The problem with many of the films examining the financial world is that they end up glamorising the traders who are supposed to be the villains. The obvious example would be Wall Street’s Gordon Gekko, but there is also the Ben Affleck character in Boiler Room and even Paul McGann’s in Dealers, the dreadful UK version of Wall Street. These men are nothing short of thieves and borderline psychotics, yet we end up being drawn into their glamorous lives, with the gold watches, designer clothes, cars and smart talking, and they always seem to get the girl.

Margin Call, to its credit, at least tries to be different. It’s a look at the 2008 financial crash told through one Wall Street firm and the people who work there, over 24 sweaty hours. It tries to examine the reasons why the crash happened, without over-glamorising the staff involved. It’s not entirely successful but compared to the Wall Street it’s far more measured – and there is at least a sense that ordinary people are going to suffer because of a few peoples’ rash actions.

Zachary Quinto plays Sullivan, a young risk assessment manager at a Wall St. investment bank. One morning the management decide to make some redundancies, including Stanley Tucci’s Dale who, on his way out of the building, hands Sullivan a computer memory stick with a model on it, asking the young buck to ‘take a look – and be careful’. Sullivan completes the model, and realises the firm is massively over-stretched and heading for total disaster.

He tells his boss (Paul Bettany), who tells his boss (Kevin Spacey), who tells his boss (Jeremy Irons), who decides to sell off everything the company owns. Spacey and Irons then have a debate which is at the heart of the film – Spacey, an old hand trader who believes in trust and a sense of decency, against Irons, the ruthless boss obsessed with survival. There are lots of lines which reveal how this could be allowed to happen – the financial world is unregulated, people buy and sell at will, people get conned and ripped off all the time, but Spacey’s character realises that the whole system is based on some sort of trust and belief – and if that goes, in his words, ‘it’s over’. Irons, who readily admits he is not the brightest and no mathematician, happily accepts the consequences, and orders Spacey to tell his staff to sell all of their assets, which are effectively valueless – thus ending most of the staff’s careers.

Where the film is at its strongest is in showing how this ‘shit-storm’ will produce casualties, as well as who manages to wriggle out of it and survive and who is doomed – cue cameos from Demi Moore, Simon Baker and the mighty Tucci, who, 12 hours after being sacked, is asked to come back in for the day.

Its weakness is in failing to really show how vital this issue is for so many people – by setting it in one specific firm it limits itself and never really gets terrifying enough – we are watching some rich dealers lose money, so what? It also fails to solve the filmic problem of how you make men in shirts looking at computer screens exciting, and there are some clumsy speeches along the lines of ‘I can’t read these computers – you tell me what’s going on’, presumably for us, the stupid audience. For one character to do it is fine, three seems a little stretched – and how can Irons run an investment bank and remain so utterly uninformed about finance?

At least we’re spared any daft ‘greed is good’ speeches, but the script could have done with a lot more polish and the direction much more pace and tension. That said, it’s still about the most palatable film set in Wall Street.

Overall Verdict: Flawed, dramatically slow but fresh and interesting look at the 2008 financial crisis, which is still affecting us all.

Reviewer: Mike Martin

Nobody divides popular opinion quite like former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. To some she is the nation’s saviour, who triumphed in the Cold War and saved the country from assorted lefties, Argentineans and trade unions, reversing decades of national decline. To others, her selfish and greedy policies wrecked our health service, schools and left a legacy of rising unemployment and crime from which we’ve never recovered.

Perhaps for this reason, large sections of this film avoid politics completely, instead focusing on the octogenarian Thatcher of today as she copes with the onset of old age, senility and comes to terms with the death of her beloved Denis (Jim Broadbent).

Streep is firmly in the Oscar class as the elderly Thatcher and Broadbent is great, if perhaps a lot more jolly and fun filled than one imagines the real Denis to have been. But it’s a shame that so much time is devoted to imagined ideas about the state of Thatcher’s mind, as the flashbacks (when they do finally get going) have so much material to include. We do, however, get a convincing sense of how Thatcher (initially played by Alexandra Roach) rises up from her lowly Grantham origins through the snooty smoky male dominated Westminster world, surprising everyone – including apparently herself – by eventually becoming the first woman Prime Minister.

