Contrarian Rules

Dr Michael Burry PhD (Christian Bale) holds his own in his conviction about the fragility of the US economy at a time when the US housing market was seeing only go-go days. An uncertain partnership between Deutsche trader Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling) and the incendiary Morgan Stanley-affiliated trader Mark Baum (Steve Carrell) also look to short the housing market in a deeply contrarian bet. Perhaps the coolest bet of all - Bloomfield Capital, a $ 30 mln fund from Boulder, Colorado, looks to working with retired banker and survivalist Ben Rickert (Brad Pitt) to go as deep as shorting AAs, in line with their strategy of picking up deep out of the money options. With inserts from an unlikely ensemble of characters that includes pop stars and celebrity chefs, The Big Short is one of the best movies that I have seen in a long time

16/20

Far Below the Belt

Stephen Myers (Ryan Gosling), Junior Campaign Manager for the sitting Governor Mike Morris (George Clooney), for the Democrat Presidential primaries, learns to be beware of The Ides of March and much else besides. So what is Steve up against, really? For a start, Steve needs to understand the priorities of Senior Campaign Manager Paul (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and his respective right and wrong sides. And then there is the campaign manager on the other side – Tom Duffy (Paul Giamatti) and the latter’s machinations. Throw in a beautiful intern – Molly (Evan Rachel Wood) and her dark secrets, a single senator – Senator Thompson (Jeffrey Wright) who could be solely holding the key to the campaign, and cut-throat journalist Ida (Marisa Tomei), and Steve may be down to his very last card in surviving the political game. And no matter who the winners and losers are in this cat-and-mouse political game, what is certain through the movie is that Steve’s brand of passion and idealism will meet a terminal end

14.5/20

Law with (some) Heart

Ten minutes into The Lincoln Lawyer, with Mick Haller (Matthew McConnaughey’s) Southern drawl and some mildly interesting small town goings-on, I was wondering if this was a movie worth watching till the end. And how! This is the movie of the classical twist. Mick is not exactly the epitome of virtue – making a living from defending small town criminals in court, while operating out of a Lincoln car. But even he draws the line at the marginally criminal, and Louis Roulet (Ryan Phillippe) crosses that threshold - or does he? An unabashed treat to watch, and in the spirit of competition among lawyer movies as it were, perhaps leaves the entire Grisham bandwagon high and dry

16/20

Grappling with Fate

The hardest thing in life is to reclaim it from your own mistakes. Gradually, you fade into the sunset, or, in the case of Randy the Ram in The Wrestler, into an existence where reconciliation with one’s daughter and seeking means of leading a so called normal life with so called normal jobs, has become one’s raison-de-etre. And then, over a night of being spurned in love, relapse into the ghosts of the past, and estrangement all over again are all brought to a head over a minor incident at the butcher’s shop. And Randy the Ram becomes a wrestler again, and stops running away from his place in destiny. This is a movie without a definitive storyline, and without a definitive end. But you will share the journey of a man trying to find his calling, While the story is heartwarming, the vignettes are somewhat repetitive and the movie a tad too inconclusive.

13.5/20

Another Scam War

John Cusack, no stranger to quirky roles, is an over-the-top assassin in an imaginary country in Central Asia, in War Inc. The country is the next large market for the largest gun-running corporation in the world. There are seductive Middle Eastern songstresses and aggressive journalists, and other sundry strange characters – but one cannot help wondering whether the makers of the movie mixed up central Asia and the Middle East respectively. These would be about as distant geographically as say Alaska and California. Now only if the average American could find those on a map.