Shark Poop Swim Eat.

Beautifully staged, excellently performed and brilliantly explained, J.C. Chandor‘s conference-table thriller is about the financial crash of 2008, and the 700 billion dollar American bailout that followed. But nowhere does MARGIN CALL give us a date, place or corporation name; it shows us AnyCompany, Inc., populated by AnySharks dealing with EveryOne’s money. It is a story of what might have happened at the desk of Any Given Analyst when he first discovered that the unethical practices that his firm was ensconced in were about to turn around and bite the world in the arse.

Firstly, one would imagine a talky drama about stock derivatives and market capitalization and risk profiles would drive us to power-hibernation; secondly, that if we marginally understood what the hell everyone was talking about, that we would get up out of our chairs, go to the window and stick our heads out and yell, “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!” … but the marvel of Chandor’s movie is that it is entirely understandable to peasants like you and I, without stooping to didactic dialogue or inauthentic explanatory lines; and in understanding the slimy practices that led to the economic collapse, we realize how futile it would be to stick our heads out windows.

You can see the bad guys clearly and how they did it. I don’t know much about high finance – all this talk about derivatives and credit default swaps leaves me hanging – but finally I could see the basic fact of what happened at Lehman Bros. and all the rest… I could see clearly in this movie – as American as HIGH NOON – the evil that came into being here… You can see it all, you learn what it looks like, you get the full glamorous look, the ‘this-will-only-hurt-for-a-minute’ wild depravity of decisions that brought this country down to its knees; you see what the bad guys know, what they really are for the first time, and what they did to us.
— Chris Matthews, MSNBC political commentator.

MARGIN CALL is filled with actors I admire: Stanley Tucci is an analyst who discovers the downward trend and is sacked from the firm during a routine downsizing before he can confirm the numbers (love The Tucci! Can anyone say “underplaying”?); Paul Bettany is Tucci’s boss, also brilliantly underplaying (love Bettany, eternally J.A.R.V.I.S., Iron Man’s computer); Jeremy Irons in a stolid performance as the big kahuna who can see trends a month in advance (love Irons! His imperious jawline might even be squarer than Demi Moore’s); and Kevin Spacey just easing into a role that has become infused with his bloodstream, Office Manager Incarnate (love Spacey! The dead delivery works so well in this milieu of shark-teeth and blood money). So much man-love to go around, I’m also beginning to love Zachary Quinto (eternally young Spock) after this role, as a gifted analyst who explains the predicament to the big bosses; he also co-produced. Simon Baker (THE MENTALIST) doesn’t bring any pre-love to this movie for me, but he does a stunning job as Spacey’s boss, and his hair is magnificently frosted.

Man-jawed Demi Moore and DAILY SHOW’s Aasif Mandvi (playing it as serious as a bailout) are two senior number crunchers, and young Penn Badgely holds his own against all the seasoned veterans, naturalistic actors and square jaws.

As Chris Matthews explained, we get to see one of those meetings that might have transpired, when decisions were made to sell off stocks that were worth nothing. I presume we have not yet reached the juncture where the same firm that sold the bad stocks into the marketplace (to avoid being stuck with them when they failed) then started betting on those stocks to fail, in order to make back the money they lost on the sale of them.

Calling these people low swine is an insult to pigs.

It is portrayed (as it might be in real life) that each person in the firm admittedly doesn’t really know what their underlings do. Bettany doesn’t know what Quinto does, Spacey says, “You know I can’t read these things – tell me in English,” and Irons, at the top of the food chain, worth a billion dollars, asks Quinto, “Maybe you can tell me what’s going on, and please, speak as you might to a young child or a golden retriever.”

His mantra on making millions is “Be first, be smarter, or cheat.” And with all he’s just said, we get the impression he’s really sweet on that third bit.

“Illogical, Captain!”

The ruthlessness of the firm and its practices is displayed in the way they treat their employees, down to the way they offhandedly swear at each other and speak AT each other, rather than with each other. A favorite rejoinder of all the top brass, when one of them asks the other, “Do you understand the implications?” is “Do you?” Or when someone says, “I understand the implications,” the question comes back with a different emphasis, “Do you?”

