Jane Heller

New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Author

Movie Day: “The Big Short”

TheBigShort

I didn’t read Michael Lewis’ bestseller about the credit and housing bubble collapse and subsequent bailout of the big banks, but I couldn’t wait to see the movie on which it was based. What a cast. What rave reviews. What a saga.

Financial terminology makes my eyes glaze over and I’m an idiot when it comes to math, so I didn’t expect to understand everything that was going on in the movie – and I didn’t. But I understood enough of the big picture to get that director Adam McKay, who’s better known for his Will Ferrell comedies, came up with an ingenious way to tell a true story that’s full of financial mumbo jumbo, doesn’t have any heroes, and certainly doesn’t have a happy ending.

Basically, Christian Bale plays Dr. Michael Burry, a socially inept genius who quit medicine to start Scion Capital, where he figured out that American housing was built on a bubble that was about to burst. His investments in subprime home mortgages gets the attention of a cocky, ambitious Wall Streeter named Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling), who explains it all to fellow investments broker Mark Baum (Steve Carrell). Baum has a complicated relationship with his job and his life (he’s in group therapy to come to terms with his brother’s death), but follows Burry and Vennett’s strategy even as he knows it could bring the country to its knees. As I said, there are no winners here and it’s hard to care about any of the characters. But McKay presents them in a unique, fast-paced style that drew me. (He uses amusing cameos by Margot Robbie, Anthony Bordain and Selina Gomez to explain technical terms to the audience.) The result is that I was furious all over again about how corrupt our financial system is and how all those assholes took the country down and never went to jail for it.

As with most movies I see lately, “The Big Short” had several places where it could have ended (directors seem allergic to the word “cut”), and it dragged on too long for my taste. A bearded Brad Pitt, whose Plan B Productions produced the film as it did with “Moneyball,” has some cool scenes as the voice of reason, and it’s always good to see Marisa Tomei and Melissa Leo even in small roles. Overall, the movie was very entertaining, and some of the dialogue was laugh-out-loud funny. The first film to show us exactly how such a heinous chapter in America’s history happened, “The Big Short” is a must-see.

 

Movie Day: "Fury"

Fury movie poster

Cinema Society showed a screening this morning of the new WWII movie starring Brad Pitt, and I actually skipped it.

I know, right? A Brad Pitt movie that I didn’t care much about seeing? It was hard for me to believe too, but there it is. I’m not a huge fan of war movies, not because of the violence but because they can be too straight-forward and simplistic, in the same way that cop movies can, and the reviews I read for “Fury” only confirmed my thinking.

Michael went though and reported the following: “Good call on your part. You didn’t miss much.”

Yes, Brad was excellent, he said, but there was nothing special about the story, which I’ll let the studio describe:

April, 1945. As the Allies make their final push in the European Theatre, a battle-hardened army sergeant named Wardaddy (Brad Pitt) commands a Sherman tank and her five-man crew on a deadly mission behind enemy lines. Outnumbered and outgunned, and with a rookie soldier thrust into their platoon, Wardaddy and his men face overwhelming odds in their heroic attempts to strike at the heart of Nazi Germany.

I feel a little guilty about missing the screening because the writer-director, David Ayer, had come for the Q&A session afterward, but hey. I got a lot of writing done during those two hours. I’m learning that I don’t have to sit through every movie or read every book, and the notion is liberating. That said, our Cinema Society has some fabulous films coming up and I can’t wait to go to those screenings. We’re getting such festival darlings as “Birdman,” “The Theory of Everything,” “The Imitation Game” and “Mr. Turner.” And that’s just between now and Thanksgiving. December is a big month for Oscar contenders too.

Meanwhile, here’s the trailer for “Fury.” Good cast. Reasonable premise. But if I’m seeing a WWII movie, I’ll take “Inglourious Basterds” and its dark humor any day.

 

Golden Globes 2012: Kind Of Boring/Kind Of Entertaining

I was expecting more fireworks from Ricky Gervais (that was the point, wasn’t it – to get us to watch?), but his jokes were pretty tame this year. Tame and mostly not funny. Plus, here on the West Coast he was bleeped a few times, which I found annoying (thanks a lot, NBC).

