Selling at the Margin

In a not-so-irregular round of bloodletting in an unnamed Wall Street investment bank, Chief Risk Officer Eric Dale (Staley Tucci) is let go. While leaving the bank premises, he asks associate Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto) to look at a model that he was working on – with the parting words – “Be Careful”. Peter passes up a night with the boys and completes the model – and realizes its catastrophic and immediate implications on the bank’s own risk positions. The rest of the night is an effort at assembling the bank’s top management and deciding on a de-risking strategy – nothing more than a “sell it all” diktat - and deliberating upon the consequences of the same on both the book and the bank’s reputation for years to come. Margin Call is an all-star, accurate, gripping insight into the cold-blooded world of investment banking, and the eventual dispensability of all those that are in it

15.5/20

Dream Merchants

Welcome to the hard-driving sales culture the way only Americana can! Steve and Kate Jones (David Duchovny and Demi Moore), and children Jenn and Mick (Amber Heard and Ben Hollingsworth) form a family “unit” – the Jone$es – planted in an upmarket suburban neighborhood by their employer, a marketing company – to peddle the wares of the latter’s clients through their lifestyle. Out come the trendy furniture and designer clothes, and perfumes and cereal and golf clubs – and the sales keep rolling. But beneath all this is the undercurrent of the unit continuously questioning their vacuous existence, and the possibilities of the unit actually behaving like an actual family – spurred by the strains of a growing attachment between “husband” and “wife”. The sales culture has its casualties on both sides, and in the end, something in the cold culture does give. An entertaining if marginally over-the-top look at ways and means to create demand where none existed, and simultaneously questioning the ethics of it all

13/20

Several Excellent Men (and one Woman)

Jack Nicholson plays strong characters - period. And it is a thrill to watch him go head to head with Tom Cruise (and a muted Demi Moore) in A Few Good Men - a movie to be remembered for its passionate performances. Jack Nicholson's misplaced sense of righteousness, honour and duty leads him to a course of action that, eventually, society cannot condone. A great movie for enthusiasts of courtroom drama, not quite so for the gender equality brigade (!). I do not find Tom Cruise convincing as a military man with an unflinching sense of duty to God and country - it is more Jack Nicholson and his little fiefdom in Guantanomo Bay that lingers in one's mind. And the "piece of shit" piece at the end of the courtroom drama was wholly unnecessary. Worth a watch, but not quite a remarkable movie