Teeny-Tiny is the story of a boy who outsmarts the witch who wants to eat him and his brothers and sisters for dinner. The Witch in the Cherry Tree wants to eat a family’s freshly-backed cakes and David and his mother must find a way to outsmart her. The Boy With Two Shadows finds out what can go wrong when you promise to help a witch. In Space Case, a space traveler makes a friend on Earth. And in King of the Cats, an old man tells his wife about the strange procession of cats he saw in the Louisiana bayou.
Investors can make bets by promising to buy stock at a higher or lower price than the current day’s valuation. If all goes well, they never actually have to buy the stock. They can keep buying and selling the bets with borrowed money without ever having to buy the underlying securities. But if it does not go well, the investor gets what is known as a margin call and has to come up with the cash.
The financial meltdown of 2008 was like a margin call for America, and we will be paying off that debt for a long time. This movie, as tightly wound as a thriller, takes us through a fictionalized version of the night when it all tipped over from going well to not going well at an enormous Wall Street company, and it was time to pay the piper and a lot of others as well.
“You guys ever been through this before?” asks Will (Paul Bettany), as some serious looking people in suits start tapping people on the shoulder and saying, “I’m afraid we have to speak with you” to the people in cubicles “Best to ignore it, keep your head down, go back to work. Don’t watch.”
“The majority of this floor is being let go today,” says the serious woman in a suit. She speaks of “certain precautions that may seem punitive.” She glances down at the paperwork when she speaks of “your — 19 — years” with the (never-named) company. And then we see people carrying cardboard boxes of belongings out the front door of a shiny skyscraper, their eyes blinking in the unaccustomed sunlight.
This is nothing new, as Will’s comment informs us. It is a routine, if brutal pruning of the staff. This is a cutthroat business and periodically some throats get cut. And periodically Will has to speak to those left behind: “These were good people and they were good at their jobs, but you are better. We will not think of them again.” Back to work watching all those screens with all those numbers.
But one of the departed has left something behind. There is evident irony in the name of the division that has been gutted. It is the Risk Management group. And the 19-year veteran who has been shown the door has been working on a new analysis of the firm’s position. He turns his thumb drive over to the young colleague who has been kept on, Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto), a literal rocket scientist with “a PhD in propulsion,” who plugs a few holes in the formula that reveal that the firm is in their terms, “projected losses are greater than the current value of the company.” In other words, on the verge of collapse. That is when it gets interesting. Sullivan has proven that there are going to be some devastating losses. The question is who will pay for them.
The rest of the long night will be devoted to answering that question. It is like a long game of musical chairs, except that these people get to decide when to stop the music so they can get to the chairs before everyone else.
The guy at the top is John Tuld (Jeremy Irons). Given a choice between reputation and money, he has no hesitation in choosing money. He tells the head of sales, Sam Rogers (Kevin Spacey) to sell the ticking time bomb securities by assuring their clients that they are solid investments, even though Rogers points out that no one will ever trust them again. “You’re selling something you know has no value.” “We’re selling to willing buyers at fair market value so that we can survive.”
Rogers is not the only one who raises concerns, moral and financial. But writer-director J.C. Chandor lets us see when and how each of them topple, and what makes them topple, which turns out to be money. Dale repeatedly says there is nothing that can get him to go back inside the building and yet there he is, back in the building. Rogers says he will not sell these risky securities to clients because “you don’t sell anything to anybody unless they’ll come back to you for more.” But he does.
This could just as easily be set in the scuzzy world of the real-estate salesmen of “Glengarry Glen Ross” or the “leave the gun, take the cannoli” world of “The Godfather.” Chandor keeps enough of the real story to keep things vivid and meaningful but does not get mired in jargon. Crisp performances by everyone keep things taut until a surprising detour at the end. For the first time we leave the world of glass and concrete for an intensely personal moment of loss and grief. “Our talents have been used for the greater good,” one character says, reminding us that the very selection process that takes people who are capable of more tangible contributions are unable to resist the big money that pays them a many-times multiple for financial engineering over mechanical engineering. And reminding us, too, that if we let people who care only about money make the decisions they will make decisions that are only about money for them.
Thanks to my godson, Theo Leiss, for reminding me of this Halloween treat! The Worst Witch is based on a pre-Harry Potter series of books by Jill Murphy about a school for young witches. Fairuza Balk, who would later play a teenaged witch in “The Craft” (and who was already a gifted young actress) plays Mildred Hubble, who can’t seem to get anything right until only she can save the day before an evil witch destroys the school. Diana Rigg plays the school’s headmistress and her evil twin sister and Tim Curry provides one of the highlights as the Grand Wizard.
Rated PG-13 for some thematic elements, drug use, and smoking
Profanity:
Mild language
Alcohol/ Drugs:
Drinking and drunkenness, a lot of smoking, drug use
Violence/ Scariness:
Sad off-screen death, some scuffles
Diversity Issues:
None
Date Released to Theaters:
October 7, 2011
Date Released to DVD:
February 21, 2012
Amazon.com ASIN:
B0062VL4QA
In honor of this DVD Pick of the Week, I have three copies to give away. Send me an email at moviemom@moviemom.com with “The Way” in the subject line and tell me your favorite Martin Sheen movie. Don’t forget your address! US addresses only.
