Prime Time: Margin Call (2011)

Another film that I had heard praised often over the past decade or so, Margin Call is a snapshot of the very beginning of the 2008 financial crisis. Okay, maybe not the VERY beginning, which was actually far back when financial institutions started to get more carefree and cocky with their ability to repackage and resell major debts, but it's certainly the day that saw a shockwave ripple through the world of finance. As we call all see now though, no permanent change came from this, at least nothing notable to stop the rich exploiting the market to get even richer while the relatively poor majority get left to pick up the pieces whenever a bubble bursts. So Margin Call feels a bit more sour as a viewing experience because of that knowledge.

Just as he's being removed from his key position in an investment bank, Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci) passes some of his work over to Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto) and asks him to look into it. Sullivan does, and what he finds makes him talk it over with Will Emerson (Paul Bettany), who passes it up the chain to Sam Rogers (Kevin Spacey), Jared Cohen (Simon Baker), and, where the buck ultimately stops, John Tuld (Jeremy Irons). Things are set to become very bad, and there will need to be a sacrifice. Will it be Eric, or will it be the tough and ready-for-a-fight Sarah Robertson (Demi Moore).

Margin Call works well by spelling out the circumstances that helped to create the perfect storm that upset everything back in 2008. Viewers may not get every nuance and detail, but there's always enough to at least get some tenuous grasp on (helped by one character specifically asking to have the whole thing explained to him as if he was a child). Writer-director J. C. Chandor knows how to convey the required information, and he also delivers a number of exchanges that reveal the motivations and environment that these main characters are used to, but he also seems to have delivered something that could easily be read as "won't someone think of the poor bankers?" Maybe I am misreading a number of scenes, but it's hard to find any sympathy for characters who are either due to be handsomely rewarded while the rest of the world falls into financial ruin or simply start whining because they won't stay on track to make the millions that they've been dreaming about for some time.

The cast are all very good, at least there's that. Quinto is particularly enjoyable, and his performance here reminded me of how much more I would like to see him do. Tucci is never bad, Spacey works well, and Baker, Moore, and Irons are all very believable. It's Bettany who steals the movie though, even outshining Quinto. Whether providing a running commentary on the unfolding situation or helping to prepare his colleagues for whatever fate might await them, Bettany is able to be mesmerising and charming without working hard to make his character particularly likable.

There's nothing I can really fault, not when it comes to the dialogue and the performances, but personal preference means that I would recommend a number of other movies ahead of this, movies that quite rightly point to those exploiting the situation and blaming them for making a bad time even worse for many other innocent (and not-so-innocent) parties.

7/10

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The Beekeeper (2024)

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this Jason Statham vehicle, especially with director David Ayer working from a script by Kurt Wimmer, and, as the credits rolled, I still wasn’t really sure what I had just watched. Was it good? Was every choice a deliberate one? Was I supposed to care about a twist I could see coming a mile away? I was sure of one thing though. I had fun with it.

Statham is the titular beekeeper, minding his hives and minding his own business. He is invited to dinner by a kindly woman he knows (Phylicia Rashad), but only finds a corpse when he gets there. The woman has been scammed by hackers, losing all of her money and all of the money that belonged to a charity organisation she worked for. Raging at the injustice, Statham decides to return to his role of Beekeeper aka a super-deadly agent who works to protect the hive. The bodies soon start to pile up as the beekeeping analogy is used over and over again, and Statham has to face overwhelming odds on the way to his final target.

What you get here is ridiculous, but it is all being handled by people who seem to know it is ridiculous, whether they are onscreen or behind the camera. As often as I rolled my eyes, I was also smiling at the mix of extreme violence and goofy plotting.

Wimmer should never be a first choice for any screenplay, I won’t traumatise anyone again by mentioning some of his past “glories”, but his material is improved here by a game cast all very aware of what they have gotten themselves into.

Is Ayer a safe pair of hands when it comes to the action? I would say yes. Set-pieces could be smoother, but there is some inventiveness in each main sequence, and he doesn’t allow for the film to be over-edited into incomprehensibility. He could do better, but we have seen the results of him doing a lot worse.

