Or how the housing crisis was pretty tough for a bunch of rich, white guys. I’ve been musing on this film quite a bit since I watched it a couple of nights ago. Not because it’s a great film but because I can see two ways to review it – for its craft and within the context of mainstream contemporary Hollywood film making.  It’s about the US housing crisis of 2007 and chooses to try to explain why it was allowed to happen rather than explore the effects. We follow several men, all misfits in some way, who saw the signs of the housing mortgage bond collapse and used it, and the blindness and perhaps deliberate fraudulence of the banks and regulatory bodies, for their own financial gain. Continue reading →

I’m not the biggest fan of superhero movies. I’ve seen a few – Batman, Superman, Spiderman, Ironman, X-Men, Avengers – and some are more watchable than others but there is a certain sameness to them. For a start, the superhero is nearly always a man (looking forward to next year’s Wonder Woman), female characters are there for sex or saving (or both) and the plot rarely varies – ordinary guy, painful process, super powers, denial and rage, girlfriend captured by villains, saves her and saves the world. Deadpool doesn’t really depart from these archetypes but it is unlike any superhero movie I’ve seen before. Continue reading →

Is there any point in reviewing this movie? If you liked Zoolander, you’re going to watch it eventually and you’re going to know that, as a sequel, it’s never going to be as good as the original. If you didn’t like Zoolander, then you’d probably choose to undergo a tax audit rather than sit through another one. I have to admit it was seeing Benedict Cumberbatch in the trailer as an eyebrowless, gender non-specific fashion model that got me there. And in that respect, I was not disappointed. Continue reading →

Spotlight is based on true events, when the Boston Globe uncovered evidence that the Catholic church had known of child sexual assault by priests and covered it up by shifting priests from parish to parish. Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber), a new editor at the Globe around 2001, insisted that a small story about a lawsuit pertaining to a priest accused of sexual assault be further investigated after the court documents were ordered to be sealed. What becomes apparent is the extent of the cover up and the reticence of a community that is staunchly Catholic to acknowledge the problem. Continue reading →