Bernard Garrett (Anthony Mackie) grew up overhearing white people’s business schemes as he shined their shoes, so he knows he’s just as smart and just as capable. In Texas in the 1960s, however, the world is designed to limit his ambition and rob him of power. But still, he dreams, and he follows those dreams to Los Angeles, where he meets Joe Morris (Samuel L. Jackson), a potential partner with as much audacity as he.
Joe is already a successful businessman; he owns several properties. Bernard, however, wants to get in on the real profit. He wants to own buildings in white neighbourhoods. Even in L.A. there are many barriers to this happening, so they convince their handyman Matt (Nicholas Hoult) to become the white face of the company. They teach him algebra and golf, the white man’s business necessities, and he basically becomes their puppet, the representative who shakes all the hands and signs all the contracts while his mysterious business partners remain names on a ledger, though both remain hidden in plain sight – as a chauffeur, and a janitor. This strategy is incredibly fruitful for them, but Bernard won’t really feel successful until he can do the same in Texas, so eventually they go back, and they buy a bank. A bank! A bank that will be the first in its area to give loans to Black clients, business owners and first time home owners. They have to do this work incredibly surreptitiously of course, because it’s still Texas, but this endeavour really has the power to transform the entire community, which of course has never had this kind of opportunity for upward mobility, which is to say, the same kind that white folks take for granted. Which is why some 1960s Karen feels the need to intervene. In 1960s Texas, Black audacity is just about the biggest crime there is, so they don’t just get a police response, but the FBI as well. Of the three men involved, can you guess which two are arrested and charged? Yes, go ahead and assume this will be based solely on the colour of their skin.
The Banker is a safe movie that leaves all the risks to its bold lead characters. Director George Nolfi is content with a pretty standard biopic, which in this case is fine, as the revolutionary entrepreneurs depicted are so vivaciously brought to life by both Mackie and Jackson. Proper credit goes to Nia Long also, who portrays Garrett’s wife, Eunice. Happily Long is given actual work to do, the wife not just content to stay in the home, but very much involved in the family business. Eunice was always the first to recognize her husband’s genius and her support must have meant the world, but that would have been a very big deal, to risk her family’s stability in order to indulge his ambition. Eunice was a trailblazer herself, and Nia Long makes the most of it.
Based on a true story, the pursuit not just of the American dream, but of equal access to said American dream, is a story worth telling every time. The magnetic banter between Mackie and Jackson is just surplus on the ledger.
palace to beg for a job from her cousin, Sarah, Queen Anne’s trusted lady in waiting. Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) is mentally and physically frail. Between painful attacks of gout and a nervous disposition, she leads a lonely life on her throne, often bedridden, frequently deranged with pain or paranoia. Her only friend and companion is Lady Sarah (Rachel Weisz), who basically rules the country in her place. Sarah is a strict go-between, acting as a buffer between Queen Anne and the demands of her royal position, and if she uses that position to exert her own will and influence, well…of course she does. Wouldn’t you?
too. I wondered how I’d come to miss this movie, with notable subjects and stars, but I didn’t have to wait long to figure out the why if not the how: Kevin Spacey. He co-stars as the beleaguered, bloated professor, which means the accusations against him would have left the producers scrambling, and they buried it in a shallow Hollywood grave.
Roessner watched Platoon for the first time in Saddam Hussein’s commandeered palace in Tikrit and it made him want to really pay attention to what was happening around him – it was film school he was hoping to attend, after all. Now he’s among the first of his generation to write a script about his own war.
man, which is exactly what Steven Stelfox (Nicholas Hoult) is. It’s the height of Britpop, and business is booming. If you find the next Oasis, or hell, the next Spice Girls, you’re made. But one misstep can also mean career suicide. It’s a super competitive industry, and both the screenwriter (John Niven) and the director (Owen Harris) have decided to bonk you over the head with this fact. And when, after the first 10 minutes or so, you’ve been completely bludgeoned with this theme, they yank open your jaw and force-feed it to you for 90 minutes more until you’re veritably choking on it.
entirety, so nothing sticks out. The bitterness is unending. Kill Your Friends aims to be the blackest of comedies, but when everyone is horrible all the time it really dulls your senses. It’s a grueling film to slog through without a single redeeming character so you can’t emotionally invest. Stelfox is pushed to further and further extremes but you won’t care an iota because nobody deserves to get out of this with their dignity intact.
To their credit, they spared zero expense on the soundtrack: Blur, Prodigy, Radiohead, The Chemical Brothers, Oasis. It reminds you what a good time it was to be alive in the late 90s. It also makes you angry that they’ve failed to live up to these bands. Almost certainly there’s an interesting tale here to tell. Kill Your Friends has no idea what it is though, and hopes you’ll be impressed with blood and cursing instead, which is almost the same as story, right?
emotions. Everything is pleasantly flat. Nothing bothers them. But some are subject to a disorder in which those feelings are somehow switched back on. This disease is fatal – if you aren’t driven to suicide, you’ll be euthanatized, because being the only sensitive person in a void of flat affect is simply too much to bear.
feels rather cold and lonely to us, the viewers, but the people living it don’t seem to notice until they come down with the disease, which sets them even further apart from their peers. But the one good thing is that Silas can see that his work mate Nia (Kristen Stewart) must also be infected. She hides her disease from others but cannot escape his awakened intuition. The two inevitably fall in love, though “coupling” is distinctly prohibited. The only way they can be together is to leave society and head for the outside world, where primitive humans still exist.
The problem, however, is with the story. The truth is, it just feels recycled. It feels like you’ve seen this before. It’s like every second Margaret Atwood novel and does little to distinguish itself from other movies in the genre. What it doesn’t borrow from Atwood it steals from Shakespeare and it never really does its own thing. Equals is a highly-polished piece from a second-hand store. It’s not trash but it could never compete with the real thing. If you’re the kind of person who’s comfortable buying a couch off Kijiji, then maybe this one’s for you.
Wow! I was excited going in to Mad Max last night. I was expecting something crazy and strange. I got that, only ten times more crazy and strange than I thought. And that is a very, very good thing.
ASSHOLES WATCHING MOVIES 