A story about a father and is son comes to us from a father and his son. Emilio Estavez wrote and directed his father Martin Sheen in a touching and uplifting movie about a doctor who completes the pilgrimage he told his estranged son not to make after the son is killed in a storm.
Sheen plays Tom, an affluent ophthalmologist living in Las Angeles, playing golf with his friends and worried about his son Daniel (Estavez). In his late 30’s, Daniel has dropped out of his PhD program to roam the world. Tom gets a call from a French policeman telling him that Daniel is dead. He flies to France, identifies the body, and then impulsively decides to finish what Daniel had started, to walk the Way of St. James from St Jean Pied de Port to Santiago de Compostela, 780 km/484 miles as pilgrims have done since the middle ages. He will bring Daniel along with him, leaving his ashes along the path so that he can complete his journey.
Tom has no interest in the other pilgrims or in sharing with anyone what he is doing. But there is no way to avoid the people who are walking along the same road and staying at the same inns and soon he finds himself sharing the journey with an affable Dutchman named Joost (Yorick van Wageningen), a bitter Canadian named Sarah (Deborah Kara Unger), and a frantic Irish writer named Jack (James Nesbitt). People on The Way tend to leave their last names behind. Everyone is just a first name and a nationality — and everyone but Tom gives a reason for being there. Joost wants to lose weight before his brother’s wedding. Sarah wants to quit smoking, but only after she completes the pilgrimage. Jack is there to write a book about it and his editor is impatient. But pilgrims are not always honest with themselves or each other and part of what they will learn on the road is what they are really doing there.
At times it has the feel of a television movie but the scenery is spectacular and benefits from the big screen and Estavez as writer and director has a good sense of timing and a gift for cinematic storytelling. It is funny and heartfelt and inspiring and it will make you think more deeply about your own journey.
Rated PG-13 for some violence, intense action, and brief language
Profanity:
Brief strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:
Drinking
Violence/ Scariness:
Human and robot violence, character badly beaten
Diversity Issues:
None
Date Released to Theaters:
October 7, 2011
Date Released to DVD:
January 24, 2012
Amazon.com ASIN:
B004A8ZWW4
The robot has the heart and the human has to learn to feel again in this unabashedly cheesy but irresistible fairy tale about a father, a son, and robots who bash the heck out of each other in a boxing ring.
Charlie (Hugh Jackman) was a boxer until human boxing was abandoned some time in the near future. Now enormous rock ’em sock ’em robots get in a ring and fight to total mechanical destruction. It is like something between trial by combat, a computer game, a cockfight, and a demolition derby. Now Charlie drives around from one skeezy venue to another, promoting whatever bucket of bolts he can get to stand up and throw a punch. When his robot loses a match because Charlie was distracted by a pretty blond, he loses everything. He actually loses more than everything because he bet more than he had.
He gets an opportunity to try again when a former girlfriend dies and he is left with their son Max (Dakota Goyo), with whom he has had no relationship. The boy’s wealthy aunt on his mother’s side (Hope Davis) wants to adopt him. Charlie agrees to sign over the boy in exchange for enough money to buy a new robot. It means keeping Max for the summer, so the aunt’s husband can take the child-free vacation trip he has been planning. Charlie planned to dump Max on another old girlfriend, Bailey (Evangeline Lilly of “Lost”), the daughter of the man who trained him as a boxer. But Max insists on going along and when the robot Charlie bought with the money he got is destroyed, Max finds an old sparring robot in the junkyard. He was never intended to be a boxer. He was not designed to throw punches, just to take them. But he has a “shadow” function that enables him to learn moves by imitating a human. And Charlie is the human who knows how to hook, jab, and uppercut.
Two things work surprisingly well in this movie. The first is the robots, magnificently designed and brilliantly executed. Real-life boxing champ Sugar Ray Leonard provided the boxing moves and gave each one of them a distinct style and personality in their approach to fighting. They are outrageously fun to watch. The second is the storyline. Part “The Champ” (made twice, both among the greatest sports weepies of all time) and part (of course) “Rocky,” the script is co-written by Dan Gilroy (the stunning fantasy “The Fall” and the uneven but intriguing and provocative “Freejack”). It may be cheesy but it embraces the cheese with enthusiasm and awareness. Jackman and Goyo bring a lot to their roles as well. We might lose interest in Charlie but Jackman makes us see that he is wounded, not selfish. And Goyo has just the right mix of determination and faith to show us that he has the best of Charlie in him and to show that to Charlie as well.
is based on a pre-Harry Potter 
about a school for young witches. Fairuza Balk, who would later play a teenaged witch in “The Craft” (and who was already a gifted young actress) plays Mildred Hubble, who can’t seem to get anything right until only she can save the day before an evil witch destroys the school. Diana Rigg plays the school’s headmistress and her evil twin sister and Tim Curry provides one of the highlights as the Grand Wizard.