fits nowhere. And as chaos descends and carnality and carnage, it’s very hard to decide whether anyone is worth rooting for.
The film brings to mind David Cronenberg’s gem, Shivers. The Canadian auteur’s first film saw a high end high rise taken down from within by a parasite that turned its victims into voracious pleasure seekers. Always the Ballard enthusiast (Cronenberg adapted the author’s Crash into a chilly NC-17 adaptation in 1996), the filmmaker’s 1975 flick eerily predicted the British cult novelist’s plot of the same year.
High-Rise’s performances range from slyly understated (Hiddleston, Moss) to powerful (Miller, Evans) to alarmingly hammy (James Purefoy), but each contributes entertainingly to this particular brand of dystopia.
Ballard’s prose is tough to bring to life on the big screen. While Cronenberg’s 1996 adaptation breathed the author’s chilly, disgusted detachment, Wheatley’s version mines Ballard’s humor in a film that is wildly alive but terrifically flawed.
The class war has not waned since Ballard set its microcosm inside his London skyscraper. Its flame burns as bright and toxic today as it ever has, but somehow Wheatley’s film lacks that heat. It’s a fascinating mess without the punch of relevance.
Still, the wicked humor and wild chaos will certainly keep your attention.
Viva
by George Wolf, MaddWolf.com
It’s fitting that Viva carries a subplot with ties to the boxing ring. The film is assembled with the familiar themes from any number of underdog sports movies, and overflowing with the heart needed to avoid drowning in cliche.
Much of that heart comes from the touching performance of Hector Medina as Jesus, a young man who works doing hair and makeup for a troupe of drag performers in Havana. Though he’s merely part of the crew, Jesus naturally dreams of the spotlight, finally getting his chance onstage as “Viva” when there’s a rare opening in the cast.
Viva’s first performance is met with a punch in the face from a man at the bar. That man is Jesus’s long lost father Angel (Jorge Perugorria – also terrific), a former boxer who’s only too happy to start crashing at Jesus’s place and dictating his life. These conflicts set by screenwriter Mark O’Halloran are obvious and formulaic, yet Viva sells them with charm and authenticity.
Director Paddy Breathnach (Blow Dry) grounds the film with gritty, crumbling Havana backdrops. He finds resonance in desolate moments that ultimately bring new depth to the escape Jesus finds onstage with Viva and her unique selection of torch songs.
There’s never any doubt if Angel will come to accept his son’s lifestyle or if Viva will shine in the spotlight, but you gain a rooting interest anyway.
Early on, Jesus’s mentor at the club tells him any performance has to be more than just lip syncing, it has to “mean something.” Viva‘s tune is far from new, but the film does find a beautiful meaning within it.