Downton Abbey: A New Era

The Very British Art of Pre-Crying

or

"Oh! How Musical You Make It Sound!"

Well, if it is to be my fate to be addicted to SOME soap-opera, it might as well be "Downton Abbey." After all, I'm of the age for it—elderly and impatient with commercials.

 

Plus, it always was impressively cast, performed, and smartly written (by creator Lord Julian Fellowes), with enough intrigues amid the family (while also negotiating historical events) to keep the considerable cast going for six seasons of episodes.* Yes, it's soapy, and far too nostalgic for the past while also acknowledging that the way of life is, without a doubt, past its sell-date and will be replaced with less familial trappings and a more (Lords help us!) egalitarian sense that would be self-evident if one didn't live in a huge estate with a peerage and a schedule that wasn't filled with breakfasts, lunches, dinners, tea, and high tea that one can barely squeeze in a cracking round of croquet. Why, it's so precious that one could even forgive Fellowes for writing The Tourist.

 

No. No. There are SOME things that just shouldn't be allowed...even in the most liberal of households.

So, as change is inevitable, one notices that things are quite a bit different in Downton Abbey: A New Era, since the first movie which was derived from the series a couple years ago. The first thing I noticed was that the film opens on a bloody hectic "drone" shot, not the quaintly hovering aerials taken from hot-air balloons as previously. I suppose there's so much plot in this one that one felt the need to rush into it a bit with a jarring anachronistic approach with a shot through a stained glass church window. We're attending the marriage of Tom Branson (Allen Leech) and Lucy Smith—née Bagshaw—(Tuppence Middleton). Once doesn't want to get too far into the weeds here (one can attest from looking at the lingering shots of lawns that Downtown Abbey doesn't HAVE weeds) but Tom is the Irish former Downton chauffeur who married the youngest Crawley daughter (who died, leaving him with a legitimate Crawley heir) and we left the last movie with him promising to write to Lucy—maid to Imelda Staunton's Maud Bagshaw (Lady-in-Waiting to the Queen), but actually Maud's illegitimate daughter. Those letters must have been some hot stuff as, in the time one can do pre-production of a sequel, they've gone from admiring flirtation to walking down the aisle.

Oh, dear me. We ARE in the weeds, aren't we? And so soon. This is what happens when one tries to explain soap-ish operas to any level of understanding. One is conflicted between trying to be informative while also employing brevity. One can't have one without the other without appearing devoid of either. Shall we move on? To the Cliff's Notes version?

There are two plot-threads in ...A New Era (a quite neat little title), one involving the revelation that the Dowager Countess of Grantham, Violet Grantham (Maggie Smith) has been bequeathed a villa in the French Riviera by an acquaintance from her past—a past that brings up many questions that go unanswered but much speculated on—and that comes with it an invitation to visit by many of the Grantham's to see what's what and why, while, at the same time, (in a move that surely seems "meta" to the Lord and Lady Carnarvon, who own Highclere Castle, which serves as Downton Abbey) the family has received a request to use Downton as a film location which, although on the surface feels distasteful, comes with it a generous sum that would aid in much needed repairs to the estate's leaky roof. So, while some members go off to the south of France, Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery), the Earl's oldest daughter, remains behind to oversee the prevention of chaos by the invading film production.

The Dowager Countess herself is too frail to travel, but is resigned to stay at home, leaving the past in the past, and the villa in the future hands of her great grand-daughter, both of whose parents are now not of her blood. It's a legacy to a family member who would otherwise receive nothing.

Her son, Robert (Hugh Bonneville) is curious to learn what the story is and begins to worry about his actual parentage, all the while being soothed by his American wife Cora (Elizabeth McGovern), who may have medical issues of her own.

Back at the Abbey, the staff is all agog at meeting the stars of the film, a silent pot-boiler called "The Gambler," primarily dashing Guy Dexter (Dominic West) and the porcelain Myrna Dalgleish (Laura Haddock)—who, it must be said, is something of a diva. Her manner is in stark contrast with her background, for though she is, indeed, a beauty, her accent reveals her to be a Cockney. This causes complications as the film is canceled mid-shooting as the studio is no longer interested in making silent pictures, as the market is now demanding "talkies."

