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Weasel:
Columbia Business School dean and ex-Bush advisor Glenn
Hubbard in Inside Job.
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Gassing
the Buck
By
Ann Morrow
Inside
Job
Directed
by Charles Ferguson
During
an interview in Inside Job, a financial-sector professional
is asked about a Wall Street CEO needing to own six private
jets, to which the answer is: “. . . and a helicopter.” Yet
that’s not the most absurd reply in this investigative documentary
into the 2008 global financial meltdown and its devastating
consequences. Written, directed, and (notably) produced by
Academy Award-nominated documentarian Charles Ferguson (No
End in Sight), Inside Job picks the best—and worst—minds
in high finance, and though it makes no pretense of being
entertaining (a la Michael Moore), the import of what’s being
said builds to almost edge-of-your-seat indignation. In traditional,
talking-heads-and-charts format, narrated by Matt Damon and
enlivened by footage of the staggering accumulation of wealth
by the leaders of the most prominent financial institutions
contrasted with bleak landscapes of economic desolation, the
film concentrates on making extremely complex information
as clear and incisive as possible, which it does successfully.
Inside
Job begins with a simple overview of mortgage lending
practices in the 1930s, when banks were local and careful
about who they lent money to, and how much, because they wanted
to be repaid. It then follows the labyrinthine escalation
of financial services through Reagan-era deregulation, the
stock boom of the 1990s, and the collusion of the Bush presidencies,
and culminates in an examination of the particularly tricky
topic of derivatives: What they are, how they came about,
and the destruction that’s caused when banks pass the buck
on bad debts. Especially when these inflated debts are sold
and resold on the global market, a tactic referred to by the
perpetrators as “spreading the risk”—as if that’s a good thing.
Some of the film’s most unnerving material comes from the
financial professionals who issued easy-to-understand warnings,
and who were ignored, and the sheer scale of losses that resulted
from Wall Street profiteering. This totalled $20 trillion
worth of lost jobs, homes, and pensions, with the tab for
damage control being footed by taxpayers while the banking
hierarchy pocketed astronomical sums in personal bonuses—along
with some not-so-gray-flannel perks, such as cocaine binges
and high-priced hookers. Former prosecutor Elliot Spitzer
earns a little credit for going on-camera about the secret
nightlife of government-supported high-rollers, and one has
to wonder why he was the one to be to be busted, since he
was hardly the worst offender in arrogant carelessness—as
is reported by former madam (and failed candidate for governor)
Kristin Davis, who says that after she was arrested, no one
bothered to ask for records from her Wall Street-vicinity
bordello. In contrast, SEC chairwoman Mary Shapiro declined
to be interviewed. As the film illustrates, the toxic consequences
of big-banking domination are like a contagion, including
influence peddling in academia. As French minister of finance
Christine Lagarde says, “There’s nothing we can trust anymore.”
After seeing this documentary, you still won’t know who to
trust, but at least you’ll know why.
Evil
Geniuses
Megamind
Directed
by Tom McGrath
In Madagascar, director Tom McGrath made us laugh hysterically
over the antics of a band of penguins modeled after the standard
unit found in any war movie. It was sublime and crazy all
at once, so good in fact that it spawned a Christmas-related
short film, and was far better than the main story. McGrath
giddily plays with our assumptions and, most of all, what
we’ve come to expect from animated movies and superhero plotlines,
with Megamind, a winning new 3D from DreamWorks.
I saw Megamind with all my children, who range in age
from 4 to 14, and this in itself was something of a rarity.
I worried that the older two would be bored, or that the younger
two would be scared, that somehow the twain in their ages
and experiences would not meet happily in the darkness of
the Madison Theatre. I mention this because it’s important
to understanding just how good Megamind is. The movie
centers on the age-old battle of good versus evil, with the
former being represented by Metro Man (Brad Pitt) and the
latter by Megamind (Will Ferrell). Metro Man’s muscles are
eclipsed only by the size of his ego, the startling gleam
of his teeth surpassed only by the megawattage of his star
power. He’s so beloved by the citizens of Metro City that
they erect a gigantic shrine to him, which he accepts while
literally walking on water. The thorn in Metro Man’s side
is Megamind, a stick figure punctuated by an enormous blue
head, who came to his life of evil by dint of never having
been any good at anything else. That said, he’s not all that
adept at evildoing, as his inventions and conceits have about
as good a track record as that of, say, Wile E. Coyote. But
in an apparent triumph, Megamind offs Metro Man, taking over
the city and wreaking havoc. Until, that is, he realizes he’s
bored with it all, in the absence of a real nemesis.
