releasing this week: Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps and Mr. Nice
1 CommentI struggled to come up with films to highlight for you all this week. To be honest, I can’t recommend you go to any of these films really… but for what it’s worth, I’ll tell you about them and you can decide for yourself if you want to spend your money on these…
The big movie this week is Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.
23 years ago Oliver Stone co-wrote and directed Wall Street. That film gave Michael Douglas an Oscar for Best Actor and, for many, brought to the fore the crass excess of the ’80s.
No wonder then, given the times we live in, Oliver Stone has chosen to revisit the bankers of Wall Street to tell us a bit more about excess.
This isn’t a review so I’m not going to go on about what I thought of this film. Let’s just say I never want to see it again. It has got some decent reviews around the place though so if you liked the original and you think you’d be interested in a relationship / financial / family / moral drama then be my guest.
That, of course, is the problem with the film. Honestly, how can you have a relationship / finance / family / moral drama? It really just doesn’t know what it wants to be…
I apologise for the shortness of this highlight this week but I really can’t bring myself to really recommend it. Think of this more as a service announcement…
…But enough about fat cat bankers, let’s talk about drug dealers. Mr. Nice is the dramatisation of Howard Marks autobiography of the same name
For those who don’t know, and haven’t yet clicked the link and read the Wikipedia article. Howard Marks was, at one point, one of the biggest hash dealers in the world. It’s claimed that at one point he controlled 10% of the world’s trade in hash. Not bad from a young fella from a little town in Wales.
The film follows his story from when he was accepted to Balliol College, Oxford till his time in jail many years later. It’s kind of interesting if, like me, you’d never heard of Howard Marks, it’s pretty much just a linear telling of the story. Rhys Ifans plays the role of Marks, apparenly he’s a good friend of Marks and it’s definitely a role he seems to be comfortable playing.
It didn’t grip me, but like I said, considering it’s probably (mostly) true, it is kind of an interesting story.
Other films coming out this week…
Life As We Know It – Romantic comedy/drama starring Katherine Heigl and Josh Duhamel. When their best friends die, Holly and Eric, hitherto uninvolved, find themselves as the defacto parents of a little girl. Sounds like a bit of a morbid premise to me, but who knows, could be funny. I like Duhamel…
The Death and Life Of Charlie St Cloud – Zac Efron decides to flex his acting chops in this romantic drama with an afterlife twist.
Restrepo – War documentary, a crew spends 12 months with a single platoon in on of the most strategically located (and hence, dangerous) valleys in Afghanistan. This is supposed to be a really good. War films aren’t usually my thing but it looks like this might be the best film of the week. Showing exclusively in the Irish Film Institute in Dublin.
That’s all folks.
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, Mr. Nice, Charlie St. Cloud, Life as We Know It and Restrepo are in cinemas from Friday 8th October 2010.
I agree Wall Street 2 was a waste of time and money. There is no plot, the young actors performed poorly, and I can’t believe Shia LeBeouf was paid US $8m for his part!