A few bits don’t ring true: the scenes of a happy Thatcher family home life seem somewhat idealised (although Olivia Colman is great as daughter “Cawol”) and a sequence where the Lady suddenly reveals to her Cabinet that she knows the price of Lurpak seems rather bizarre.

Inevitably, as this is a Thatcher biopic most of the key events of her tenure are viewed entirely from her own perspective. We see the Falklands War and the Miner’s Strike (though for some reason the Strike not the war occurs first in this version). However her opponents are never presented as being reasonable: they are either toffee nosed wets or ugly hairy protesting lefties. Only towards the end, when Thatcher’s relentless single mindedness on issues like the disastrous Poll Tax and her bullying of unlikely nemesis Geoffrey Howe (Anthony Head) unwittingly precipitates her downfall, does the screenplay lose sympathy with its subject. And even then it’s implied these failings could be an early manifestation of her illness.

But ultimately, while the strange perspective does effectively undermine the film, it’s hard not to be moved by Streep’s touching performance as a lioness in the winter of her life.

Overall Verdict: A flawed biopic but Streep deserves an Oscar for her performance. And at least the film doesn’t go on and on.

Reviewer: Chris Hallam

I don’t know why people are saying The Artist should win at the Oscars. It’s obvious director Michel Hazanavicius doesn’t know how to make a movie. For a start, he made the film in black and white. Doesn’t he know the world got coloured in during the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s? Plus, he’s so incompetent he forgot to record the dialogue, so he just plays some music and occasionally has a caption card come up on screen, as if that’s a sensible way of telling a story.

He doesn’t even manage to make it in the right aspect ratio, as it’s the same width-to-length as old style-TVs. Hell, it’s not even in 3D! Hazanavicius needs to go back to square one, watch some Michael Bay movies and learn how to make real, proper films with explosions and stuff. This is the 21st Century!

However I’m assured that The Artist isn’t the product of an utterly useless filmmaker, but instead harks back to something known as ‘the silent era’, when people moved their mouths but no sound came out. Thankfully this only happened in cinema, as it would have been a bit of a pain in real life. Then things changed in 1927 with the arrival of ‘talkies’, starting with The Jazz Singer, and very soon after silent movies were a thing of the past.

The Artist is a relatively simple story. George Valentin (Jean DuJardin) is a top silent movie star who is convinced that the newfangled idea of ‘talkies’ is just a flash in the pan that he can safely ignore. Even when the studio he works for cancels all silent productions, he decides to drive forward, funding his own non-talking movie, which will bankrupt him if it doesn’t succeed.

George’s fate becomes entwined with that of up and coming starlet Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejo). They share a few moments together, which leads to a flirtation lasting years. As her star rises with the emergence of sound, his fortunes decline, but his stubborn pride could not only keep them apart, but also destroy him completely.

While The Artist is a wonderful movie for film lovers, it’s tough to tell how the more general film fan will react to it. Many will probably enjoy it, as it’s full of humour, romance and features the world’s most scene-stealing dog, but if it does win the Best Picture Oscar, it’ll be as much because it’s a movie for those whose life is film, as it is because it is indeed one of the best movies of the year.

The story may be fairly simple, but Michel Hazanavicius’ film is a wonderful study in how to visually tell a story. Indeed it will be immensely useful in colleges and universities in years to come as an excellent demonstration of how cinema actually works, without all the modern bells and whistles that tend to disguise and dilute that. Some of the film’s sequences are a joy to behold, with editing, camera position, performance and music coming together to create something that’ll excite film nerds just because of how elegantly it’s done.

George DuJardin is wonderful as the prideful Valentin, oozing charm and spirit. It ensures you’re always on his side, despite the fact the character could easily have come across as a bit of an ass. Berenice Bejo is also excellent as Peppy Miller, working as a great counterpoint to DuJardin. Without dialogue, the actor’s job is undoubtedly a lot tougher. Everything needs to be over-emphasised and created visually, but without looking fake and melodramatic (particularly because, as the film notes, silent cinema has a reputation for actorly gurning). It’s actually quite fascinating to trying and discern how the actors do it in The Artist, and it’s also a good demonstration of how a film performance is as much about editing as acting.