The offbeat beauty of Megamind is the way it employs
the standard-issue devices of such movies, such as the almost-daily
kidnapping of the leading lady (in this case intrepid reporter
Roxanne Ritchi, voiced by Tina Fey) and inverts them, as when
Roxanne asks Megamind to stamp her frequent hostage card so
she can just be on her way. Without the thrill of the competition,
Megamind is bored out of his big blue head, so he schemes
with his sidekick, Minion (David Cross), to create a new hero,
namely Roxanne’s besotted cameraman Hal turned Titan (Jonah
Hill), or, as the hapless Hal spells in bold letters, Tighten.
Titan, who looks like SynDrome in The Incredibles on
steroids and without conditioner, seems an appropriate vessel
for returning some semblance of normalcy to Metro City, but
a lifetime of loserhood translates into sheer and utter joy
at the opportunity to use his power for vengeance. Scripters
Alan Schoolcraft and Brent Simons take enormous chances by
refraining from coloring their leads in one-color brush strokes,
something which could be confusing for some, but it gives
the movie a strange but potent undercurrent of reality. When
Roxanne tries to reason with Titan, saying that she “knows”
Hal, he strikes back, truthfully, that she never cared or
knew a thing about him. The movie skewers the nice idea we
like to have that how a person looks doesn’t have anything
to do with our attraction to them.
The 3D effects are dazzling and scary, as when Roxanne is
flung through the air and left hostage at the top of what
looks like the Seattle Space Needle, only much higher. The
dizzying sense of abandonment in such a precarious situation
is palpable, to the point where this acrophobic reviewer had
to remove my 3D glasses for a bit. Ferrell’s aptitude for
improbably blending childhood wonder with maturity is well
suited to the title character, plus he gets do blistering
riffs off Marlon Brando’s Superman role and even Ben Stiller.
Fey’s Roxanne is a rarity in the genre that usually calls
on its female leads to look pretty and scream mightily in
their frequent moments of peril. And Pitt is a riot, seemingly
soaking up the chance to play the BMOC as a cocky ass. Altogether,
the movie succeeds more as a send-up of genres, not to mention
egos, than as a straight cartoon, and we’re all the better
for that.
—Laura
Leon
The
Big Finale
The
Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest
Directed
by Daniel Alfredson
The girl is Lisbeth Salander (played by the indelible Noomi
Rapace), and in The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest,
Lisbeth is back—but not with a vengeance. Hornet’s Nest
is the slow-burning third installment of the Swedish film
adaptation of Stieg Larssen’s best-selling Millennium trilogy,
and in it, the complex plot is satisfyingly (if less shockingly)
resolved. In The Girl Who Played With Fire and The
Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Lisbeth’s horrifying past
at the hands of men in power, whether criminals or authorities,
was intertwined with corruption in Swedish society that escalated
to some of the highest levels of power. A hardened biker punk
with an aptitude for technology, Lisbeth partnered with journalist
Michael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) on her long and brutal
odyssey to attain freedom from the system while fighting back
against the misogynist and pathological forces aligned against
her. Opening with flashbacks to Dragon’s grisly ending,
Lisbeth is in a vulnerable position while she recovers in
a hospital. Meanwhile Michael is writing an investigative
piece to further her cause, which puts the staff of his progressive
magazine in mortal danger.
Hornet’s
Nest is slowed by long stretches of exposition detailing
the complexities of the ever-widening plot, but the conversational
slogs—and flashbacks—help to make the film engrossing for
audiences who haven’t seen the previous films, as well as
for fans of the books who can’t get enough of the novels’
various psychopaths and unexpected do-gooders. One of Lisbeth’s
protectors is her surgeon, who helps to fend off the repulsive
Dr. Teleborian (Anders Ahlbom), the psychiatrist who has been
lurking in the shadows of Lisbeth’s life since her childhood.
Dragon director Daniel Alfredson has honed his ability
with precision cinematography for the eruptions of violence
that are the trilogy’s nongratuitous hallmark. But even more
so, it’s strategic exchanges of information, hair’s-breadth
escapes, daring hacking, and especially, the story’s luridly
pulpy psychology and astringent acting that combine for a
tour-de-force conclusion that the upcoming American remake
will be hard-pressed to match.
—Ann
Morrow
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