Yes, they use the Singin' in the Rain gambit, where the starlet has a voice completely unsuitable to her image and post-production "dubbing" is used to temporarily solve "the problem." This is such a minor plot-point in the movie that I don't think I'm spoiling anything by mentioning it. Certainly, there are other bombshells that I won't reveal as mentioning them would surely rankle.

There is one little thing that popped into my head hours after the film, stemming from this film showing Bonneville's Lord Grantham breaking down into tears, not once but twice. It is always done in private and always in anticipation of some heart-wrenching event. And then it occurred to me—"Ah! That's how he does it!" With all the vagaries that life bestows upon him, Robert has always been something of a rock, although able to appreciate humor and irony, and quite capable of taking umbrage. But, he gets his weeping done out of the public eye, so that when disaster strikes and he must be the "7th Earl of Grantham," he can keep a stiff upper lip and present a stoic facade to the public. Jolly good show, Earl!

And Downton Abbey: A New Era is a jolly good show. It all goes down like comfort food, with just enough spice to make it memorable, but not too much to make it unpalatable. And it provides a good repertoire of memorable "catty" lines that one can use to sound snarky while appearing high-toned. There may be some continuity jumps a couple times—I think that is due to cramming so much material into a little over two hours that some connective tissue hit the cutting room floor—but, all in all, the Empire of Downton Abbey remains strong and may the sun never set on it.

* Just to show how well-cast—and inhabited—these roles are, I always find it a shock to see pictures of the actors on the red carpet in contemporary fashions. So many of them seem unrecognizable out of period clothes.

300

Written at the time of the film's release...

"This won't be over quickly. You will not enjoy this" 

Two characters say this in 300, but it might as well have been me when I walked into the theater. I'm not a fan of Frank Miller, the comic-book artist-turned-writer who breathed new life into Marvel's "Daredevil" and DC's "Batman." I enjoyed his work on those, but around the time of his "Sin City" output, I began to think of his work as campily overblown and corrupt. When he ran out of ideas, he'd have one of his characters cut off a limb and do something that defied the laws of physics and that would serve as plot advancement. 

So, upon seeing the extremely faithful film adaptation of his "Sin City" graphic novels years ago, I just hung my head and thought that was the end of Miller doing anything good ever again. His hack-work had become too successful. A second Batman "Dark Knight" series was a sporadically illustrated mess, and his current work on an "All-Star" version of the character has been embarrassing. His scripts for the "Robocop" series were terrible. His co-directorial debut with Sin City was a frame by frame recreation of his original illustrations, and in those, there was power, no matter how thick-headed the concept or eye-rolling the dialogue that accompanied them.* 

It did point out, however, why films are one thing and graphic story-telling is another. Comics have the luxury of leaping from high-point to high-point. They suspend time to make way for mouthfuls of dialogue. They focus the eye and mind. Film does this, too, but at 24 frames a second, rather than the one comics afford. A film has to crash through that white border separating panels, and that's the difference between art and artifice. 

Now, Miller's "300" has hit the screen, and unlike "Sin City," director Zack Snyder has taken the concept, the tone, and Miller's design sense but gone his own way with the direction. Key frames of Miller's book are reproduced, but for the most part Snyder has found a way of taking Miller's tropes and making it move and breathing life into it. And it's Snyder's efforts to connect the dots and make Miller's flat-panels three dimensional that lets 300 rise above most comic book adaptations. 

It's still overblown. Some of the dialogue is not only bad, it's bad for today, much less ancient Greece. Example: When King Leonidas meets his opposing King, the bling-encrusted Xerxes--who's not nearly as gay as Miller made him in the book--he takes a look at the Persian's elaborate transportation and says "Let me guess. You must be Xerxes"--a line more weisen-heimer than kingly. 

But it beats the fade-out line on the eve of the final battle: "Unless I miss my guess, we're in for one wild night!" 

Oy. So bad it stings!