Imagine what it must have felt like to be the first to realize that your firm’s “projected losses are greater than the current value of the company”; that the sharks were about to start eating their own shit. These analysts were looking at the Crash onscreen, in numbers that didn’t add up. Once the losses start staggering in one direction, they could not be stopped. Did they feel that hot flush? That flop sweat? That sudden glut of seeing the police cruiser’s lights in a rearview mirror? Only seven-hundred billion times worse.

The way these risk takers rationalize is bluntly poetic. Bettany simultaneously castigates and elucidates the way of the world: “If you really want to do this you have to believe you are necessary. People want to live like this – with their cars and their big fucking houses that they can’t even pay for – then you’re necessary. The only reason they can continue living like kings is that we’ve got our fingers on the scales in their favor. I take my hand off, and then the whole world gets really fucking fair really fucking quickly and nobody actually wants that. They say they do but they don’t. They want what we have to give them, but they also want to play innocent and pretend they have no idea where it comes from. That’s more hypocrisy than I’m willing to swallow, so fuck ’em.”

And in the darkest chamber of your heart, you know he’s right. We all want at least the opportunity to one day be a shark, with someone behind the scenes tipping the scales in our favor. That’s why, despite all the exposés Matt Taibbi can write, despite all the corporate misfeasance the media can uncover, despite all the Occupying the 99% can enact – we’re still living with the same sharks shitting in our pool.

END

FEMper Fi.

If she wants to play lumberjack, she’s gonna have to learn to handle her end of the log.
— Dirty Harry, THE ENFORCER.

Demi Moore tries to prove she’s got a dick.

As Jordan O’Neill, Demi goes action figure in G.I. JANE and claws her rambunctious way through man-sized basic training to be a Navy SEAL in this extremely unimportant movie. Which I think the filmmakers regard as some kind of statement about womankind or transgenderkind or manwoman testicles or something.

Anyway, I missed the boat on that whole woman-empowerment, burn-the-bra, equal-opportunity, kick-male-butt feminism thing. Cos I have a penis.

So Jordan shaves her head, badgers high command not to give her preferential treatment (which is technically preferential treatment if they heed her request) and goes balls deep with the boys climbing obstacles and being shouted at by Master Chief Urgayle (Viggo Mortensen, with a faggoty little mustache and testosterone levels so dangerously high his balls are not just navy blue, they’re Navy SEAL blue).

To ensure we don’t mistake Jordan for a lesbian (a mortal sin in military parlance) or a feminazi (slightly less mortal), the story sets her up with a nominal army boyfriend in another sector. (Don’t Ask Don’t Tell but shove this gutless aside in our faces just in case…)

Totally ironic Jordan should want to prove she has nuts in an organization which is intrinsically one big penis inferiority complex. Why else do they loooove shooting off those big, big guns?

She lobbies for her “right” to share the sleeping quarters with the men, do pushups man-style and flaunt her implant juggernauts in the showers. And for the life of me, I don’t know what she is trying to prove. Let me get this straight: she DOESN’T want to get gang-raped, right? And you can bet if the men actually DO treat her like One Of The Boys, without askew glances, without flirty comments, totally flensing themselves of the desire to grab her jugaloos, she’ll be the first to whine that she’s not being treated like a woman!

Has it occurred to women that the double standards they complain about are brought about by themselves?

At one point, Master Chief Urgayle steps in on Jordan while she’s showering, to give her a message, looking over her nudity casually, like he’s too cool for frickin’ school, while she’s in prescribed Penthouse Posedown position (it’s a fact that all women shower in runway-model poses) – and what exactly are we meant to derive from this encounter: that he is taking her seriously because he is not trying to pick her up?; that he regards her as one of the boys because he has no erection?; that he’s insulting her by looking at her naked? I’m telling you – I missed the boat on this hypocrisy.

