Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

Ratings - MPAA (PG-13), USCCB (A-III), Roger Ebert (3 stars), Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 stars)

IMDb Listing - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1027718/
CNS/USCCB Review - http://www.usccb.org/movies/w/wall-street-money-never-sleeps.shtml
Roger Ebert's Review - http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100922/REVIEWS/100929993/1001/reviews

I confess that I did not like Oliver Stone’s first Wall Street [1987] movie. I agreed with Stone’s anger and sentiment that the ethos of Wall Street was one of unbridled greed and that the investment hot shots of that time had convinced themselves that “Greed is Good.” Still, precisely because I had such a low opinion of Wall Street, I had little interest in paying to see a movie that would only support what I already believed and would only get my blood pressure up.

So why did I go see this second Oliver Stone movie on Wall Street taking place today, twenty years later? Well, I’m twenty years older. So is Oliver Stone (who co-wrote and directed the first movie and now the second) and so is Michael Douglas (who played the iconic villainous investment mogul Gordon Gekko in the first movie and does so again in the second). And having seen the movie, it is clear to me now that all of us have mellowed with age.

Now Stone’s condemnation of the excesses of Wall Street remains in the second movie and perhaps it is more savage than in the first and it comes from a stunning extended response given by Michael Douglas’ Gekko to a question asked him at a presentation Gekko is shown as giving to an auditorium full of finance students at a university in New York. In his response, Gekko declares that the excesses for which he had been sent to prison had become “legal” and that financial crisis of our time was caused by “everyone drinking the same cool aid.” Still despite this blanket condemnation, the overall tone of the second movie is softer and more human than the first.

Even in the first movie, Stone tried to complement the story of the big-shots on Wall Street personified by Gekko, et al, with the lives of “regular people” personified in the portrayal of the parents of the young “up and coming hotshot” Bud Fox (played by Charlie Sheen), including Charlie Sheen’s father Martin Sheen who played Bud Fox’ union card carrying airline mechanic dad. But in the first movie, the contrast of the two worlds (investment banker Gekko’s world on one side and the world of Fox’ parents on the other) seemed to me to be too shrill and contrived.

In the second movie, Shia LaBeouf plays the role of the neophyte on Wall Street, Jake Moore. However, Jake is portrayed as being someone a bit more mature than Charlie Sheen’s Bud Fox of the first movie and one who had been exposed to a wider (and often better) set of mentor figures than Fox. Moore’s more rounded character is the first of many softening improvements over the first movie. A second improvement over the first movie comes in the character of Jake’s mother played by Susan Sarandon, who I believe is possibly the second movie's most compelling character. Introduced in the movie as a former nurse turned real estate agent who had gotten quite adept at “flipping” houses and condos for a profit during the past housing boom, she seemed lost in the new realities following the housing boom’s collapse. And it is LaBeauf’s character plays her conscience even near the beginning of the movie, when she still hadn’t grasped the new realities of the economic downturn, chiding her: “I used to be so proud of you when I was a kid. My mother saves lives for a living! What could be better than that?” Her journey in this movie is at least as important as that of Gekko’s and fills-out the true significance of Gekko’s condemnation of the current economic situation given above.

All in all, if the devil was entirely _outside_ “us” (and in the person of Gekko) in Stone’s first "Wall Street" movie, the devil (Gekko) turns out to not be entirely bad and arguably redeemable in the second and one comes to appreciate that there is plenty of evil (and good) to spread around. And as one who has matured some as well over these twenty years, I do believe that such new insight (and acceptance) does come with age.


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The Town [2010]

Ratings - MPAA (R), USCCB (O), Roger Ebert (3 stars), Fr. Dennis (3 stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB review
Roger Ebert's review

Set in the working class neighborhood of Charlestown in Boston, I knew that The Town was going to be popular among the Anglo parishioners in my parish. Having now seen the movie, I do think that its universal themes dealing with loyalty, friendship, community and parting of ways would probably strike chords among older and working-class audiences across the globe.

The Town is a “genre movie,” hence the story is presented in a form with discernable “conventions” (rules) and the story is presented in an exaggerated manner for effect. I say this because on the surface this movie is about a crew of bank robbers who work for a local mafia which controls the Charlestown neighborhood of Boston.

Now why would one have sympathy for any of these people? This is especially since during the course of the movie, the members of this crew of bank robbers wound an awful lot of people, smash an awful lot of cars and other property, and seem to be enjoying an enormous streak of luck in getting away with it all. So what’s going on? Why do we sympathize with the apparent thug-protagonists in the story? And most importantly why, despite the violence and mayhem, we can more or less be certain that the vast majority of the smiling, popcorn eating parishioners from my parish (often sweet rosary praying grandmothers, though with their own stories) watching this movie will not turn to a life of violent crime as a result of watching a movie like this?

It’s because the story speaks to us on a level below the superficial and why I believe that this movie would be understandable to working class and generally older audiences across the globe: The protagonists in this movie feel trapped. They are making a living in a manner which is obviously dangerous and illegal, but most of them don't see a way out. The frustration of the people in the story is most clearly expressed by Krista the former girlfriend of the MacRay (the movie’s main protagonist). At one point in the movie, she sobbingly asks: “Why is it me who always gets used?”

MacRay, who is the leader of the bank robbing crew and is played by Ben Affleck (Affleck also wrote and directed the movie) comes to see a way out of his dead-end and rapidly closing situation. But he has to deal with and navigate through feelings of loyalty to his neighborhood and crew. Anyone who has ever loved his friends and his community even though everything was “not right” would understand.