300 is a bit too enamored by the CGI-technology to create blood-spurts, but damn, if it doesn't move and hold your interest! There's one shot--of King Leonidas providing point (literally) to an attack done in one long take, and as he dispatches opponent after opponent, at each impact the film is speed-ramped to a crawl, which is as ingenious a way of recreating the framing ability of comics in a moving picture as has been devised. Sort of like Peckinpah's slo-mo cut-aways but self-contained in a single shot. 

So, what did I think of it? I enjoyed it! I may not like Miller's current writing, but one can't fault his illustrative sense, and Snyder brings it to glorious life. It may be gratuitous "homo-erotic war pornography," but it's sure well-constructed homo-erotic war pornography. It makes one anticipate Snyder's promised version of Alan Moore's "Watchmen," although one quails at the suggestion (and it's only been suggested) of Tom Cruise as the Machiavellian super-hero Ozymandius. Not even a Spartan could face that! 

* Miller did go on to make his directorial debut with a film version of the classic comic character "The Spirit".  It was just plain badness. And not in a good way.

Colette (2018)

The Graduate
or
"The Hand That Holds the Pen Writes History"

My name is Claudine, I live in Montigny; I was born there in 1884; I shall probably not die there.

Sidonie-Gabriel Colette's story has been taken off the book-shelf and adapted, and despite covering her years during the turn of the century (20th) from fancifully-romantic young womanhood to a sadder-but-wiser independence, could not be more timely. While being so, Wash Westmoreland's* biography of French writer known simply as Collette manages to rise above the constant threat of the stiffness of a BBC adaptation, which might have been, if they decided to tone down the life and present her as merely a Nobel Prize winning icon. Colette, you have to read between the lines.

It couldn't have been easy. Films about writers tend to be either precious when recalling inspirations for their work, or present the creative process as a magical mystery, completely unfathomable (except with voice-over). 

Colette falls into the latter category, but at least it shows a side of writing few of these things show: writing is hard work, often born of necessary...and it's not a lot of fun.

We meet Gabriel (Keira Knightley) at the age of 19, the daughter of Jules-Joseph Colette (Robert Pugh) and Adele Eugenie Sidonie (Fiona Shaw), living in a small rural town in Burgundy. The family, being once well off, is now in financial straights—they can't even provide Gabriel with a dowry. Good thing a family friend, the well-known author, publisher, critic and bon-vivant Henry-Gauthier Villers (Dominic West)—who writes under the pen-name "Willy"—finds her enchanting...and available. They whisk away to Paris to a cosmopolitan married life and where Gabrielle finds that "Willy" depends on ghost-writers for his output and he can be counted on to be unfaithful to her.

His small stable of writers rebel and finally quit, leaving them in bad consequences, given Willy's exorbitant lifestyle. Gabriel offers to write something—a novel, something that Willy is in no position to turn down. She spends hours on the project, the story of a young girl named Claudine, who, not unlike herself, grew up in Burgundy and her years at an all-girls school.  When she's finished, Willy dismisses it as fine writing, but the novel as "plotless" and beneath his standards. he won't publish it. Gabriel is crushed—the writing was hours of hard work and says she'll never do it again.

But, in a moment of frustration, with the bills mounting, Willy relents, after making some small suggestions for tinkering and spicing up...and surprise! "Claudine at School" becomes a publishing phenomenon. Everyone seems to be reading it, and Willy—whose name is on it as author—becomes the toast of the town, as Colette looks on in amazement. Along with the staggering book sales, Claudine even inspires merchandising and a popular play. Everyone assumes that the book is inspired by Gabrielle, but no one suspects—because Willy won't allow them to—that she might actually be the author.

Willy buys her a country estate, away from the city, with the profits for her. But, he has an ulterior motive. While Gabrielle spends time fixing it up and making it "just so," Willy becomes more and more agitated; he'd intended it to be a writer's retreat for Gabrielle—but she isn't writing, a problem he solves in his usual subtle way by locking her in her room until she's produced enough pages to his satisfaction.

