The Big Short

The Big Short is the true story about three groups of men who discover the housing market is unstable and seek to profit against the big banks, only to deeply regret it when it leads to the Financial Crisis of 2007. I'll admit that before seeing The Big Short, I knew next to nothing about the market crash (how I passed Economics in High School, I'll never know) and even afterwards, I was still a little fuzzy on some of the details, but overall, the film really helped me understand what was going on and kept me emotionally involved. I have a feeling that if I watched the film a few more times and did my own research on the terms mentioned, I'd definitely get the full picture about what happened. Of course, I couldn't become emotionally involved without the necessary elements. The film features an all-star cast of players ranging from Christian Bale and Steve Carrell to Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt. The films uses their abilities mixed with great writing to full effect, wonderfully capturing the range of comedy to drama. The feel and tone of the film is instantly portrayed from the first image, is consistent throughout and flows naturally into the darker heavier scenes later on in the story quite well. The comedic side is balls to the walls crazy, portraying the feel of a pseudo-documentary with news footage, the breaking of the fourth wall, texts and pictures at the bottom of the screen and random celebrity cameos to explain some of the complex terms used. This not only helps the film really feel like its taking place in the mid 2000s, but also captures what the main characters are like as people: they're cocky, angry jerks, but they're likable jerks. They want to fix the wrongs the banks have caused, they want to pursue their dreams, they want to do right by their families and co-workers. This is none better captured than in the performance of Steve Carrell, who I really think is the main character. Carrell's Mark Baummstarts the film very self-absorbed and angry at the big banks for being jerks and also has unintentionally pushed his family to the side but as the film progresses, he becomes angry for the right reasons and also despondent about what's going on. Like the overall film itself, when Mark and the other characters feel the real weight of the situation hit them, we feel it too and it really sinks in. I will admit though that because the film moves at such a break-neck speed with its comedy, I fell a little behind in understanding the terms, and as a result, didn't feel the full emotional impact of the drama when it hit. But there were enough quiet moments, clear explanations, and visual storytelling that I was still fully engaged. Indeed, when I left the theater, I had started to get angry. Like I mentioned above, if I watched the film again and got the full picture, I know I'd end up furious. Other than that, my only other complaint was more of a personal one in that I wanted to see more of Christian Bale and Brad Pitt's characters in an emotional sense. Bale's character is the one that starts the whole thing off and he does portray a full emotional arc of social awkwardness and guilt that he may have screwed up, but at the same time, he felt more like a passive character who actively starts things off but then rides in the back seat the rest of the way through the movie. With Brad Pitt, he is wonderfully involved with a full emotional arc as well but he was a secondary character in the story of the hopeful entrepreneurs, and I just wish he had been more front and center as well. Overall, I wanted to see more of all these characters. To continue following them in their everyday lives and in their adventures in the financial world. In a TV show perhaps? In Summary: The Big Short is a well crafted,, wonderfully acted. hilarious and dramatic film that not only made me feel smarter about something that I know nothing about, but also made realize how serious the real world situation it portrayed was, despite a few moments where I was lost in the economics talk. Rating 4.5 Stars out of 5.

"Joy" Review

. David O. Russell returns with his lucky troop of actors (Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, and Robert De Niro) in "Joy". "Joy" is the story of Joy Mongano, a struggling single mother, who becomes a billionaire after selling her new invention, the Miracle Mop on the Home Shopping Network. Sounds like your pretty standard setup for the popular "rooting for the underdog" kind of story, right? I thought so too, but what I didn't take into account was this sort of material being put into Russell's hands. The result being, for a lack of a better word, utter insanity. The film bounced back and forth so many different times with its many elements and switching tones that within the first twenty to thirty minutes, all I could think was "What the heck is going on?". It felt like Russell was trying to make the underdog story more interesting to himself by combining elements of "Silver Linings Playbook" and "The Fighter" with a flair of Wes Anderson. But this is done in such a confusing way that it felt like the story was taking place in the 50s or 60s, rather than the late 80s and early 90s when the actual events took place. This constant back and forth also stifled the potential for some great storytelling with the secondary characters and the actors who played them like Virginia Madsen as Joy's soap opera obsessed mother, Robert De Niro as Joy's father who can't seem to maintain a relationship, and Edgar Ramirez as Joy's ex-husband who is a singer still living in her basement. In the first thirty minutes or so, there are no consistent moments of storytelling or moments where the audience can take a breath with the characters because everything is thrown at you at breakneck speed. As a result, the emotional moments with these characters is nearly if not completely lost later on , where they are much needed. This is especially true with Diane Ladd as Joy's grandmother, who also serves as the film's narrator but is only in the film for ten to fifteen minutes, and Bradley Cooper as the executive who gives Joy's Miracle Mop a chance and serves as her business mentor. However, the only memorable thing about him was his constant spouting of trivia about the founding executives of movie studios like Louis B. Mayer. The film also rushes its ending, cutting off the emotional victory the audience should be feeling with Joy and jumping forward in time, mainly to summarize what happened to all the characters, so by the time the credits rolled, I felt confused and emotionally unfulfilled. The film has two saving graces, however. The first is Jennifer Lawrence as the emotional center of the story. It goes without saying that Lawrence is an acting powerhouse, and here, like in Silver Linings Playbook, she does it again. I could feel the anger and frustration building when we first meet her and felt it explode when Joy breaks down in front of her daughter late in the film. That scene alone was absolutely gut-wrenching and heart-breaking. The second saving grace, actually due in part to Lawrence, was when Joy first goes to QVC to promote her mop. That scene worked for me because the film started to slow down, the elements were coming together and the audience was allowed to engage with the story and characters. Because of that, I was able to become emotionally hooked for the rest of the movie. In Summary: Jennifer Lawrence delivers a strong performance as the main character in "Joy" but David O. Russell's inconsistency with the tone and rushing with the storytelling hampers everything else. Ranking: 3.0 Stars out of 5.