In PULP FICTION, John Travolta espouses how certain interactions between men and women, though regarded as casual, have much more sensual import than even pornography: “I’ve given a million ladies a million foot massages – and they all meant something. We act like they don’t, but they do. That’s what’s so fuckin’ cool about it. There’s a sensuous thing goin’ on where, y’know, you don’t talk about it, but – you know it, she knows it…”

Hmm, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Just go with the honey flow.

So in this state of high libido, Jordan is handcuffed and bashed in a combat exercise by Master Chief (there’s a penis envy title if ever there was one, created by grown men with the mentality of frightened, entitled little boys). We supposedly turn a corner here. After the thorough bashing (with – you guessed it – simulated rape), instead of washing out of Navy SEAL School For Meatheads, Jordan defiantly taunts Master Chief, “Suck my dick!” And a cheer goes up from all the men. Yay! Jordan has a dick at last! Now we can all get some sleep.

Even when Jordan passes training, Viggo’s sadomasochistic Master Chief continues to be skeptical that she will make a good soldier, constantly riding her, “You’ll never be able to drag a man out of combat.” Upon consulting our Screenwriter Handbook, we see the flow chart denotes that she will ultimately drag Master Chief Bondage and Discipline himself out of combat. This she does, in the most contrived war scenes ever committed to film since Meg Ryan pretended to fly a chopper into a hot zone in COURAGE UNDER FIRE (1996).

So what does THAT prove? That she’s equal to a man? What does equality even mean when women cite it? How would the human race continue if women and men were the same psychologically and physically? We ARE different – live with it! If you don’t believe me, look two feet below your jawline – oh! A vagina and womb! Not better, not worse. Not equal, not unequal. Different.

Every time women claim they “want equality with men,” they mean “superiority over men.”

As illustrated by this ever-recurring scenario: So she’s granted equal pay, equal privileges, and god knows, she’s allowed to take her panties down in the same bathroom as the boys – THEN – she gets pregnant. And wants six months off work WITH THE SAME PAY AND PRIVILEGES! Which Hypocrite Queen said that was sane? Further, extolling pregnancy as some kind of “miracle” (again, for the sole purpose of making herself superior to men) – which it isn’t. It complies with all natural laws; nothing supernatural about it. And a billion species on Earth are giving birth even as she is yammering about how superior she is and how miraculous she’s become.

G.I. JANE’s plot of Jordan applying to be a United States Navy SEAL (Sea, Air and Land) is set in motion by a politician (Anne Bancroft) pulling strings. (Hmm, is that not “preferential treatment”?) In real life, the number one qualification is: be male. Let’s face it, women would never be allowed into the SEALs. There’d be no troops left – all the gay guys would leave.

Tyne Daly in THE ENFORCER (1976), fought alpha male Harry Callahan every step of the way to accept her femininity-yet-independence. Every time Dirty Harry asked if she could handle the situations they got into, her catchphrase was, “Don’t concern yourself,” meaning, Don’t give me a break. But the fact you’re here means you’ve been given a break.

And that’s why this movie is so unimportant. Its very existence puts woman on a pedestal, thereby promoting her “superiority” from the get-go. It is giving women a break by featuring them as superior to men. It does nothing for and says nothing about female discrimination; in the patriarchal American Military there is innate discrimination even after the point where the men have supposedly accepted Jordan as an equal. And let’s face it: men only “allow” women the perception of equality – to get into their pants.

And we must question exactly what motivates Jordan to be this attention whore in the first place. Is it a misguided “duty to her country”? Like the rest of the grunts, she can do much more productive work for her country by NOT becoming an inculcated legal murderer (i.e. Navy SEAL).

Surprising that G.I. JANE is written by a woman, Danielle Alexandra (with David Twohy). Not surprisingly, directed by a man, Ridley Scott. Surprisingly, each sex didn’t do their sex justice.

G.I. JANE should really give you a hard-on. If you’re a woman.

END

Serial-licious.

Serial killer. Not a sympathetic role, but in MR. BROOKS, Kevin Costner dives into the psychotic title character with a violinist’s verve. His killings are orgasmic; his planning, meticulous; his wife and daughter, oblivious. His alter ego, so well-defined it’s William Hurt.