As if he wasn't "Svengali" enough, Willy starts to become possessive and jealous if Gabrielle even looks at another man, but she dismisses the idea as absurd—she's more attracted to their lady-friends, if anything. Noting how Gabrielle is charmed by an American heiress from Louisiana, Georgie Raoul-Duval (Eleanor Tomlinson), he encourages an affair between the two, and, because he's a complete cad, decides he'll seduce Georgie, as well.

At this point, the marriage of Willy and Colette, as she begins to call herself, becomes fractious, and some of the invective starts to spill out on the pages of the books. When Colette even includes a fictionalized version of the menage-a-trois with Georgie in her third volume of "Claudine," Willy takes the opportunity to avoid a lawsuit by burning the existing copies, and then having them re-published, anyway. At one point, in discussing sequels she coyly tells him "I'm going to kill [the husband] in the next one."

Colette sets out on her own. Instead of writing, she decides to begin a career on the stage, separating herself from Willy and starting an intense friendship with Mathilde de Morny,(Denise Gough), the cross-dressing Marquis de Belbeuf. She very publicly rebels, recreating herself to her own satisfaction if to the bewilderment of the public-at-large. What's lovely about Colette is that there is no shame in it, merely the story of a woman who's been boxed in and revels in seeing just how free she can become, and on her own terms. 

Everybody's great in it, but it is Knightley that shines. She has always been an actress of intense daring, presenting her roles in mercurial flashes that hint at the conflicting emotions roiling within her. At times in the past, she has been so good, she's been scary, but in Colette, she presents a relaxed strength that finally snaps when she realizes that the nice little life she's made for herself has also become a prison...and a raw deal. After a success has been stolen from her, merely because anyone can claim words on a page, she makes herself the art, and no one can lay claim to that, good or bad.

Perhaps now, that Colette is out (although it hasn't done extremely well at the box office) we could supplant the endless adaptations of Jane Austen and maybe do the "Claudine" series as films, so that the author, so well regarded, can be most well known for something other than Gigi. Thank heavens.

    

* Westmoreland made the well-acted, but soft-pedaled and blunted Alzheimer's drama, Still Alice.

Finding Dory

I Had a Great Title For This Review, But I Forgot What It Was...
or
WWDD?

They did it again. Pixar's sequel to Finding Nemo, Finding Dory is such a good movie as to defy any objections. It's one of those rare movies (although not so rare when considering Pixar's output) where I can simply say "just go." Don't let anything, external or internal, keep you from seeing this in the best possible theater experience.

It's that good.

In fact, if you liked Finding Nemo, you may be surprised to discover that its sequel joins that rare list of films that is better than its predecessor.

But, how does it improve? It takes one of the more problematic of the earlier characters, focuses on it/him/her and provides value to a character that was, basically, comedy relief. At the same time, it teaches family-friendly, inclusive life-lessons that won't raise the blood pressure of either autocratic or laissez-faire parents, be they conservative or liberal. while keeping the whole thing entertaining, without needlessly villifying anybody, and having no scary moments that will necessitate the "hands-over-the-eyes" routine.*

The humor will not go over most kids' heads, but the ironic stuff might (irony being something that kids don't appreciate, as it's usually creates something that bursts their little bubble Universe—irony makes kids frown without knowing whether to laugh or cry). Finding Nemo, at the time of its release, was one of those Pixar bench-marks producing an artistic leap in how the physical world was represented digitally (late-comers to it might wonder what the fuss was about, considering the leaps they've made over the years). Finding Dory is as impressive in its depiction of the underwater world as The Good Dinosaur is showing the surface-world. But, its characterizations are far more sophisticated (and entertaining), while using a poignant story about memory and loss with the forgetful blue tang (voiced...memorably...by Ellen DeGeneres).

We go forward by going back: baby Dory (Sloane Murray) is being taught by her parents Jenny (Diane Keaton) and Charlie (Eugene Levy) how to introduce herself—"Hi, I'm Dory and I have short term memory loss." Dory's memory-stick is faulty and the parents (voiced by two of the best actors for portraying neurosis) worry about their little juvenile, warning her of the dangers of the deep (watch out for the undertow, don't stray too far from home) and hoping that some of it will make its way into her memory. But, they can only hope, because Dory can't stay focused or still enough for things to sink in. In the meantime, they do the best they can, hoping that it's enough.

