Margin Call

First Hit: This smart educational film opens the door to understanding the mortgage crisis of the late 2000’s.

What this film does is give the audience a human flavor as to why the mortgage crisis happened.

Human not in the context of the mortgage holders, but the guys in a Wall Street house who created bundling of the subprime mortgage packages and sold them.

In this Wall Street firm, recent losses have created firings. One of the fired, Eric Dale (played by Stanley Tucci), has been working on some numbers which concern him. When he leaves he gives a thumb drive to a young new Analyst, Peter Sullivan (played by Zachary Quinto).

Sullivan works for Will Emerson (played by Paul Bettany), who works for Sam Rogers (played by Kevin Spacey). Will is smart and has about 10 years with the firm and when Sullivan finishes the analysis that Dale started, he immediately sees that the company is overexposed and is exposed for more than their capital worth.

Like the mortgages of many, they are underwater. This brings in the heavy weights. Rogers calls Jared Cohen (played by Simon Baker) who calls the CEO John Tuld (played by Jeremy Irons). A 2:00 AM meeting between all these players and lawyers, the meeting starts with Sullivan explaining what he discovered.

The Head of Risk Sarah Robertson (played by Demi Moore) indicates that they tried to tell Tuld this could happen but Tuld indicates that this is now water under the bridge. What can they do to save the company now? Tuld decides to sell all of their positions at a loss, even though they know that doing this will destroy the market for mortgages, their relationships with all other brokerage companies they work with, and maybe destroy the company.

However, by leading the charge to sell this bad debt they will lose less than the others. To do this they know what they are doing and that is where the morality of their decision comes into question.

Tucci is great as one of the guys who complies with the end decision, all for money. Spacey is wonderful as the head of sales who motivates the crew for the last selling spree, he does it for the money as well. Quinto is sublime as the smart analyst. Irons is absolutely dead on as a ruthless player. Baker is very good as the guy who didn’t listen enough and is mostly responsible for the company’s plight. Moore is OK as the woman who pushed for a change but was unconvincing enough. Bettany is very good as the guy who thinks he knows it all but really relies on the smarts of others. J.C. Chandor wrote and directed this film which was intelligent, educational, well scripted, and provided excitement and interest.

Overall: This was a wonderful film to see and provided enough of a layman’s language explanation to shine light on the financial mess we’re now in.

The Joneses

First Hit: Could have been more fully fleshed out to make it more interesting.

The obvious set-up is that people do outlandish and stupid things to keep up with The Joneses. This film is about a family unit called the Jones.

Demi Moore plays Kate Jones who is head of this unit. In her unit are her pretend husband Steve Jones (played by David Duchovny) and fake children Jenn Jones (played by Amber Heard) and Mick Jones (played by Ben Hollingsworth).

The unit is really a sales machine. It is not a real family although they pretend they are to the world around them. They exist to sell merchandize the manufactures and sponsors want them to sell at any given time.

The unit moves into an area and sells their lifestyle, what they appear to own, use and eat, to neighbors and friends. They do this by being the people everyone else wants to be. The kids are hip, have the newest and hippest things, and look just great.

The adults mingle at country clubs, hair salons, or anywhere they can influence others with their shiny new toys and extra fantastic good looks. By showing off what they have others may think they will be happy if they have the same stuff, just like The Joneses.

We all know the fallacy of this argument. You like Steve’s watch and buy one, Steve’s sales ratio goes up. You like Mick’s new hand held video game and buy one; Mick’s sales ratio goes up. This is Kate's first assignment as lead member of a unit and really is pushing to get the entire unit's sales up so that they can get "icon" status.

Only once, during this film, do we understand why anyone would want this kind of life when Steve’s background and history is revealed to the audience. But why is Kate so driven to this lifestyle? How do kids become part of a family unit? Where are their real parents? Are they orphans?

This is where the film falls apart. There is very little background context to the story to make it plausible and therefore are suppose to just accept it. Not that the idea wasn’t good, it just wasn’t well developed.

Moore looks good and carries off the style of the part rather well. She can be cold, distant, directorial, attractive and alluring; but when Duchovny asks her if she ever wants to have a real family, her response was “no” as if she was capable of having kids. She is young enough to have the older kids in the film but too old to even entertain having new kids. Duchovny is the most fleshed out character of the group and this is an asset to both him and the film. His role is to be the conscious of the unit and questions the legitimacy of what they are doing. In the end he makes the right choice. Derrick Borte co-wrote and directed this film and unfortunately there was little character development which might have made this somewhat entertaining film a whole lot better.

Overall:  At best this is a rental film and has mild entertainment value but not worth a full price of admission.

Flawless

First Hit: This was very enjoyable film and made so by two really good actors, Demi Moore and Michael Caine.

This is an interesting London based 1960s period piece. It is easy to forget that there was such an obvious glass ceiling for women in that time but there was.

Demi Moore plays Laura a smart no-nonsense American woman who was top of her class at Oxford and is the only female manager in the London Diamond house. Her outfits are extremely conservative with neck high blouses and jackets with longish skirts. She continues to be passed up for promotions even though she is clearly heads above the others in the company.

A contract with the Russians is coming due and with the strife associated with blood diamonds the company is concerned that there may be trouble in their diamond monopoly. However, Laura finds a solution that can save the company and Russians embarrassment.

However, the Russians only want the top senior managers to know about this plan which means Laura is going to be fired because she isn’t top senior management and she knows the plan.

Then along comes Michael Caine playing Mr. Hobbs a longtime simple janitor who knows a lot about what is going on in the company. He approaches Laura with a plan to steal some of the diamonds in the safe as a way for her to get back at the company. To motivate her he tells her she is going to be fired. Laura doesn’t believe it but when she secretly looks at her personnel file and sees a future dated letter indicating her upcoming termination, she’s convinced. She begins to get drawn into the plan and discovers that Mr. Hobbs needs money for retirement and that is why he wants to rob the diamond company. The day after the robbery, when the safe is opened it is discovered that all the diamonds, tons, are gone she is shocked and dismayed. With more than $100,000 dollars worth of diamonds gone, Laura tracks down Mr. Hobbs and quickly begins to learn that Mr. Hobbs really had another agenda for the robbery, vengeance.

Overall: This was a very well acted film. Demi Moore shows why she is a top actress and Michael Caine still knows how to deliver multiple levels of a character at any point in time.