It’s worth remembering, however, that neither Wimmer nor Ayer will be the big draw here (although they do have their fans). This film is being sold as a Statham vehicle, and it delivers on that front. Our leading man has a lot of fun here, doing his usual gruff and deadly schtick, and there’s a real feeling of glee as he throws subtlety to the win at the very start of the film, portraying a character so sure of himself that he will often just enter any confrontation head-on, even telling villains exactly what he is planning to do next. On his tail are two cops (played by Emmy Raver-Lampman and Bobby Naderi), one being the daughter of the deceased, and they are good extra obstacles for The Stath, who doesn’t want to harm anyone innocent. Both Raver-Lampman and Naderi do well in roles that could have been eminently forgettable, especially when interacting with the villains. Ahhhhh, the villains. This is another big plus for the film, especially when Josh Hutcherson swaggers around as some kind of ultimate douche-bro. If you start to suspect that Hutcherson’s character belongs in a ‘90s movie, you will have that suspicion confirmed in a final act that brings on a character named Lazarus (Taylor James) who could have easily been in one of the first two Lethal Weapon movies. Although playing very different types of baddies, Hutcherson and James are equally fun for every minute of their screentime. The same can be said of David Witts, and there is some amusing scenery-chewing from Jeremy Irons, Minnie Driver (in a brief cameo role), and Jemma Redgrave.

Not necessarily an essential cinema viewing, The Beekeeper is an entertaining action flick that feels enjoyably “old school”, in terms of the characters and plotting, without also feeling as if it is trying too hard. Funny and violent, making much better use of Statham than a couple of other recent releases I could mention, this might just give you the action movie buzz you seek.

7/10

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Mubi Monday: Lolita (1997)

I am not familiar with the tale of Lolita, having somehow never seen the film by Stanley Kubrick, or even read the source novel by Vladimir Nabokov. All I knew about it is what most people know about it. There's something at the heart of it that involves an older man and an underage girl. Yeah, if you've spent the past week or so getting upset about Cuties then you may want to stop reading now.

Jeremy Irons plays Humbert Humbert, a gentleman who ends up residing as a lodger in the home of Charlotte Haze (Melanie Griffith) and her young daughter, Dolores "Lolita" Haze (Dominique Swain). Swiftly growing infatuated with the child, Humbert eventually marries Charlotte, all the while scheming to do the minimum he has to do, in terms of his husbandly duties, and keep himself available to Lolita. Things do not go well in the marriage, of course, but that leads to a period of time during which Humbert and Lolita can give in to their distasteful urges.

I'm struggling to fully balance out my thoughts on Lolita. It is not a film I enjoyed, not one bit, and I am struggling to figure out the appeal of the source material, which perhaps makes some points lost in the adaptation from page to screen by Stephen Schiff (in what seems to be his first credited writing role). I guess, considering the third act, it's about a man so oblivious to how wrong his behaviour is that he needs to find someone worse than himself to help him find some kind of redemption.

Everyone involves deserves credit for giving it a try, even in 1997 this wasn't exactly something that moviegoers would be rushing to see, and the fact that it tries very hard to walk a tightrope between the intriguing and the disgusting is enough to remind you that no small amount of effort was exerted to get this done.

Director Adrian Lyne shoots things in a way that is either passive or, worse, lingering from the POV of Humbert. He places you alongside the main character, who has the benefit of being so well portrayed by Irons, and gives you nowhere to hide, even as things become darker and more sordid.

As well as a top-notch performance from Irons, Swain does well in the titular role. Her character is often very annoying, and treats the people around her quite appallingly, but she's a child being a child, even when she has moments of trying to act like a woman. She never is, and that point is emphasised at every turn, even when viewing her through the eyes of Humbert, who views her in a different way from everyone else. Griffith has a limited amount of screentime, but does well with it, and there are a couple of scenes stolen by Frank Langella.

The more I think about Lolita, the less I like it. That's not really the fault of the film though. I found the central idea too disturbing, as it was intended to be, but I also appreciated watching something that proved to be such a strong challenge. Not to sound too pretentious, but that can happen sometimes with art. A strong averse reaction can be just as rewarding, in some ways, as a strong connection to the material. The worst thing that any art can do is leave you disengaged, and Lolita certainly doesn't allow you to view it without becoming engaged.