We're back in Finding Nemo territory here, which was, basically, a movie about parenting. Yes, it was about finding yourself and taking chances and being more than you think you're capable of, but it was mostly about parenting, about loving something more than yourself that you would do all those things you wouldn't do otherwise. That Dory is a "special needs" child makes the movie even more poignant. The parents can only do what they can. It is up to the child to apply the lessons learned.

But, what if they can't remember the lessons?

Because it's a movie (rather than a short subject), of course Dory gets caught up in the undertow and is separated from her parents and left in the open ocean to say to every fish that passes "Hi, I'm Dory and I suffer from short-term memory loss. Have you seen my parents?" Of course, they haven't. But there are a lot of fish in the sea. And a year later, she encounters Marlin (Albert Brooks) who has also lost something, his son Nemo, and the movie flips to the ending with, that movie having been done thirteen years ago, Marlin and Nemo re-united, and Dory nearby, her own quest unfulfilled (not that she remembers).

But, images keep snapping into her mind. She talks in her sleep. One day, accompanying Nemo on a field-trip, she remembers something about "the undertow," and she associates it with her parents, and, together with Marlin and Nemo, she sets off to try and find a mysterious place she mentions after being knocked out by a migrating school of manta-rays—"The Jewel of Moro Bay, California."

In one of the few call-backs in the film (something that encourages me that a sequel has its own soul), the three catch the California current with Crush and his brood of migrating turtles and make their way to the U.S.'s West Coast, where an encounter with a squid manages to place them right where they want to be.

One of the neat things about Finding Dory is that it has a nice subliminal visual scheme to it. As the clowns and tang get closer to California, the ocean surface is littered with garbage from a Volkwagen beetle (which looks like it dropped out of Cars) and a sunken tanker of containers—at one point, Dory is swimming around with a plastic six-pack ring, which complicates her life for awhile.

And there are lots of new characters—Hank the camouflaging octopus (Ed O'Neill) who has a missing leg ("that would make you a septopus!"), Destiny the near-sighted shark (Kaitlin Olsen) and Bailey the beluga (Ty Burrell) with faulty echo-location, as well as sunning seals Fluke (Idris Elba—brilliant) and Rudder (Dominic West). If you're sensing a pattern in this, it's that "The Jewel" has a lot of damaged oceanographic life, where Dory fits right in.

And yet this doesn't dawn on you until late in the picture. Most of the sea-folk in the larger two-thirds of the movie are parked in a handicapped space, but, when left to their own devices, are just as capable, or even more so, than their blithely-"together" water-buddies. This realization colors the reactions of the schools of fishes that ignore, snub, or scuttle away from Dory's clueless pleas about her parents. It's a story about the invisibility of the handicapped, invisibly woven through an adventure story about the formation of relationships and its strengths...and in the words (improbably, but true) of Warren Beatty "the sanctity of family."

Because it's one thing for Marlin and Nemo to be in jeopardy and for us to feel for their plight. It is quite another for Dory and Hank and Destiny and Bailey to have their own survival systems and networks and feel that everything is going to be okay. Yes, there are tight spots. Yes, there are moments of indecision and desperation. But, the second-guessing and neurosis of Finding Nemo is refreshingly absent. No one needs convincing here (except for Marlin...again)—everybody is heroically zen-Yoda "Do or do not. There is no try." The pay-off is a goofy, ludicrously over-the-top chase sequence capped by a hilariously extended slow-mo denouement with a musical accompaniment that is both entirely inappropriate and dazzlingly perfect.

It's why I find Finding Dory a better film than Finding Nemo. Yes, the former has Marlin learning a lesson about overcoming his fears to find his son. All well and good. But, Finding Dory goes the extra step. It teaches to be fearless, despite adversity, despite handicaps, despite...anything. I like that message for being a life-lesson, rather than an answer to a problem. Yes, fine, don't be so neurotic is a good enough lesson to start. But "just keep swimming" is both a good philosophy and a good course of action.

