The Last Black Man in San Francisco

First Hit: I was both enthralled and, at times, perplexed by this quirky powerfully acted story.

The opening set of scenes; a neighborhood preacher/orator is standing on a box talking about cleaning up the neighborhood near the Hunter’s Point Naval Shipyard. There’s a local group of young men hanging out talking smack to each other south of Hunter’s Point. Also, there are men in hazmat suits cleaning up the hillside near the shipyard. A fantastic looking house in the Fillmore district on “Golden Gate near Fillmore” (House is really on S. Van Ness), and other great shots in the city, were all mesmerizing. These opening scenes and more were amazingly shot, giving a languid sense of life in a subsection of San Francisco.

But all is not so languid on the inside and neighborhood as Jimmie Fails (plays himself) rides a skateboard everywhere around the area, stopping, looking at “his grandfather’s house.” We find him sitting in front of the house on S. Van Ness Avenue. His close friend Montgomery Allen (“Mont” Jonathan Majors) is often with him. In fact, Jimmie sleeps at Mont’s home where Mont takes care of his Grandpa Allen (Danny Glover). And there is a tension that rises from all the players, except Mont.

In an early scene, Jimmie is climbing up on the house on S. Van Ness and is painting the windowsill. The owners of the home come back and start throwing fruit at him, telling him he must leave, and he must quit coming by the house and painting it.

He claims that his grandfather built the house in the early 1940s, although the style and construction type is clearly from a time 100 years earlier. In one scene, he shares this information to a crowd led by a tour guide (Jello Biafra) on Segways in front of the house – it is both funny and telling of Jimmie’s deeper self.

As he keeps telling the story about how his grandfather built the home, and as an audience member, I am becoming convinced that he is right.

There are scenes of the Greek chorus (the gang) in which they challenge each other on some set of facts or of their manliness, and most of the time, through the biting comments, all is made well enough.

The couple living in the home leaves, so Jimmie and Mont move in. There are exploratory sections where Jimmie tries to get a loan from a bank, and Mont talks with the listing Real Estate Agent named Clayton (Finn Wittrock) who shows the property deed to Mont. The exploration here shows just how difficult it is to find a path to their want - the house and the truth.

Mont writes and draws in a notebook he’s always carrying around, and one evening he writes a play, which they put on at the house. It is a great scene.

The film was touching in many ways because Jimmie is attempting to live in an idealized world and believe the story he tells himself. Mont is wonderfully supportive and faithful and Jimmie’s friend. The intense scenes of the group challenging each other, the play, and when Jimmie is pleading for money from the bank’s loan manager are powerful. The poignant, convincing acting is telling a story of wants, desires, wishes, family, pain, and truth.

Fails is great as himself in a role he envisioned as a very young boy. His remembrances of being in the house as a young boy are particularly vivid. Majors, as Jimmie’s friend Montgomery, is elegant in this role. His ability to live in a present moment and not become too swayed by emotions, especially when the gang attack him verbally was stunning. Glover was fun as the grandfather who couldn’t see and needed television programs explained to him. Willie Hen as the corner preacher who stands on boxes and shares his word was amazingly strong. He captures so much of what is going on in SF and life in his sharing of his truth. Wittrock was excellent as the real estate agent who grew up in the neighborhood. The Greek Chorus (the gang that hangs out) were all great, each exemplifying an attitude and stake in the ground of the city. Joe Talbot and Rob Richert wrote a wonderfully dynamic screenplay that was based on a story by Jimmy Fails. Talbot shows us in the first 5 minutes that he’s an influential director with a clear vision.

Overall: When Jimmie says; “You can’t hate this city unless you love it,” a sentiment that, based on this film, it says it all.

The Big Short

First Hit:  This film amazingly and with clarity explains how trusted financial bankers and Wall Street traders used their greed and arrogance to create a mortgage system that collapsed and ruined the lives of 10’s of thousands of people.

The impact of the mortgage credit bubble bursting in the mid-2000s affected thousands upon thousands of people. Not since the 1929 crash had so many families lost their homes, their jobs, and ended up on the street. Why?

Because Wall Street bankers and others running hedge funds thought they were smarter than everyone else and deserved to make as much money as they could at the expense of other people. The sad part was that these guys either; never thought about how it might hurt others, or they didn’t care about anything or anybody else except themselves.

There is something amazingly depressing about our society that promotes ways for people to act in the way they did. To teach us about this complex situation, Charles Randolph and Adam McKay wrote a quirky and intelligent script based on true characters and fact while using various ways to tell the story.

They used odd vignettes with Selena Gomez and Margo Robbie playing themselves and had them share fun examples of how the scheme worked. Director McKay also had one character as a narrator allowing him to break the fourth plane and speak to the audience directly, then drop right back into his character. All this added to the quirkiness of this film.

In the story Christian Bale played the extremely intelligent Michael Burry who predicted the fall of the market. This highly focused numbers guy read and analyzed each loan in many of the packaged loan portfolio bundles and saw how their high rating belied the loans within them.

There was Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling), a big bank trader who knew the banks were packing high risk and junk loans with good ones to hide their risk. He wanted to find a company that would allow him to bet against his own company. He also narrated from time to time. Mark Baum (Steve Carell) a trader who felt that there was a lack of integrity by most of the people in the world. He was always railing against society and how it rips people off. He and his team did their research by going to Florida and talked with the people who owned or rented the homes that were in these portfolios.

For example; when he learned that a female stripper owned 4 homes and a condo and didn’t make any down payments in purchasing them, he was convinced. Then there is Jamie Shipley (Finn Wittlock) and Charlie Geller (John Magaro) who accidentally picked up a prospectus while being turned down by Citi-Bank to trade on their floor. Reading the prospectus their interest was sparked and they dug deeper.

After seeing the numbers, they asked their friend and retired famed trader Ben Rickert (Brad Pitt) what he thought. These four groups (and their people) ended up being right. They bet the market would fail, it did, and they made a ton of money. I didn't get the sense they felt good about it because they knew people were going to lose their homes, banks were going to fail, and that the federal government (read this as taxpayers) would bail out the the arrogant bankers and their companies. To add insult to injury, these bankers took their annual yearly bonuses, and the banking laws changed little.

Carell was manic in a good way. He embodied many people’s sense of outrage at how people take advantage of others and don’t care. His unfiltered way of interacting with people is what many want to be like. Gosling was smooth in transitioning from a character in the film and also the narrator. Bale was almost uncomfortably quirky in his amazing portrayal of a disconnected numbers genius. He sold me on his character’s solid belief that he knew what and when the bust would happen. It was amazing when he walked out of the office one last time and posted his company’s % gain. Wittlock and Magro were perfect as the small time fund managers, who were making great trades and wanting to play with the big banks. Their bright enthusiasm and commitment was spot on. Pitt was interesting in his role as a transformed trader that wanted to help his friends. Randolph and McKay wrote an outstanding script by making this complex issue understandable. McKay’s direction worked and made this into a top notch film.

Overall:  I thoroughly enjoyed learning more about how our financial system failed and was left with some fear that it may happen again if we don’t watch ourselves.