How Horrible

Nick (Jason Bateman) has a psychotic boss in Dave Harley (Kevin Spacey) – the latter promotes himself into a post that he has been holding up to his subordinate as a carrot all the while. Dental assistant (!) Dale (Charlie Day) has a man-eater of a boss in dentist Julia (Jennifer Aniston) who is out to “deflower” him and end his relationship. Lastly, Kurt (Jason Sudeikis) has an unworthy inheritor in Bobby (Colin Farrell) for a boss, who is all out to run Kurt and the business to the ground. All the three, in a fit of frustration, decide to kill their bosses. But our protagonists here are hardly the experts when it comes to crime. So while they roll out their grand plans, beginning with surveillance and moving on to actual execution, almost everything that can go wrong does. The outcome, however, is reasonably logical, while surprising. With an all-star cast (of bosses), Horrible Bosses is a lighthearted take at the all-too-familiar reality of utterly intolerable workplaces

13/20

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

Of Staring Down Goats and Other Warfare

Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor), a reporter with the Ann Arbor Daily Telegram is devastated when his wife leaves him for the newspaper's editor. A chance meeting in Kuwait with retired Special Forces member Lyn Cassidy (George Clooney) introduces Bob to the world of psychic warfare, and a story of their antecedents that sounds too ludicrous to be true. Started by US Army officer Bill Django (Jeff Bridges) during the Vietnam war on the aftermath of a curious event on the battlefield, the New Earth Movement soon had an equally strong and opposed proponent in the form of Bill’s student Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey) – the latter not a proponent of the non-violent ways of Bill and fellow-student Lyn. While some experiences are harder to believe than others, Bob and Lyn eventually find themselves in a psychic warfare camp run by Larry, where Bill is a mere depressive inmate. With predictive abilities on coin tosses, splitting clouds, and apparently killing goats by staring at them, The Men Who Stare at Goats is a now-you-believe-it-now-you-don’t expose on psychic warfare that is tailored more for humour than for serious consumption. With deft touches, director Grant Heslov leaves you with just the facts, and your own interpretations

12.5/20

Gambling the Nation

Welcome to the workday of super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff (Kevin Spacey) – that starts with explaining to himself – in the mirror as part of the morning ablutions – as to just why he is the hardnosed gut that he is, in Casino Jack. As a super-lobbyist Jack was willing to walk the fine line between justifiable promotion of others’ quasi-legitimate interest, and serving himself and his ego – and was to be found very often on the wrong side of it. Questionable advocacy of US offshoring circumventing minimum wage laws, and mispricing deals with American Indians for lobbying for the latter’s gambling rights on grounds of highly dubious benefits, were but some of Jack’s transgressions. The act comes to a halt in late 2004, and in 2006 Jack pleads guilty and the law takes over. While arguably not the best-made of movies, this one will strike a resonance with the anti-corruption crusade that seems to have taken over as our current national obsession at the time of writing, as an effective example of justice served even in the case of powerful defendants 13/20

To the Moon and Back

Given that this is a private blog, I think the Moon deserves a closer description lest I forget later what this was all about (at the cost of giving away some of the movie’s secrets). I remember watching Solaris and 2001 and their ilk and the loneliness and silence of space, and I got that same eerie feeling all over when I saw Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) at the fag eng of his 3-year long mining stint on the moon. Sam Bell ventures out to study a leak, and finds himself next at the sick bay in the base station. Ventures out again to the crash site, and finds himself – or a copy of himself – at the site – alive. Succeeds in hatching a plan to return to earth and succeeds in bringing the diabolical plans of The Lunar Corporation to light and put an end to the trauma of clone usage in the mines of the moon, all clones that have been implanted with memories of lives back on earth that were never theirs to begin with. A science fiction movie that is convincing, touching and flawlessly executed by Sam Rockwell in two concurrent avatars, and Kevin Spacey as the voiceover for GERTY, the resident robot who faces moral choices – and chooses right

15.5/20

A Time for Friends

With strong overtones of To Kill a Mockingbird, A Time to Kill shows how little has changed In America in fifty years (or has it?) White supremacists still walk free, the racial debate is still the subject of angry politics, and the relationship between the black man and the white man strained at best. The relationship between Matthew McConnaughey and Samuel L Jackson is the highlight of the movie – terse, quiet, the latter never believing in the former’s empathy, the former always on the back foot in establishing himself as a legitimate “white” lawyer for a black man. The summation scene lacks the intensity of most Grisham adaptations

Minority Report

To Kill a Mockingbird is a 1962 movie starring Gregory Peck, delightfully nuanced, skips clear of being a morality tale, and delivers a dispassionate tale of a black man wronged and perhaps killed in custody, during the Depression. What is remarkable about the movie is that the setting of the context is done through the eyes of children. It is only the trial scene and subsequent events that are delivered without intermediation. Hard times make for a setting of ambiguous relationships and definitions of rightfulness. In contrast, The Green Mile attempts to be lyrical, magic and reality interweaving in a closed world of limited characters cast firmly in black and white. The movie struck no chord with me. I suppose that to a majority this was a heartwarming tale - just seemed a tad fairytale to me - the dumb big black guy that endears us with his powers of healing, the magical mouse - seems to be a cruel joke to those that actually wait on death row, bereft of such magical diversions

Watched Kevin Spacey in 21 - a timepass flick on MIT maths whizzes ruling Vegas, and the victimized nerd finally getting his moral compass in order and going one up on his guru. Give it a miss