Set in a fictional brokerage firm in 2008 just before the housing bust, Margin Call appears to be very loosely based on Lehman Brothers (hence the boldly printed words “Inspired by a True Story” on its poster). Opening strongly, Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci) is ushered into a conference room to meet with people he has…
During my younger years, my mother would always tell me outlandish stories. Most of these tales involved animals spontaneously springing to life and adapting anthropomorphic qualities and inspired an overactive imagination, but one fable in particular would always scare me witless. As a superstitious woman, she’d look at me — her words marinated in conviction…
Admittedly, I haven’t the slightest idea of what it means to be a woman (especially in these oh-so-confusing times). But, with the media on blast about weight loss products and plastic surgery, and super models — all rail-thin and covered in makeup — constantly being shoved in our faces, I assume that it’s difficult for…
Kaboom is a celluloid pastry, an instrument of candor, a bundle of youthful fun that inspires even the more soporific among us (I’m looking at you, elderly couple next to me who came to the wrong film and gladly stayed through to the end). In strongly repudiating all the noise over how The Social Network…
When legendary frontman Jim Morrison joined The 27 Club in 1971, it is widely believed that he did so while reading one of the earliest unofficial scripts for what would become Platoon, sent to him by director Oliver Stone. Whether or not Jim would have been given the film’s lead role is uncertain. Regardless, Stone…
Um . . . hmm . . . wow. I’m stupefied at what a colossal mess The Three Musketeers has been made into. Three of the more prominent heroes in history have been watered down to pathetic caricatures and, in their own movie, given a back seat to a nausea inducing 3D experience and to…
Everyone has their own, personal reason for choosing to walk the 500 mile Camino de Santiago. This is a trail which begins in France, winds its way through the French Pyrenees, across northern Spain’s Basque region, and ends in Galicia at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. Legend says St. James is buried here. Every…
