Money and Masks

The challenge for Dumb Money is how to make a story about stocks interesting, especially when anyone interested either already knows what happened or can easily look up the events. The answer given here is to focus on some great characters played by grade A actors.

The story is a simple one, albeit one seasoned with odd bit of financial jargon. Way back in pandemic times (2021) a low rung financial investor called Keith Gill led a Reddit driven movement to buy up stock in video game retail chain Gamestop, massively driving up its share price and giving investors a huge return. This sparks a backlash from the big finance institutions betting on the companies demise. Paul Dano plays Gill with Seth Rogan, Vincent D'Onofrio and Nick Offerman appearing as real life Wall Street investors alongside some made up "average Joe" characters portrayed by America Ferrera, Anthony Ramos and others.

When every character is introduced we see their net worth, from the multiple billions to those in debt, giving a sense of the stakes for everyone involved. You really want the nurse to clear her debts, you really don't want the Wall Street tool to demolish a mansion and build a tennis court. Another great stylistic choice is the banging hip hop soundtrack. It's pretty hilarious to watch distinctly uncool characters live it up to rap beats and perfectly encapsulates the juxtapose between the gangsters they are in their own heads and the way the rest of the world sees them.

A much more divisive choice is the films use of face masks. Being set during the pandemic our heroes all wear masks while the hedge fund slimes are never pictured with them on, so far so realistic. Where it gets a little dicier is with the multiple scenes of authority figures telling our protagonists to put their masks on, suggesting that the virus slowing coverings were indeed some sort of tool of oppression. This idea is backed up near the end of the movie when a newly flush investor feels he no longer needs his day job and casts aside his make while his former boss meekly pulls his back up. Are we already far enough away from the height of the pandemic to thematically use face masks this way? Will we ever be? How you feel about that may greatly impact how you feel about this film.

Other than that Dumb Money is a slick, well acted telling of a fresh, (mostly) feel good story that should have you routing for the characters and keep you invested throughout, even if it isn't always exactly edge of your seat stuff.

I like 7 out of 10 of these stocks.

Comments

Wasted Men

From Scum to Starred Up, neither the big nor small screen are short of brutally frank depictions of life behind British bars. Wasteman adds a taut, modern take to the pile and shows that life isn't getting any easier inside. Philip Barantini (creator of Boiling Point and Adolescence) is on board as a producer so you know it's going to feel real and the Safdie brothers were at one point attached to direct, so you know it's going to be gut-clenchingly tense. It doesn't disappoint on either front. David Jonsson plays long term convict Taylor. A timid drug addict, he cuts the hair of the top-dog inmates in return for a regular fix and is existing rather than living as the years of his sentence tick by when he gets some unexpected news. Prison overcrowding means he is up for early release, provided he can keep his nose clean for a couple of weeks, something made increasingly tricky by the arrival of his new cellmate Dee (Tom Blyth). Dee encourages Taylor to make contact wit...

More Money More Killing

How to Make a Killing is loosely based on 1949 British crime comedy Kind Hearts and Cornets (which is in turn an adaptation of 1907 novel Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal). In a world of remakes, reboots and adaptations, that is pretty interesting source material and could almost qualify as an original idea. Unfortunately, the imagination mostly stops there and the film isn't funny or insightful enough to rise above "it's fine" territory. Glenn Powell is Becket Redfellow, a suit salesman who grew up largely in the foster care system as his mother died while he was young. He is heir to the fortune of his mother's estranged family and, in the unlikely event all the other senior Redfellows should perish, he would be a billionaire. A chance encounter with his status obsessed childhood crush Julia (Margaret Qualley) and an unjust demotion at work give him the notion to speed up his inheritance a little. As he arranges "accidents" for his fellow R...

Hell to Pay

They Will Kill You begins with a soaking wet Zazie Beetz waiting to start her maid job at swanky apartment building, The Virgil. Her character Asia is a former convict who has no idea her new employers are devil worshipers who sacrifice their staff to Lucifer. The building residents have no idea that Asia is actually there for reasons other than a steady paycheque and is not about to go gently into that good night. The touch paper is soon lit on a relentless blend of slapstick horror action that leaves little room for you to catch your breath across its ninety minute odd runtime. The most obvious comparison here is to 2019's Ready or Not and its sequel (which coincidentally released one week before this film), where an unsuspecting bride is left fighting for her life when her wealthy in-laws opt to make her a human sacrifice. While They Will Kill You shares that movie's comedic spirit we are much deeper into supernatural territory here. The grand old building and seemingly ...

You Screen, I Scream

The worst thing about Scream 7 isn't actually the film itself. It's the at best cowardly, actions of production company Spyglass Media who fired the star of the previous two films, Melissa Barrera, for daring to have an opinion on genocide. In addition to leaving an icky taste in the mouth, this move cost them fellow star Jenna Ortega and the guy who was supposed to direct the seventh instalment Christopher Landon, resulting in a return to the drawing board to completely rework the film. The only actually good thing about Scream 7 is also nothing to do with the actual film. Series mainstay Neve Campbell missed the previous instalment after producers lowballed her, but the production chaos of their own making means they've had to go crawling back. So Neve returns with a reported $7 million payday, a producer credit and a story based solely around how legendary her character Sydney is. Go her. The actual film doesn't warrant much discussion at all, given it does little mo...

