☻ ☻☻Margin Call (2011). "Inspired by real events", this is the fictional mechanics of the 2008 so-called global economic meltdown.
I quite enjoyed hating these people who knowingly engineered the disaster then set others up to take the fall.
Victim of the latest round of corporate lay-offs, the last thing Risk Manager Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci) does is hand a data key to Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto, the evil Sylar from Heroes), a low-level analyst, with the instructions to check things out - carefully. He does, and the ensuing events separate the wheat from the chaff.
Sullivan's superiors, Sam Rogers (Kevin Spacey) one of the Horrible Bosses) and Will Emerson (Paul Bettany), shed crocodile tears in their vague attempts to stay on the right side of ethical behaviour. However, once the big guns arrive in the shape of John Tuld (Jeremy Irons, recently of The Borgias), the writing is on the wall.
☻Midnight in Paris (2011). I was expecting better of this Woody Allen film, but the film lacks the psychologically-challenged character Allen once performed himself, so perhaps that explains it.
Gil (Owen Wilson), a struggling writer, is too laid back, too normal. He's in love with the Paris and would like to live there. He's visiting the city with high maintenance and overly demanding fiancee, Inez (Rachel McAdams), along with her parents, John (Kurt Fuller) and Helen (Mimi Kennedy). I found Inez too ordinary. She's is too practical -- she radiates money. What she wants is a nice investment banker, so what's she doing with a guy like Gil?
Their obnoxious know-it-all acquaintance, Paul (Michael Sheen), a stock Allen character, serves to underline the differences between Gil and Inez. However, Gil is so laid back he simply allows Paul to natter on like the fool he is.
More than anything else, Gil just seems to drift into the magic of a Paris midnight, meeting up with a budding writers dream team including F Scott Fitzgerald (Tom Hiddleston) and a suicidal Zelda Fitzgerald (Alison Pill), Ernest Hemmingway (Corey Stoll), Gertrude Stein (Cathy Bates) in the guise of a willing book reviewer, Salvador Dali (Adrien Brody), and even Cole Porter (Yves Heck).
As expected, I disliked Inez and Paul and found John and Helen suitably dull. I enjoyed sharing Gil's love of the city and his midnight forays into it's fabled ex-pat past. Yet I was unable to buy into Gil's growing alienation with Inez and the seductive pull of the past. I couldn't engage with Gil's character, nor could I fathom how or why Paris turned magical. Were Gil's midnight travels flights of romantic fancy or something more sinister? I didn't really care.
☻ ☻ ☻See any of the Swedish films adapted from Steig Larssen's Millennium Trilogy. Watch them dubbed or subtitled, I saw both and preferred the atmosphere of the Swedish. Don't wait for the North American remakes.