American cinema has a long “noir” tradition of “hard boiled” movies about the fallen city and getting by (and finding a way out) through street smarts. In recent years a numbrer of movies of this style have been set in Boston (Mystic River, The Departed and now The Town). Clint Eastwood, who directed Mystic River, adds others including The Grand Torino and even The Changeling. If you liked any of these movies, you will probably like The Town. And given the arc of the story, if you liked the movie Shawshank Redemption, you’ll find many similarities.

Yes, this is a very violent movie. There is some sex. However, it is a movie that also tells a story, one that a lot of people, who will never become criminals, will relate to.


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The Social Network

Ratings - MPAA (PG-13), USCCB (A-III), Roger Ebert (4 stars), Fr. Dennis (3 stars)

IMDb info - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1285016/
CNS/USCCB Review - http://www.usccb.org/movies/s/social-network-the.shtml
Roger Ebert's Review - http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100929/REVIEWS/100929984

Many people pick The Social Network about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (played in the movie by Jesse Eisenberg) to be a contender for "Best Picture" at the Oscars this year (and Justin Timberlake to be a nominated for "Best Supporting Actor" in his role as Sean Parker, the 20-something founder of the infamous music downloading site Napster, who in the film befriends and mentors Zuckerberg).

The key scene in the movie falls right at the beginning. Harvard computer science student, Mark Zuckerberg is in a bar with his Boston University girlfriend, Erica Albright. Focused on himself, and rambling on and on about his plans and only peripherally refering to how these, his plans, could "benefit her," he seems utterly clueless that she's considering breaking-up with him. She does. And she ends with the words: "What's really sad is that you're going to think that people don't like you because you're a nerd. But that's not the reason, it's because you're an asshole."

At this point, we don't know enough about Zuckerberg to tell if he really was an asshole, but the moviegoer is invited through the rest of the movie to deliberate internally and render his/her verdict.

Does the Zuckerberg character do assholy things? Yes, he certainly does. He goes back home, writes a slew of nasty and immature things about Erica on his blog, including disparaging (and almost certainly untrue) things about her bra size, things that certainly wouldn't serve at all to win her back, if that was his hope. So he certainly becomes an asshole to her. He also does or _plausibly_ does other assholy things to all sorts of other people throughout the arc of the story.

But was he / is he really an asshole (or a real asshole)? The movie leaves this up to the moviegoer to decide.

Now I do find a certain "Hollywood defensiveness" in this movie, that the movie seems to need to say "Yes, he's smart and yes he's got his billions, BUT ..."

And it does this in many ways:

(1) Zuckerberg is portrayed throughout the movie as being somewhat creepily obsessed with the girl who dumped him. If that is true, then yes, he _is_ a sick jerk. But it also seems to me to be unlikely. Afterall, the guy was dumped like in his sophomore year in college. Most people get dumped at least a few times in college (or otherwise) and _go on_ with life.


(2) Zuckerberg's portrayed by Jesse Eisenberg playing him as exhibiting symptoms of ausperker's syndrome / mild autism. This makes his character perhaps more compelling and perhaps more pitiable, but is it true??? Actual footage of an hour long interview with Zuckerberg available online doesn't seem to show the autism-like behavior that Eisenberg displays playing him in the movie.

(3) Finally and to its credit in the movie, Zuckerberg, who was portrayed early in the movie as being obsessed with being accepted into one or another of Harvard's exclusive student clubs (as a means of acheiving a better life), says that with Facebook "everybody gets to be the gatekeeper of his/her own club." It's an interesting insight into Facebook and it is true -- everyone can choose to "friend" or "unfriend" anyone who requests becoming "friends").

And here could be the crux of a "Hollywood defensiveness" regarding Zuckerberg -- Hollywood is built on status. Here's a guy who's made billions, more than ANYONE in Hollywood has ever made, and who did it through a means (creating Facebook) which undermines (not just for Zuckerberg, but for EVERYBODY) the status pyramid on which Hollywood has stood -- If thanks to Facebook, you are really (using Seinfeld's words) "The Master of your own Domain (club/page)" why would you care what Lyndsey Lohan or Shia LaBeouf did or did not do anymore?

So is Zuckerberg an asshole? Perhaps, but it also sounds a little like the former "in crowd" complaining that "the nerd" actually made good ;-).


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Introduction

Those who know me know that I'm an avid moviegoer and over the years I've been asked by a good number people to start a blog like this giving my thoughts on the various movies that I've seen. So here it is.

I will always try to put up links to the USCCB's movie review page and Roger Ebert's movie reviews as well.

My view of the movies that I see will naturally come from my own "sitz im leben," that is from my own experience of being a rather well traveled, multi-ethnic Catholic priest, who has always had an interest in "inculturating" the message of the Gospel in our time and place.

Since my time in the seminary, I've liked movies because "going to the movies" is one of the few "mass experiences" (outside of going to Mass/Church) available in our culture AND one which isn't particularly time consuming.

In 2-3 hours the experience of seeing a movie is over and the movie is ready to be discussed (again, not unlike the length of time of a Mass or Chruch Service, though the Mass/Church services are generally somewhat shorter). In contrast, the time needed to read a good book or to follow a television series is generally larger.

I also believe that all art is meant not only to be consumed but to be discussed, be it over a few beers or, in our times, over the internet ;-).

So that is why I am happily starting this blog. May God bless this endeavor and help us to better understand the world in which we live in and thus better to understand how to apply the Gospel in our times.