And that’s why we love him so. Writers Bruce A. Evans (also director) and Raynold Gideon make Mr. Brooks (Costner) the Good Guy and his alter-ego the villain. Hurt is Marshall, the bestial, bloodthirsty voice in Mr. Brooks’s head, except he’s not in his head – both Mr. Brooks and we the audience see Marshall as a separate entity.

Denial, thy name is Displacement.

MR. BROOKS opens with Mr. Brooks winning one of those Man of the Year Awards that mean nothing, bequeathed by the city of Portland, Oregon. After the ceremony, instead of sealing the night with a Plonk of the Year with his hot MILF wife with no pores (Marg Helgenberger), Mr. Brooks skulks off, at the urging of Marshall, to murder a young couple.

Efficiently – but for one thing. The drapes are left open. And a young photographer across the way (Dane Cook), who has been covertly snapping away at the young couple in Coitus Reversus Cowboyus captures Mr. Brooks in Orgasmus Killus.

From the Miscasting Agency:
Rich dicks playing rich dicks

Next day, the photographer visits Mr. Brooks and – instead of the blackmail we think is coming – asks to be taken along on the next kill! Dane Cook (known for his goofball standup comedy and Idiot Boyfriend roles) seems an unlikely off-kilter headcase, but he does a reasonable job – not exactly inhabiting the role, always one exclamation away from blathering, “Oh God! I’m in a film with Kevin Costner and William Hurt!”

Speaking of miscast: Demi Moore, as a detective on the trail of Mr. Brooks. Her unnecessary backstory of a rich cop who just loves the job doesn’t help her credibility when we consider the most prominent example of this millionaire-funning-as-cop is from TANGO AND CASH.

Mr. Brooks attends AA meetings as if to pass off his psychosis like an addiction, admitting at his Meetings, “I’m an addict,” but leaving it at that, never “sharing” what he is addicted to, or how he is succeeding in subsuming his addiction.

The movie plays Mr. Brooks’s compulsion almost like a “disease”; like it can be explained away as snidely as that alcoholics’ excuse.

Costner also served in Eastwood’s magnificent A PERFECT WORLD, which asked the same thematic questions pertaining to crime: Nature or Nurture. PERFECT WORLD came down on the side of “Nurture” – his character’s anti-social nature in that film was molded by his environment. MR. BROOKS says the opposite – sociopaths are born, not made. We marvel at how Costner now plays the mirror image of his character in PERFECT WORLD, as clinical, controlled, and with as much conviction of his innocence as PERFECT WORLD’s molded misanthrope.

Add a dash of William Hurt psycho, and it is a guilty-as-first-degree-murder pleasure to see these two giants play off each other.

When Mr. Brooks’s daughter (Danielle Panabaker) returns home from college unexpectedly, Brooks discovers a dirty little secret about her that makes daddy kinda proud, yet annoyed that he has to employ his veteran psycho methodology to clean up the mess she has run away from.

The MPAA usually doesn’t let killers off the hook, so it is an unexpected pleasure to watch MR. BROOKS unfold to a shocking, yet satisfying ending. Two words: knife, throat.

Psycho-licious.

END

“Hi, we’re here for the Shrikes On Bikes event.”

Too much style IS a bad thing.

Despite the consensus that Cameron Diaz wantonly proffering her backside like a baboon in estrus makes for good cinema, my existence would be incalculably enhanced if I never witness this repulsive rectal display cloaked in ostensible good-natured humor ever again in my short span on this earth.

CHARLIE’S ANGELS: FULL THROTTLE is so plastic, it hurt my teeth. There is a plot somewhere, but they forgot to film it. There is a movie somewhere amidst all the explosions and over-lighting and inane dialogue, but everyone forgot to act in it.