The technical side of things is generally decent enough, and the performances give it a boost, but I hope to never watch this again. I will, however, check out the Kubrick film one day. And I may see how the novel presents things.

5/10

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Red Sparrow (2018)

Although I didn't really dislike Red Sparrow while it was on, it's not a film I can wholeheartedly recommend to anyone, mainly because of the way it constantly wavers between being too slick and neat and being bloody and faux-gritty.

Jennifer Lawrence plays Dominika, a Russian ballerina who ends up struggling after an injury cuts her promising career short. She is then approached by her uncle (Matthias Schoenaerts) with a job offer - seduce a local gangster. That job ends in death, and Dominika is then given the option of either training to become an intelligence agent or being killed, to ensure there are no witnesses left. It's not much of a choice, and Dominika also has an ill mother (Joely Richardson) to consider. She starts her training, which soon puts her at odds with those around her, due to her strong will and determination, and then ends up heading to Budapest, where she meets an American agent (Nate, played by Joel Edgerton) who may end up being able to help her with her predicament. Or maybe she will just do her job, leaving a number of corpses in her week.

Directed by Francis Lawrence, Red Sparrow is certainly an ambitious film, considering the attempt to make an old-fashioned spy movie that will appeal to a wider age range than most. Lawrence did a decent job of mixing pure entertainment with interesting psychological moments in his three movies that made up three of the four The Hunger Games series so it's a shame that he can't do just as well here. Perhaps some of the fault lies with the script, by Justin Haythe, or perhaps the source material, written by Jason Matthews, was just never suited to what feels like a more sanitised telling of the story (despite a few strong moments).

Lawrence does a good job in the lead role, and her accent remains consistently impressive throughout. She's given good support by other fine Russians, such as Richardson, Charlotte Rampling,  Ciaran Hinds, and Jeremy Irons (obviously all picked for their talent and name recognition, as opposed to their actual . . . Russian-ness). Schoenaerts feels more obviously authentic, despite being Belgian, and he does a lot with a role that could have easily been either a pantomime villain or just a forgettable plot device.

Red Sparrow gets a few things right. The performances, the generally clean shot compositions and style (this is not a film for anyone looking out for the next Bourne), a lot of the plotting. But it doesn't ever do anything to make it stand out, cinematically, and the 140-minute runtime feels overlong by a good 20-30 minutes. But it's that inconsistent approach to the material that probably harms it the most. There are scenes that Lawrence knows can't be shown to be cool or sexy, he'd be in big trouble if he tried, but then he tries to keep everything moving along in between those scenes by utilising the star power of his leading lady, who inevitably comes across at times as, well, cool and sexy. It stops the film from having one true identity throughout.

Worth a watch, I'm just not sure of anyone who will love it, and I can't see it being one that anyone will choose to revisit more than once or twice.

6/10

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High-Rise (2015)

Based on yet another "unfilmable" novel by J. G. Ballard, High-Rise has been a film that many people have been trying to bring to the screen for decades. The man who finally succeeded where others failed is director Ben Wheatley, helped along by a screenplay by Amy Jump.

The plot sees a man named Laing (Tom Hiddleston) moving into a modern apartment block (aka a fancy block of flats) in 1970s England. The block is full of amenities and luxuries, but only those higher up in the building get to access more of the good stuff, turning the whole building into an obvious microcosm of society. And when people start to upset the order of how things should be, it's not long until the whole environment devolves into an anarchic mix of violence, debauchery, and death.

The thing that threw me about this film is how quickly viewers are thrown into some outright strangeness. Even the earlier scenes, which are supposed to be showing normal life in the apartment block, are just plain odd. And then things go from 0-100 very quickly, with oddness turning into the bizarre and then the absolutely insane. I kept wondering what I had missed, or what scenes had been excised in the editing process and never put back where they should have been. Then I stopped wondering about it. I just started to enjoy the atmosphere of the film, immersing myself in the environment, which is when I started to appreciate everything that this had going for it.