Fifty Shades of Chrononberg

If you've been missing pure David Chrononberg then Crimes of the Future has you covered. It has the lot; body mutilation, main character undergoing a metamorphosis, questions about what defines being human, integrity of the mind, the collision of different world views and pretty much every other recurring theme of his is present and correct. So needless to say, it isn't for everyone. The film takes place in the (possibly near) future, when most humans have evolved to no longer feel pain and in some cases grow mysterious new organs. Viggo Maortensen and Lea Seydoux play a pair of performance artists whose act revolves around removing Mortensen's excess organs in front of a live crowd. Fittingly, given its focus on artits, the film takes place in the orbit of the protagonists with little shown of the world at large. Everything is dingy and grimey, hinting things aren't going swimmingly, and there are vaugue hints at ecological disaster but the characters are all far mor...

There Can Only be One

Trailers for Him had Jordan Peele's name slapped all over them, which is understandable from a marketing point of view. In reality it is simply produced by the"Get Out" directors company, Monkeypaw Productions. It is actually directed by Justin Tipping, from a script he co-wrote with Skip Bronkie and Zak Akers. The prevalence of Peele's name in the advertising means the film is bound to draw unflattering comparisons with his own work, which is a shame as the film has its own merits. Cameron "Cam" Cade (Tyriq Withers) grew up idolising Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans), star quarterback of the San Antonio Saviours. When White suffers a grisly injury during the Super Bowl, Cade's father tells the young fan that real men like his idol make sacrifices for greatness. Fast forward about a decade and a half and Cam is about to be drafted to the NFL, where he is tipped as a potential challenger to White's "Greatest Of All Time" status. When a mascot in ...

Spooky Tresspaser

The Women In The Yard marks the return of director Jaume Collet-Serra to his horror roots after years in the big budget action space. He puts some scary images together and gives a good cast a chance to shine but is let down by a fairly weak script. The film begins with struggling mum Ramona (Danielle Deadwyler) watching a video of her deceased husband. Struggling may be a bit of an understatement, the crash that took her husband also left her with a badly broken leg and she is stuck in a pit of despair so deep it has rendered her almost non-existent as a parent. Her son Taylor has essentially taken over looking after his little sister Annie, the food is running out and when the electricity goes off they have no means of contacting anyone. With tensions already frayed, things take a sinister turn as a mysterious and threatening figure in black appears in the garden, creeping slowly closer as the day drags on. The titular woman in the yard is played with equal grace and mena...

Econ Air

Single location thriller Flight Risk is the latest film to suffer from an "over eager" trailer. That is to say, the trailer covers pretty much everything that happens in the movie, more or less in the exact order it occurs. On the plus side, it isn't a film that was ever going to keep any secrets so it doesn't suffer as much as some others have. FBI agent Madelyn Harris (Michelle Dockery) takes a flight with informant Winston (Topher Grace) but a short way into their journey they discover the pilot, played by Mark Wahlberg, is actually a mob hitman there to end them both before Winston can squeal. There is a brief opening at an Alaskan cabin and the finale is on a runway, but for the most part it's just the three of them in the cabin of a small plane. Events unfold almost like a theatrical play as the three talk and argue with intermittent attempts at murder. The main thing to know about Flight Risk is that it is ridiculous. The decisions the characters make a...

Family Misfortunes

Final Destination Bloodlines is the sixth instalment in the franchise but the first for fourteen years. Its a bit of an anomaly for a series to take such a long hiatus when the last entry was a resounding financial success, but the break has lead to one of the best Final Destination films to date. The plot is generally the same as always, a premonition leads to a bunch of people escaping their intended death so the Grim Reaper tracks them down and dispatches them in insanely convoluted ways. With the distance between entries making this a quasi reboot, there is a small twist on the formulae. This time round, the main character has dreams of their estranged grandmother saving hundreds from a disaster in her youth. Turns out Death has been working his way through the survivors for years, with granny holding him at bay (by isolating in the most dangerous looking shack known to man) for years. Now all her descendants are on the chopping block, making this a family affair rather than the u...

Fast 10 Your Seat Belts

Despite suffering from some well established franchise problems Fast X puts it's pedal to the metal to become one of the saga's best entries. No mean feat for a series 10 films and over 20 years in. The set pieces are a tiny bit more grounded than F9 but still ridiculous and a lot more fun. Various members of the crew play live action Rocket League in Rome, drop out of a plane in a "canoe" and engage in a final chase that is much more satisfying than the turn magnet on and off showdown of the previous film. The film also benifits from an increase in star power and better use of its characters. John Cena returns but he plays the character of Jacob Toretto completely differently and is great fun as he embarks on a road trip with his nephew. Jason Statham is back as Decard Shaw, albeit only as a cameo with the promise of more to come. The film really belongs to franchise newcomer Jason Mamoa as Dante Reyes, son of Fast 5 villain Hernan. Leaving his imposing frame to por...

Dan Says its Alright

Search This Blog