Do not leave early at the "the end" credit because the movie has a nice end-note that continues issues from the film, but also from Finding Nemo.

Also, go early enough that you see Alan Barillaro's pitch-perfect short piper, which is amazing in its visual story-telling, mind-boggling in its photo-realistic animation, and admirable in its refusal to anthropomorphize its subjects.

*I missed roughly 20% of To Kill a Mockingbird when I was 7, thanks to that move. Thanks, Mom!

Money Monster

Fostering the Status Quo
or
Crumbs and Clowns, Not Bread and Circuses

Oh, their hearts are in the right place, those makers of Money Monster. Liberals all, they want to decry how the big-money-guys are destroying the little guy by sucking the shekles out of their retirement accounts (if they have them), pension funds (if they have them), life-savings (if they have them) or any amount of disposable cash by relying on the very greed that made them who they are to obtain the "other people's money" they depend on to get rich themselves. 

It's a shell-game for the selfish. The statistics show that we have such a lop-sided social strata that the top 20% of the people have 85.1% of the assets (the largest section, the bottom 40% of the population own 0.2%). You'd think that something that top-heavy would collapse under its own weight, but it resists crashing (or even trickling down) because that's gravity and gravity is Nature, and money has nothing to do with reality, especially these days. It works only because we agree on it for the purposes of barter, but these days—as the movie points out—money isn't even cash anymore, it's only pixels in theory in denominations of 1's and 0's. A bi-polar demarcation, like the "have's" and the "have-not's."

The barker for this circus is Lee Gates (George Clooney, who might be doing another of his "Idiot" roles for the Coen Brothers), a pompous ass of a guy who goes off-script, off-time, and off-color to shuck and jive his audience by proffering investment advice (think a nightmare blend of Jim Cramer, Glenn Beck, and a sports clown) for the good of the masses when actually his celebrity and clout are mostly used to prop up cronies and folks he can use to prop up the show. If somebody in the audience makes money, hey, it can only help ratings. 

Besides "caveat emptor." He's not saying you should actually buy the stuff. it's your decision and if something goes south, tough luck, there's fine print in the terms and conditions that you should have read if you read the prospectus carefully (if anybody had encouraged you to). The responsibility is all yours.

The show thrives on machismo and surface glamour and bling. Plus, there's the implied threat that you're a wimp if you don't take chances. You don't make the green if you're fifty shades of yellow. That sort of thing. And it's glitzed up like a game show with fast talk, goofy graphics, and bright shiny objects that defy analysis because it's all in fun.

But, Gates is a pain in the wallet. He's been doing this for years and the formula works and why change? He basically goes off-script every time the red light goes on and it drives his producer-director Patty Fenn (Julia Roberts) nuts. But, she's good, so she can ride the Gates tsunami every night. She's tired of it, though. She's leaving the gig to go direct somewhere else, so that she can...direct, rather than watch helplessly in the control room while Gates wings it.

If she thought she had lost control before, it's nothing like the day the movie portrays. In mid-broadcast, while Gates is clowning around, a million-dollar grin on his face, the control room sees a guy hiding behind the backdrops and video-screens. He waits just long enough for Gates to see him and think he's part of some "surprise bit." That is, until Kyle Budwell (Jack O'Connell) pulls out a gun and threatens Gates (on live television, one might add) with a bullet in the head unless he "gets some answers."

Budwell had invested his inheritance on one of Gates' recommendations, IBIS corporation—all of it, $60,000, to make a "big score" for himself and his pregnant girlfriend—and when the investment went south, he lost everything. Now, he wants answers as to what happened in the transaction, and he instructs Gates to put on a suicide vest (which Budwell holds the trigger to in a "chicken switch" configuration) to get the officers of IBIS on-camera to admit their failures.