While most of this homage to silent film is great, one thing that rather frustrated me was the use of music from Hitchcock’s Vertigo during one pivotal scene. Hazanavicius has said he used it because it’s a great piece of music. He’s right, as Bernard Hermann’s Vertigo music may be the greatest film score ever written. It’s also very famous and so many viewers may find themselves sucked out of Hazanavicius’ carefully created silent movie world. However while I’ve made a big deal of it – mainly because it sucked me right out of movie for about five minutes – in the grand scheme of things it’s not a giant problem.

My other slight concern is that people will be taking The Artist as an absolute lesson in what happened when Hollywood embraced the talkie in the late 20s, as it’s not that great for that. The film is actually slightly misleading on some aspects of Hollywood history, simplifying things so it works better for the story. Many things it gets right though, such as the stars who simply couldn’t believe that talkies would be anything but a flash in the plan. It’s tough now to imagine why anyone would have thought that, but at the time many did, including Chaplin, who resisted making a talkie for years. I still reckon the best film for giving you an overview of the basics of the coming of talking pictures is, surprisingly enough, Singin’ In The Rain, which does gloss over some things but is actually fairly accurate.

Making an old-style silent movie in the 21st Century could easily have been an interesting filmmaking exercise but have resulted in a rather tedious film. However The Artist has an enormously warm heart, loads of humour and a dog that deserves to have a movie of its own. It’s undoubtedly a movie that will be best appreciated by film obsessives – which should stand it in good stead at the Oscars – but if you’ve enjoyed a Chaplin short or even if you don’t mind the lack of dialogue in Mr. Bean, there’s a lot in The Artist to enjoy.

Overall Verdict: A wonderful look at the elegance and storytelling skill of silent cinema, which will make you laugh and leave you with a warm feeling when you leave the cinema.

NOTE: Just for a bit of poncey edification, I’ve tried to stick to referring to ‘talkies’ here rather than ‘sound’, as sound came to cinema before 1927’s The Jazz Singer, and not just in the form of someone playing music live in front of the screen. While they’d worked out how add music tracks and sound effects to movies – and many films did have them for cinemas that were equipped to play them – the difficulty was getting people to talk on screen. The technological hurdles that had to be overcome weren’t only about being able to absolutely synchronise speech to the mouth movements on screen, but also about how you recorded dialogue on a set with noisy lights, cameras and ambient noise. Then, of course, cinemas had to be converted to be able to play the dialogue (even cinemas that already had sound systems often weren’t compatible with what was needed for talking picture). While it had been possible since the early 1920s to create short scenes with recorded dialogue, it was only with The Jazz Singer that a feature-film came along that included talking/singing sequences (it wasn’t a talkie all the way through, by the way, just in selected scenes), and which could be shown in enough cinemas to cause a sensation.

Reviewer: Tim Isaac

When people complain that modern movies are lacking in plot, I suggest they go watch Meet Me In St. Louis, a film that makes many modern blockbusters look like they’ve got Russian novels full of storyline. However the 1944 musical, which is getting a welcome Christmassy cinema re-release courtesy of the BFI, is proof you don’t need acres of plot to make a movie.

Here’s the story: The Smith family lives in St. Louis and the four daughters are really looking forward to the 1904 World’s Fair, which is due to be held in the city. However their father gets a job in New York and so they might not be able to go to the fair. And, um, well that’s about it!

To be fair, there is a tiny little bit more than that, which largely revolves around eldest daughter Rose (Lucille Bremer) trying to get someone to propose to her, while Judy Garland re-enacts her real-life love life by chasing a man who doesn’t appear to be all that interested in women (to start with at least). Largely though it’s just an excuse for a joyous, rip-roaring, ridiculously over-saturated Technicolor MGM musical, where the costumes are lush, everyone’s having a great time (unless they might not be able to go to a World’s Fair, of course) and there’s nothing you can’t sing about.