Soft-porn Poffy

Which boat did I miss? Why are these puerile, cardboard doxies regarded as screen goddesses?; heroines for an arse-tattooed generation of over-fed, class-less, prepubescent, poorly-educated future streetwalkers? The just-plain-ugly Lucy Liu, the matron-plump, lisping, graceless Drew Barrymore and the flat-plastic Cameron Diaz, who’s idiot-grinning and asinine booty-shaking every ten minutes reaches stratospheric ludicrousness unequaled by the worst Ed Wood or Godzilla movie. None of these tarts is in the least appealing to me as a procreative heterosexual male.The Hammer dance? And all that imbecilic giggling? Only minimum-wage flunkies slaving over fast-food counters and born-again christians exhibit such a surfeit of fake sincerity. Either stop all that laughing and hugging on the couch – or continue along this pornographic thread that you yourselves have instigated – and give us a payoff. But at PG-13, as long as there are no swear words, simply insert as much lewd innuendo as possible and slide it past the feeble-minded censorship board.

Over-riding my desire to slap these three emasculating shrikes was the yearning to cudgel every half-wit who greenlit, funded, created and marketed this monstrous cinematic trash which, due to its distribution budget, has ingrained itself deeper into the world culture than the name of penicillin’s discoverer. (Alexander Fleming, on the off-chance you can tear your eyes from Diaz’s baboon rectum on display yet again.)

The unsophisticates may opine: “But it’s all in fun – it’s entertainment!” Well, so is overdosing on heroin, which is what this film’s barf-inducing action sequences resemble. The opening scene, in which the Angels run a truck carrying a helicopter off a bridge and then climb into the helicopter and fire its ignition and fly off (all within a 100-foot drop to a river) is enough to discern that this movie is definitively purely for the plastic popcorn and cardboard hot dog brigade (i.e. the swell of the bell-curve of movie-going audiences who have no discernment – for cuisine or film-making). And the Great Unwashed rise up in indignation, unwilling to be classified as bovine enough to be deceived into paying to be exploited – yet – how else did a movie aiming for low intelligence ever manage to make the amount of money it extracted from the viewing public?

The paradox: Director McG’s target demographic (4 to 7 year olds with an attention span no greater than 12 seconds exactly – the longest interval of time which ever elapses in this movie without an over-tweaked explosion, unrealistic wire stunt, CGI-drenched “action” sequence, irrelevant slomo passage, or gratuitous soft-porn allusion) will never have the perception to fathom the musical and visual cultural references which the movie is bloated with: The Sound Of Music, KC & The Sunshine Band, The Pink Panther, Flashdance, the Cape Fear remake, etc. Almost every sequence becomes a wink to the audience, as McG gets swallowed by his own anus by trying way too hard to impress upon his viewers that he’s in on these gags as well. His groveling as a sycophant far outweighs his talents as a film-maker.

Did anyone else notice the 20 million watts of obvious stage lighting on all characters all the time especially when they’re out in the sunlight and they don’t need it? Are we to consider that these hounds are so freakin’ beautiful that we wouldn’t want to miss one inch of their bootylicious backsides or frontsides in realistic shadow?

And speaking of bootylicious frontsides, the ab-crunched, testosterone-drenched Demi Moore appears in the movie solely to display her nakedness to Ashton Kutcher’s jealous mates in a socially-acceptable forum. Lord knows, she’ll never actually deign to ever visit a beach to do so – if you think these Hollywood starlets get their all-over tans by gadding about in natural sunshine, you must also believe that any film with over seven explosions in its 30-second trailer is a movie worth seeing.

John Cleese is the film’s only saving grace (along with Bruce Willis’ 30-second cameo), but Cleese’s screentime is diluted by his interaction with the mannequin Matt LeBlanc. LeBlanc should be thanking his goat-headed gods that he actually got the opportunity to even stand alongside the icon Cleese, let alone share screentime with him. The downside to appearing alongside Cleese was, of course, that it proved beyond a doubt that Matt LeBlanc isn’t really an actor. Or funny. Or ever has been. And should probably be put out of his misery like the hoss that he is.

A lot of sugar went into making this sour ipecac seem sweet. If I could just purloin one god-given opportunity to wrap my fingers around their collective throats, I’d illustrate the proper method to execute a FULL THROTTLE.

END
Orig: Dec 2004