The head of the company, Walt Canby (Dominic West), a favorite name Gates likes to drop on the program, cannot be found—he's out of the country. The company's mouth-piece, Diane Lester (Caitriona Balfe) burbles homilies, platitudes and corporate lines and boiler-plate, but that only causes Budwell to shoot out the video screen she's appearing on. Normally, the talking-head would remove their ear-piece and go have a congratulatory lunch for themselves, but in this fantasy, Lester starts a one woman crusade at IBIS to find answers to what's going on. She doesn't get fired for this, which might make the genre this one is classified under as "science fiction." She makes calls to the original programmers to determine what went wrong with the algorithms of the investment plan. They say there's nothing wrong with the algorithms (proving that they are, indeed, programmers—it's always somebody else's fault) and that something else caused the fund collapse. Lester investigates further, insuring that her pension gets taken away (and forget about a good recommendation).

Meanwhile, locked in the control room, Fenn coordinates with the police, evacuates the studio, negotiates with Budwell, and also has the time to do her own investigating into the IBIS corporate structure and its dealings. I'll bet her salary is a fraction of Gates'.

Gates, for his part, sweats. And, while wearing "the vest of doom" grows something that resembles a conscience, at least under the glare of television lights. He starts back-pedaling and comes up with a plan to take Budwell out of the studio and confront Canby about the apparent fraud.

He should have looked at his own monitor. Money Monster is, itself, a fraud, no "apparent" about it. The movie tries to gin up sympathy by channeling resentment against Wall Street by personifying it with a disgruntled investor who's gone off his rocker and decided to ultimately commit suicide by cop. That's like feeling bad for the Van Heflin character in Airport because he decided to blow a plane up for the insurance (as opposed to the Maureen Stapleton character, who's left behind to pick up the pieces). Thank you, I'd rather have somebody a bit more competent through whom to channel my righteous indignation. But, then, Budwell is always a schmuck throughout this movie, it's only O'Connell's earnestness that makes you take him at all seriously. It's what the movie-makers think of all the consumers of their bright shiny objects and their bread and circuses.

They give lip-service to Budwell's plight, but the sympathies seem to be with the one percenter's among the characters, because, after all, the bad guys still get away with their schemes and Gates gets to continue his job shucking and jiving. How like the economic crisis that the film-makers are wringing their hands about. Unfortunately, wringing your hands is visually indistinguishable from the silent movies' miming for "miserly greed." Frank Capra might have done something with it, making sure that phoniness is pilloried for its cravenness, and the true villains, if not completely thrown to the mob, are, at least, exposed to them. In the end, the movie really has nothing to say other than people are getting screwed, so maybe we ought to pay attention before torch and pitchfork futures go up. In the meantime, that Budwell guy's dead, but, hey, the show must go on. Oh, and Fenn decides to keep her crappy job that she is way too qualified for. Happy ending. All smiles. Cue the "Applause" sign.

The writers might not know better than this crap. But Foster does. Clooney might. Why was this Money Monster of a movie allowed to be released with so little thought attached to it?

Money Monster is a bad investment all the way around, certainly not of somebody's time.

Post-script: it's probably a good idea I had trouble writing this review, because the shooting in Orlando imbues Money Monster with a different perspective, one the writers were insensitive to and should have brought into the mix, if they wanted to make the thing more complex (but one suspects that was never the intention, or else the ending wouldn't be so superficially upbeat. 

Because whatever motivation behind his terrorist attack, Kyle Budwell is a terrorist. What did he think he could accomplish by his actions except suicide? Did he think because his motivations are so transparent, that the actions of the other villain of the piece, Walt Camby, would be equally as transparent? Camby is, after all, in the business of making money from other people's money, and so his motivation is always to keep his machinations in secret, only to reveal the results in an annual report of earnings, the way most businesses do. How they do so, whether it be Volkswagen by rigging emissions tests or Turing Pharmaceuticals (and its reprehensible little wanted poster-creep, Martin Shkreli) raising the price of Daraprim by 5,000% or the private contractors, like Halliburton, bilking the government and the tax-payers by charging $99 to wash a sack of laundry in Iraq, is their business, shady as it is. They do villainous, often obscene, things in order to look like heroes to their stock-holders. They're crooks, one and all, but just because he is victimized by the villains does not make Budwell a hero. He's a villain, too, and a pathetic one.

It's just one more facet to what makes Money Monster a cheat, an empty suit, and a badly thought-out entertainment.