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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Kraven The Hunter (2024)

Now that I have FINALLY got into reading some of the many comics that have proven to be such fertile ground for Hollywood, I tend to know a number of the characters I would have never even heard of years ago. Which explains why I ended up looking forward to Kraven The Hunter, another of the Sony movies making use of a Spider-Man character without having Spider-Man actually in the movie. I have read the earliest comics to feature Kraven The Hunter, and I thought that he was an entertaining character who could be placed in a fun movie. Of course, that opinion was affected by knowing that he was to be played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson (I'm not really a fan), but I still decided that I would try to have some fun.

The plot is tosh, a mess of a script written by Richard Wenk, Art Marcum, and Matt Holloway (all the more disappointing because of how much I love some of Richard Wenk's directorial work), but it essentially gives us the origin story of the title character, someone who uses his powerful animalistic skillset to hunt poachers and villains. Once he sets his sights on someone, that person is as good as dead, and the highlight of this film is the determination and savagery with which Kraven despatches those who end up on his bad side.

Director J. C. Chandor isn't used to working with this kind of material, but he does a decent enough job with some of the action moments. Maybe I'm just worn down from the bad stuff that we've seen from Sony over the past few years, but this never seemed as bad as anything else they've given us. The CGI is uneven, but not completely awful, and Kraven feels as if he has proper teeth and claws. There just isn't enough here to distract people from a fairly wea script, and a large part of that is to do with the eminently forgettable villains (there are at least three, but only one works, and that's Russell Crowe, enjoyably hamming things up with another accent in the role of Aleksei Sistevich, the father of our "hero").

Taylor-Johnson is okay in the role, trying to maintain a serious face in the middle of some ridiculous moments, but there's always someone better available for pretty much every role he gets. Someone with a bit more charisma, and maybe someone better able to convey humour, would have been welcome, although I'm not sure I could give any specific examples. As I've just said, Crowe is fun, but that's all the praise I can offer. Poor Ariana DeBose tries hard in a thankless role, as a woman named Calypso who ends up helping Kraven more than once, Fred Hechinger barely registers as Dmitri (Kraven's brother), and both Alessandro Nivola and Christopher Abbott play the other two main villains, forgettable as soon as they're offscreen).

This isn't great, but it's polished and entertaining in a way that the previous film in this flop-tastic movie series wasn't. I didn't have a terrible time, and the fact that this ended up taking even less at the box office than either Morbious or Madame Web feels slightly unfair. It's certainly not anywhere close to being as bad as the latter. I wish some better decisions had been made, but I also know that I could easily sit down and rewatch this without feeling the overwhelming urge to rip off my own head. How's that for a ringing endorsement?

6/10

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