Margin Call

Column: The Word on Films | Date Published: Tuesday, 24 April 12 | Author: Melissa Wellham | 1 year ago

Margin Call is a smart and suspenseful film that turns the complicated and convoluted financial meltdown of recent years into not only an explanation that us mere humans, who aren’t Wall Street sharks, can understand, but a very human drama.

Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto), an entry-level analyst for a big firm on Wall Street, discovers that his firm has over invested in unreliable assets, and is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. What follows is really a thriller, as the financial advisers and executives of the firm must wrestle with the ethics of whether or not they sell their unreliable assets and destroy the market, to save themselves. Given that we’ve lived through the financial crisis, I think you can guess what happens.

Zachary Quinto turns in a believable performance as a naïve guy who just happens to work on Wall Street – and that takes some acting skills, as I don’t believe for a second that anyone there, even the street vendors selling hotdogs, could be that unassuming. The rest of the cast, however, is also exceptional. Stanley Tucci, Paul Bettany, Kevin Spacey, Simon Baker, Jeremy Irons – even Penn Badgley from Gossip Girl – are an interesting blend of ‘good person’ and ‘product of their pretty corrupt environment.’

It’s a film that is as much a meltdown of morals and humanity, as finances.

	A Dangerous Method : Based on true events, A Dangerous Method follows a young Dr Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) as he takes on a new patient: the beautiful but unstable Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley), who through years of beatings at the hand of her father has been reduced to a twitchy neurotic mess. Regardless, the two commence an affair, despite Jung being married. Simultaneously, the film follows Jung’s professional relationship and friendship – and eventual falling out – with Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen), a man whose strict views on psychoanalysis (ie everything is about sex) soon begins to trouble Jung. A Dangerous Method features some fine performances. Fassbender and Mortensen are both, as per usual, pretty fantastic. Knightley has been widely panned for her arguably over-the-top performance, but she brings some great physicality to the role. What’s most surprising about A Dangerous Method is that a film about sex and psychoanalysis could be so boring. It’s never clear what the real point of the film is; and the plot is meandering and repetitious, merely moving around in circles. For a film about psychoanalysis, where one might assume that the most interesting revelations would be made through dialogue, the script is strangely sparse and comprised mostly of its characters looking pensively into the middle-distance. Don’t see A Dangerous Method, for the sake of your own mental health.

	Battleship: Ostensibly based on a board game, Transformers 4 – oh, sorry, I mean Battleship – is another film about aliens, in Transformer-like suits, making Transformer-like noises, with big Transformer-like explosions. Except less subtle. With the action set in the seas and the skies, Battleship follows a small group of naval ships and their crew that become disconnected from the rest of the world’s forces, by a mysterious force field that appears over Hawaii when aliens crash-land in the ocean. It’s up to bad-boy Lt. Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch) and his brother Commanding Officer Stone Hopper (Alexander Skarsgard, definitely my highlight of the film), along with their rag tag crew (including Rhianna as your stereotypical sassy black woman) to save the day. Aside from the ridiculous premise, there were one or two moments where I began to feel myself being sucked into the film – but every time, a new twist would occur that was so patently ridiculous that I was able to stop myself from drowning in this whirlpool of stupidity. Highlight: a troupe of elderly, retired naval officers appearing out of nowhere to save the day – walking in slow motion, no less. Most of the audience in my cinema couldn’t contain their laughter. Battleship wants to be a ridiculous romp, but misses its target entirely. It’s ridiculous sure – but far too farcical to be fun.