It’s essentially a series of vignettes about how simply spiffing life in the 1900s was. Before we’d been corrupted by TV and the internet you could have enormous fun throwing flour at strangers (which apparently was a perfectly fine Halloween activity back then) or trying out the amazing new electrical device, the telephone. When you weren’t doing that you’d sing about anything and everything, whether it’s being under a bamboo tree or riding a trolley car (can you imagine a modern film devoting five minutes to how great being on a bus is, which is essentially what Meet Me In St. Louis does with ‘The Trolley Song’?).

Admittedly it was also made during a time long before women’s rights, so it’s not exactly a bastion of feminism. The movie presents a young woman’s life as being purely about trying to nab a man. While I suppose we should really be wishing Judy Garland stood up to 1900’s social mores and was insisting she wanted to be an independent woman with her career, it’s tough not to hope she ends up with the next-door-neighbour she’s mooning over.

Meet Me In St. Louis is bizarre but wonderful, helped by a wonderfully joyous attitude and great performances by Judy Garland and Margaret O’Brien. The latter in particularly is brilliant, despite the fact she was only seven when she made the movie. Indeed, between this, Little Women and Jane Eyre, Margaret O’Brien may be the greatest child actor Hollywood’s ever produced – and certainly no one has ever been as good at crying as she was.

It’s almost surprising that Meet Me In St. Louis isn’t treated as some sort of gay sacred relic. Not only does it star Judy Garland and features the song Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas (with its lyrics about ‘making the Yuletide gay’), but it was also on this film that Judy first met and worked with director Vincente Minnelli, which led to marriage and the birth of Liza Minnelli.

While Vincente’s illustrious career also saw him make Father Of The Bride, An American In Paris, Gigi, Brigadoon, Kismet and various other movies, I still think Meet Me In St. Louis is his best film. If you can catch it at a cinema, it’s well worth searching out, but if not, go get on DVD (or it’s even on TCM at 2.25pm on Christmas Eve). It is cinema made purely to put a smile on the audience’s faces, with great songs, beautiful production design and very slick filmmaking.

Overall Verdict: There may be remarkably little to it plot-wise, but Meet Me In St. Louis is one of the true musical greats. It’s a wonderful, heart-warming movie that’ll leave you with a smile on your face.

Reviewer: Tim Isaac

This sequel has a lot of expectations to live up to. The first Guy Ritchie directed Sherlock Holmes amassed over $524 million at the worldwide box office and remains in the Top 100 grossing films of all time.

As you’d hope, in Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows the original bromance is back with a vengeance! Guy Ritchie has delivered once again (after a few turkeys mind!), as the on-screen chemistry between Jude Law and Robert Downey Jnr. is superb – reminiscent of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The supporting cast is also tremendous in their roles, although some of the parts are just too small. Eddie Marsan as Inspector Lestrade is most notably missing screen time – blink and you’ll miss him – as is the excellent Geraldine James as the long-suffering Mrs Hudson (though I can’t help but think of her as one of the prostitutes from Band Of Gold!).

The plot follows on from the first film, where Holmes (Downey) feels something is afoot and has discovered a web of death and destruction, realising his nemesis Moriarty (played menacingly by Jared Harris) is at the very heart of it. This result in a wonderful romp across pre-war-torn Europe, where Holmes, Watson and the gypsy Sim (Noomi Rapace) try to foil Moriarty’s dastardly deeds.

This is obviously a labour of love for all concerned. The script, cinematography, editing, acting and music (Hans Zimmerman) all fuse together perfectly. The main action set pieces are excellent, including a train journey where Holmes dresses as a woman to help protect Watson and his new wife (Kelly Reilly).This is enjoyable partly due to the disdain Holmes feels towards this woman, as it’s evident he feels she has spoiled his relationship/partnership with Watson (it’s oddly reminiscent of the contempt Family Guy characters feel towards Meg). A pony trek across snow-covered Europe with Holmes is hilarious, and the final scenes in Switzerland, where the protagonist and antagonist go head to head over a game of chess, are extremely exciting.

Guy Ritchie also introduces us to the character of Mycroft (Stephen Fry), who is Holmes’ smarter brother and relishes calling Sherlock ‘Shirley’. Ritchie has given us many hunks (gay icons) over the years in his catalogue of films – Tom Hardy, Gerard Butler, Brad Pitt, Jason Statham and…err…Vinnie Jones – but now he has topped the lot by giving us a very naked scene-stealing Stephen Fry. What more could you ask for?