First of all, even by his own standards, this is impressively ambitious directing from Wheatley, managing to make the central building seem both like an entire city and also like a horribly claustrophobic cocoon, depending on just how well things are going. He also keeps all the character shots and cinematography in the strange retro-futuristic style of the apartment block.

The script by Jump may be a muddled mess at times, and that's hard to deny, but it's also full of cutting lines, great individual moments, and a smoke-filled, languid, atmosphere that becomes hazier and hazier as the minds of the central characters start to fray and break.

Then you have the cast. Hiddleston is great in his role, barely holding on to his precarious position in the building from the very beginning, and there are also fantastic performances from Elisabeth Moss, Luke Evans, Peter Ferdinando, and Jeremy Irons, the latter as the architect of the building and the top resident (of course). Sienna Miller, James Purefoy, Keeley Hawes, and Reece Shearsmith also lend solid support, each one playing a memorable resident who may be for or against Hiddleston's place in the heirarchy of the structure.

This isn't a film to watch if you want an easy ride, and it's not even one to watch if you need something that makes sense throughout. It's a dazzling, dizzying, strange experience. Almost like leaning over the top balcony of a tower block and looking down through a kaleidoscope. While other people throw protesting victims over to meet their gravity-hastened demise. And of course I mean that as a compliment.

8/10

Get the disc here.
American friends can pick it up here.

Justice League (2017)

Messy is the word to use with most of the major DC movies we have seen in the last few years. Ever since Man Of Steel seemed to sorely misjudge the very essence of Superman, fans have been worried about those in charge making too many mis-steps, which has since been confirmed by, well, numerous mis-steps. Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice actually didn't seem too bad the last time I watched it, redeemed by some impressive action scenes and fun individual moments, Suicide Squad was actually FUN, which I wasn't expecting, albeit very messy fun (has any blockbuster film used clips of music so erratically?), and Wonder Woman almost made up for everything else, despite a climactic battle that felt a bit disappointing.

And now we finally have Justice League, the film that you know DC have been wanting to give fans from the very beginning. The film responsible for the messy, rushed approach to their release timetable. And, whaddyaknow, it's messy. But it's almost entertaining enough to make it an enjoyable mess.

The silly plot sees a big baddie named Steppenwolf (impressive CGI voiced by Ciaran Hinds) coming back to Earth to collect a few cubes that will cause devastation and death if linked together for long enough. It's up to Bruce Wayne/Batman (Ben Affleck) to put together a team. He knows that he can get help from Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), but also wants to recruit Aquaman (Jason Momoa), The Flash (Ezra Miller), and Cyborg (Ray Fisher). But will they be enough?

Directed by Zack Snyder (for the most part), Justice League continues in the dark visual style that was set up back in Man Of Steel. Thankfully, that style doesn't mean that the script, by Joss Whedon and Chris Terrio, is too sombre and humourless. A lot of the humour comes from the exuberance and inexperience of The Flash, but there are also some fun exchanges between Aquaman and the other team members.

Starting, suitably enough, with a flashback scene that shows Superman (Henry Cavill) talking to some kids who are filming him on a mobile phone, it's worth mentioning that the DC movies have already tried to give their superhero movies more weight than their Marvel counterparts. Ever since that major moment at the end of Man Of Steel, deaths mean something here, they impact on the characters (which didn't happen in the Marvel Cinematic Universe until the pieces needed to be put in place for Captain America: Civil War).

The performances are all decent enough, with Miller, Fisher, and Momoa feeling very comfortable in their roles and Affleck and Gadot suitable leaders, and everyone from the past few movies seems to get a moment or two: Diane Lane, Amy Adams, Jeremy Irons, Connie Nielsen, J. K. Simmons, and a few others.

The biggest problem with Justice League is how forced it all feels. The plotting often feels as if it was reverse engineered, with everyone involved knowing what the final scenes needed to be but not really knowing how to get there. That may not sound like a major issue, but it is. It allows the whole film to feel as if certain scenes are either completely extraneous or just put together in a slapdash manner to get elements in place.

To sum up then, Justice League does just enough to be a fun time at the cinema. And it's pretty messy.

7/10

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