Wall Street: People Never Change

Hair color may change, but an obsession with a certain shade of green never does...

If Oliver Stone is disappointed that his inconsequential Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps isn't nudging its way into the Best Picture race, he might consider sneaking it into the Oscars in the Best Foreign Language Film category. Fact is, for American viewers the characters may as well be speaking a rural Turkish dialect as they argue and fret about the recent financial crisis. It's yet another aimless Recession Movie that ultimately serves no purpose other than to remind us that we still have no idea what a credit default swap is. We don't understand Wall Street, and thus we can't understand Wall Street.

But then, that's assuming Stone set out to explain this disaster in the first place, which we can rule out based simply on the fact that he doesn't actually portray even one financial shenanigan (leaving Charles Ferguson's upcoming Inside Job as the all-important final chance to explain the recession in Main Street terms). Instead, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is a timeless examination of greed, similar to its prequel in an attempt to personify evil as a white guy in a dark suit.

To the extent that Stone successfully portrays bankers and brokers as scheming swindlers, we should be thankful. It puts us at much greater ease when we can pin the blame on them, the lenders, and not us, the borrowers, and Stone's stylish flair throughout the film, as unnecessary as it is to the story, still achieves an essential purpose in distracting us from the film's bleak central theme: people never change.

Although advertising firms and media headlines and magazine columnists naïvely and hopelessly attempt to convince us that we've entered a "new normal" in which people will spend sparingly and save wisely, the inconvenient truth is that 90% of Americans are earning and spending as much as they ever have (and in the case of the top earners, earning more than they ever have). Interest rates remain at historic lows and credit is still freely available to nearly anyone who desires it. As the recession begins to fade on a wider scale and the opportunities for easy money begin to emerge, we will be resurrected like millions of Gordon Gekkos, anxious to reclaim our financial kingdoms, no matter the literal or figurative cost. Isn't that human nature, or, at the very least, the American way?

300 Words About: New York, I Love You

"Listen, Hayden, let me tell you a little something about being boring on screen"...

Easily one of the most disappointing films of 2009, New York, I Love You makes the largest and most culturally diverse city in the United States appear bland, lily-white, and generally lifeless. It's like Des Moines on a Sunday morning.

To be fair I'm not a New Yorker and have never lived in the city, but in all the times I've ever visited I've never left with an impression as dull and tasteless as I did walking out of this movie. The locations are pedestrian, the stories inconsequential and insipid, the chain-smoking characters severely lacking in charisma, and the acting hit or miss (like, broad-side-of-the-barn miss). Aside from two or three of the 11 short stories, the highlight of New York, I Love You is the music playing over the closing credits.

300 Words About: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Though I saw it on opening night, the only thing I can add to the millions of reviews in the week since its release is: What did you expect? Maybe people felt betrayed by the trailer (which I dutifully avoided), but it seems the general consensus is that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is an inoffensive but otherwise fluffy failure that doesn't belong in the same conversation as the original trilogy. To which I say, again, what did you expect?

Unfortunately, this is the state we're in. Right around 2000, Hollywood figured out that, along with comic book movies, all they needed to do was continue to churn out sequels upon sequels and people would show up at the theater. And they were correct, as six of last year's top ten highest-grossing films were follow-ups to earlier movies. I can't put my finger on exactly when my expectations of these sequels dropped to near zero, but it's greatly helped me get my past my disappointment when a highly anticipated installment, like this one, fails to fully recapture the magic of its predecessors. In other words, I've wised up since The Phantom Menace. It's a sad way to see a movie, but it's necessary to avoid heartbreak.

So, Crystal Skull. It wasn't great but I got what I hoped for: Harrison Ford throwing sick two-handed punches (my favorite part of every Indy movie), everybody saying silly lines, at least one booby-trapped cave expedition, and John Williams' score. Additional positives were Shia LaBeouf (4 spelling tries there) proving that he's still one my favorite young actors, and my sister excitedly watching a terrific chase scene filmed at her alma mater. The big negatives were, of course, a completely ridiculous (even eye roll-inducing) plot and a stilted performance by Cate Blanchett, who appeared to to take this Oscar-seriously. Sure, it would have been nice to have an interesting and/or believable reason for Indy to take off to Peru, but the lack of one didn't ruin it for me because there were enough familiar elements to appreciate. It wasn't as warm and cozy as home (Raiders), but it felt like hanging out at a good friend's house.