Ritchie has given us a perfect, contemporary Holmes in the guise of Downey Jnr, which will be recognised as one of the great portrayals of this literary character, alongside Basil Rathbone and Jeremy Brett. However Holmes would be nothing without his long-suffering partner, played splendidly by Law.

The only part of the film I was disappointed with was Noomi Rapace’s performance as the gypsy Sim. I had high expectations of her as I had been a huge fan of the original Scandinavian Girl With the Dragon Tattoo film series and as a result I expected so much more from her. She wanders through the film looking somewhat lost. With the chemistry between Law and Downey Jr., her character almost seems irrelevant as she gets acted off the screen.

Overall Verdict: A very entertaining and energetic action film. It is evident that Guy Ritchie has matured as a director, with the relationships between all the characters very believable and the chemistry electric.

Reviewer: Stephen Sclater

 

Shrek spin-off Puss In Boots has already had quite a lot of good reviews in the US, but it’s just the latest attempt by the liberal left in Hollywood to indoctrinate kids. Everyone knows that the natural state of cats is not to be in boots, but Dreamworks Animation and its media lefty cohorts keep presenting this perversion of nature to us as if it’s something we should treat as normal. Not content with using the Shrek movies to warp young minds into thinking that cats in footwear are the equal of regular unshod felines, now they’re giving Puss In Boots a whole movie to himself!

It’s just plain wrong. It’s bound to cause children to start asking awkward questions about why Puss is wearing boots. It should be a parent’s decision how and when to broach such thorny subjects, not forced upon them by the all-powerful pro-shoes-for-cats agenda. Indeed it’s gotten to the point where right-thinking people are afraid to stand up for what’s correct and openly say Puss shouldn’t wear boots!

Worst of all is that Dreamworks Animation has spent so much effort to make the movie entertaining, so that kids won’t even realise they’re being brainwashed into thinking Puss’ ‘lifestyle choice’ is okay (after all, God made Cats & Dogs, not Cats in Uggs).

A prequel to the Shrek movies, the film tries to force us to believe that perhaps cats might have a penchant for shoes from an early age (rather than the truth, which is that Puss must have had his mind warped by other boot-wearing felines).

Puss starts out in an orphanage in Mexico, where he become friends (very, very, very, very platonic friends, of course) with Humpty Dumpty. However Humpty is a rather unreliable fellow, and while they start out as a bit of an outlaw duo, he and Puss soon go their own ways.

Years later Humpty tracks Puss down and persuades him to join him in a European quest to steal the magic beans of Jack & The Beanstalk fame and seize a golden egg from an ogre’s castle in the clouds. This brings Puss into contact with the fiery temptress Kitty Softpaws (Salma Hayek) and the criminal wrong ‘uns, Jack & Jill.

The film isn’t perfect, with a tendency to pack a lot incident and japes into a lean running time at the expense of an overall satisfying narrative. However there are a lot of good jokes, Antonio Banderas appears to be having great fun as Puss and the visual style of the movie is extremely good, giving the whole thing a spaghetti western vibe. Like the Shrek movies, there’s plenty to keep the adults happy, which of course will give them an extra reason to allow their kids to be brainwashed by the disgusting idea of cats who refuse to keep their boot-wearing tendencies behind closed doors.

The tragic thing about the movie is that adults and children will come out thinking they’ve just had a nice time and enjoyed all the 3D visuals of a film that’s not perfect but is a whole lot of fun, without realising the brain washing perversion they’ve been subjected to. I think it’s shame that with Hollywood so desperate to push its own perverted agenda, there won’t be a more righteous movie soon called ‘Puss who feels nauseous about the idea of wearing boots and is preaching God’s message against the disgusting idea that some cats might like to wear boots and there’s nothing wrong with that’. Nope, we just get this entertaining movie instead.

Overall Verdict: Light frothy fun that keeps up a fast pace, with plenty of jokes and great visuals. It’s just a tragedy it insists on suggesting it’s okay for cats to wear boots.

Reviewer: Jake Davis