The stars showed up as they always do at the Globes. Where else do they get food and alcohol, not to mention nominations for projects that wouldn’t ordinarily get nominated? (Can you say Madonna?)

My favorite moment of the show had nothing to do with the awards. It was when Felicity Huffman and Bill Macy sang a duet. I love those two.

Michael’s favorite moment was the appearance (all too brief in his opinion) of Michelle Pfeiffer, his fantasy woman.

As for fashion statements, I found the following to be head scratchers:

What was a pretty girl like Jessica Biel doing in a dress that made her look like a cross between a drowned bride and a tablecloth?

And then there was…

Her dress had a lot going on, but in spite of all its distractions I focused on her arms. I’m all for being toned and fit, but she needs to cover up those tree trunks.

I usually like Reese Witherspoon’s look, but…

But this was an awards show, not a day at the beach, and her hair was messy to me. And why the dark roots?

Michelle Williams may have been trying not to look like her Marilyn Monroe character, but…

Did she have to go all Peter Pan on us?

As for Brangelina, I don’t know what they were thinking…

She looked a bit severe – like a queen of hearts playing card. And I prefer him clean shaven. Still, they’re one glamorous couple.

 

 

Movie Night: "The Tree Of Life"

What a perfect movie to see over the Christmas holiday, since Terence Malick’s masterpiece (yes, I’m using the “m” word) probes the mysteries of God, life, death, the universe – no entertainment trifle here by any means.

I expected to hate the movie. It won at Cannes and has been on many critics’ “Best” lists, but it sounded so pretentious and many of my friends said, “The cinematography is beautiful but nothing much happens.”

Nothing much does happen over the movie’s two-plus hours unless you consider watching the most arresting images ever on screen to be “nothing.” As far as plot, there is some. Jessica Chastain and Brad Pitt are the parents of three young boys in ’50s Waco, Texas. We learn early on that one of the boys dies years later. What the story really tackles, though, are The Big Questions:

Who is God?

Where is He?

Can he see us? Hear us?

How does life begin and end?

Is there an afterlife?

Are we reunited with our dead loved ones at some point?

I know, I know. Movies are supposed to have car chases. What this one has is the curious mind of Terence Malick, who goes for it in the same way Stanley Kubrick went for it in “2001.” We’re made to think. We’re made to feel. We’re made to watch. (Those images are probably even better while stoned or tripping, but those days are over for me.)

I was blown away.

 

 

Still Not Fixed

Actually, it’s not my computer that’s down; I just liked that picture. It’s this blog. We haven’t been able to solve the problem of not being able to comment.

Which means I can post but not get any feedback, and it’s like talking to myself.

Oh, well.

I was disappointed that tonight’s game was rained out. I had planned my whole day around it. I went to an early showing of “Moneyball” so I’d be back by 4 o’clock Pacific Time. But no game. And since the Rays lost to the Jays, that pretty much guarantees the Red Sox are the Wild Card team. Ugh.

As for “Moneyball,” I liked it but didn’t love it.

I loved looking at Brad Pitt for two-plus hours. I loved all the references to and clips of the Yankees. I even loved that the Yankees as an organization were portrayed as the big, bad, rich villains. I also think the screenwriters did a great job of making the subject both film-worthy and user-friendly; the word “sabermetrics” is never mentioned and nobody rambles on about OBP or stats of any sort. Instead, the movie is about bucking the system and being successful, with the “system” in this case being baseball.

What I didn’t love was the pace of the film; it’s slow in parts.

But the oddest thing of all was that I’m a baseball fan and yet I found the baseball scenes boring. Maybe I’ve seen one too many shots through the years of somebody hitting a home run with the ball sailing over a stadium in slow motion while the music swells.

Here’s the trailer in case people haven’t seen it.

Anyhow, I hope the weather in the Bronx clears and there will be a game tomorrow.

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