Daily Archives: February 27, 2018

Thor: Ragnarok – Taiki Waititi

Adventure, Comedy, Great Trash, Loved it, Uncategorized

I really like Marvel Comics movies and of all those I love the Thor movies. With Chris Hemsworth as Thor and Tom Hiddleston as Loki it’s a no miss buddy God franchise. What can I say. Instead of saving the Earth this time Thor saves Asgard from his sister – the evil Hela played but Cate Blanchett. The special effects are great, the supporting cast of Mark Ruffalo, Benedict Cumberbach, Anthony Hopkins, Karl Urban, Idris Erlba and especially Jeff Goldblum you really can’t miss. Goldblum is classic in a totally comic role and a new comer – Tessa Thompson also provides great comic relief. I have to admit that comic relief from a script that is totally tongue in cheek is not really necessary, but it is really fun anyway. Not Oscar stuff but truly Great Trash!! I promise. If you like super heroes you will love this movie. Oh by the way, the director Taiki Waititi is a New Zealander and plays a cameo role. You won’t recognize him except by his broad New Zealand accent since he plays a rock creature. The movie is up there with Guardians of the Galaxy in my opinion and I really like Stan Lee taking such delight in having fun with his characters. Oh yeah, Stan Lee also has a cameo. Look for him when you go to see it.

Abacus: Small Enough to Jail – Steve James

Documentary, Good, Oscar 2018, Oscar Stuff, Uncategorized

This is one of the movies nominated for Best Feature Length Documentaries. It is a classic documentary in style as it follows the trial of the owners of a small federal bank based in Chinatown in New York City. In 2008 when the mortgage fiasco brought down the world economy this small bank was caught up in the disaster. Despite the fact that the crisis was brought about by huge unregulated banks and finance companies on Wall Street, the New York District Attorney’s office decided to make and example of the Abacus Bank which is the only financial institution to be charged with wrong doing out of the whole financial collapse. A total joke. Abacus was founded and owned by the Sung family with a goal of supporting the Chinese community especially new immigrants. As 2008 crept up the bank had a couple of employees who did do some illegal money laundering and outright theft that the family was not aware of. It was picked up and the DA’s office went into action. After a five-year investigation they charged the bank with fraud and larceny. The case went to trial and the documentary crew followed the family and trial over nearly 3 months. I will not tell you the outcome since you really should see this movie if you like documentaries or you can look it up but I can tell you that you get a close up look at the struggles of a family that truly wanted to do good for their community and got caught up in a crisis to which they contributed almost nothing and it also gives you good insight into the whole financial crisis. Great stuff.

The Post – Director, Steven Spielberg

Drama, Loved it, Oscar 2018, Oscar Stuff, Uncategorized

The Post is a movie I was not that keen to see despite being about the release of the Pentagon Papers and the start of the end of Richard Nixon. It stars Meryl Streep who I have not liked in most if not all her films and lately I have not been overly impressed with the ability of the Post and the NYT etc to hold the US government to account. Not like the good old days so I was not sure I could stomach a film that was going to point to the journalistic integrity of this newspaper now owned by Jeff Bezos who cares only for money and not for truth. As many may be aware the Washington Post was a family owned paper until 2013 when it was sold to Jeff Bezos at which point I decided it could no longer be trusted to be a bastion of integrity. Besides two of my favourite movies are All the President’s Men and Spotlight both of which illustrated investigative journalism at its best and I didn’t want that good taste to be spoiled.

However, I girded myself and headed off to see it. I will confess I was pleasantly surprised. Meryl Streep is very very good as Kay Graham the owner of the paper and Tom Hanks was also excellent as the editor Ben Bradlee. There is a superb supporting cast that all lead to a great movie experience. Unlike the President’s Men and Spotlight, the film does not focus so much on the crime as on the process of acquiring the Pentagon Papers and deciding to publish them. The NYT actually beat them to the punch, but Nixon closed the story done with an injunction against the Times. Daniel Ellsberg turned next to the Post and gave them the same documentation. The Post had to decide if they could publish the story and avoid prosecution for violating the injunction against the Times. The issue was freedom of the press but at the same time the Post had just gone public and a bad legal situation could seriously hurt their chances of attracting investment. So…. They decided to go with the story to defend the first amendment and the freedom of the press. Nixon erupts and takes them to court. In fact all the way to the Supreme Court and…he loses. The story breaks and while there is much more to the Daniel Ellsberg story than the fate of the Washington Post this still made a great movie and… damn it… Meryl Streep deserves her nomination for Best Actress too.

Oh by the way Mathew Rhys played Daniel Ellsberg who has a small role in the movie. Still it is important and recently I heard a couple of interviews with him about his new book, The Doomsday Machine. Ellsberg actually stole documents related to two secret studies undertaken by the US government. He delivered the Vietnam War Pentagon Papers first and hid the other document which was all about the impact of a thermonuclear war which the US clearly was looking at conducting. The title relates to the movie Dr. Strangelove very deliberately. The papers were hidden but then lost (a long story) but Ellsberg now thinks it is worth revisiting given the current president. So I left the theatre and bought the book. I am guessing the movie (Strangelove) and the book by Terry Southern has already been done but this book will be interesting and feed my paranoia.