'Café Society' Not a Night Club Worth Visiting

Cannes favorite, Woody Allen, made his 14th festival appearance with Café Society this year. In typical Allen fashion, the film stars big name actors including Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Steve Carell, Blake Lively and Corey Stoll, but despite the big names, Allen’s recent films have garnered most of their major buzz based on negative press. While the films cinematography, production design, and soundtrack are admirable, its poor performances and weak writing make it land on Allen’s growing flop list.

The film begins as Bobby (Jesse Eisenberg) moves from the Bronx out to the west coast hoping to experience Hollywood’s golden age. Once there, his Uncle Phil (Steve Carell) offers him a job. On his first day he meets Vonnie (Kristen Stewart) with whom he is instantly smitten. Vonnie first rejects his advances, but, when she is dumped by her boyfriend, she immediately comes crawling straight towards Bobby like a lost, lonely puppy. Following a series of unfortunate events and misunderstandings, Bobby is left alone and returns heart broken and hardened to New York. A few years pass and it seems as though Bobby’s life heads up hill. He marries Veronica (Blake Lively), has a child, and starts up a wildly successful nightclub with his brother, Ben (Corey Stoll). But, just when his life seems to be going perfectly, the trouble begins: Vonnie pops back into Bobby’s life. They share their dreams and their “what could have beens,” but they never fulfill their unrequited love.

Undoubtedly inspired by himself, Allen portrays Bobby as a naïve and romantic young man who must squash his romantic dreams to continue a life of monogamy and monotony. Eisenberg does a good job in portraying Bobby’s transition from immature young man to cynical adult, but unfortunately, the half-assed performances, unbelievable relationships, and the inclusion of themes repeated in Allen’s body of work make the plot uninteresting. It is normal for an artist to draw inspiration from their personal lives; it is usually encouraged. But, when the artist writes and directs films every other year, their work easily become boring and repetitive. Jesse Eisenberg, now an Allen film vet, plays essentially the same character he played in When in Rome. Instead of an aspiring architect like Jack, Bobby aspires
to work in Hollywood. Instead of falling for a beautiful and intelligent actress unlike any girl he has met before, he falls for a beautiful and intelligent secretary working in Hollywood unlike any girl he has met before. Like Jack, Bobby stays with the safe blonde rather than risking it all for an alluring brunette.

Kristen Stewart’s performance as Vonnie is basically Kristen Stewart wearing more pink dresses than normal. Stewart’s real life “tomboy” attitude peeps through as she attempts to portray a girly, bubbly, and captivating secretary. When adorned in fancy jewels and elegant furs, she looks uncomfortable, as if rejecting her character. In scenes requiring any romantic interaction, she appears hesitant and reserved. Also, casting Steve Carell as a suave and accomplished Hollywood hotshot hinders the believability of his character (typecasting at its finest).

The lack of depth in Stewart’s acting can be easily attributed to the lack of depth of her character. As a matter of fact, the lack of depth of all the female characters. Allen is known for writing idolized and romanticized female characters, but that is no excuse to continue writing such one dimensional, mind-numbing characters film after film. Both Vonnie and Veronica are introduced and sustained on such superficial level that limits the audience’s ability to see them
as more than objects.

With accusations about Woody Allen’s history of sexual abuse, the reveal of Vonnie and Uncle Phil’s relationship is unsettling rather than comical. It definitely does not help that Allen’s indiscretions are under the media microscope even more heavily now thanks to the rape joke at the opening ceremony. On top of the allegations, the lack of chemistry and authenticity in the on-screen relationships between Vonnie and Uncle Phil and Vonnie and Bobby leave the main story line and the jokes falling flat.

The only truly comedic moments include Bobby’s family. Bobby’s large and meddlesome family finds itself in sticky situations as they react to the events in their lives. Sadly, those scenes do not push the story line forward in anyway; they just exist for comedic purposes. Recycled and tired jokes, themes, and plotlines make for a boring and predictable film. Despite its trademark Woody Allen touches, Café Society does not live up to the director’s
past films.

Cafe Society is in theaters July 15th

'The Big Short' Is Smartest Movie of Year

Well, it’s happened. The man most famous for being a frequent Will Ferrell collaborator, Adam McKay, has made (arguably) the smartest movie of 2015. The Big Short is a derisive satire based on the 2010 best-selling non-fiction book of the same name, focusing on a handful of key players on Wall Street and across the country who not only predicted the inevitable housing crisis of 2008, but looked to capitalize on the looming crash quite handsomely.

McKay and Charles Randolph adapted the screenplay from the Michael Lewis’ book that chronicles the real life series of events that lead to a respective group of money managers (Steve Carell and his motley crew), investors (Christian Bale and Brad Pitt), and Wall Street types (Ryan Gosling) who looked to bet against the wildly profitable sub-prime mortgage industry. Seems like a tough sell, right? A movie that revolves around a bunch of rich white guys in their offices outsmarting all the other rich white guys sounds hardly interesting, or original (see: Gordon Gecko). That’s where the combination of McKay’s comedic prowess and ingénue along with the A-list arsenal of acting immersion lift The Big Short into unparalleled satirical standing.

The Big Short is grimly funny – opening with an uncanny (and later on, intermittent) fourth-wall break a la Wolf Of Wall Street from Ryan Gosling, whoops, in the movie he’s Jared Vennett, a hotshot Deutsche banker. Vennett takes the viewer through a brief montage on the history of the real estate, mortgage, and various other large-scale financial industries in a fun and expository manner. Despite the light and playful nature of Vennett’s historical run down, the overall sardonic tone is established, allowing the film to become much darker and fuel itself with clever wit and rage.

The players introduced in Vennett’s expository homily are as follows: all around acting chameleon Christian Bale as the glass-eyed, hermitic M.D. turned San Jose investing consultant with a penchant for drumming, Michael Burry, Steve Carell as the New York corporation-condemning neurotic misanthrope Michael Baum and his troupe of equally maladjusted money managers (one of the films truly unexpected highlights) portrayed by Hamish Linklater, Rafe Spall, and Jeremy Strong. Brad Pitt not only stars as Ben Rickert, a despondent Wall Street banker turned political activist/guiding light to a couple young gunners from Denver (Finn Wittrock and John Magaro), but also lends a hand as a producer on the film. Finally, the film’s pseudo narrator, docent, fit fanatic, Jordan Belfort-lite, antagonistic protagonist, resident “burn” distributor, Jared Vennett, played by Ryan Gosling in a jerry curl.

Due to the magnificent People magazine fodder the exceptional cast actually is, the film takes a couple beats to fully commit to the characters within the story. That being said, Bale disappears into Burry’s anti-social, atypical nature seamlessly almost instantaneously, with Carell’s well-intentioned, yet cynical portrayal of Michael Baum not far behind.

Rather than give a full recount of the film’s synopsis, the reader may be better served with focuses on the unique and clever aspects of the film instead. The film operates in multiple parts - documentary, farce, drama, satire, etc. – with each aspect being highlighted in various capacities. Gosling’s Vennett serves as a wonderful narrator for the more historical, expository asides, while Carell and Bale offer more dramatic performances within the film. Pitt’s role in the film is mostly ancillary, but provides a lens that inevitably makes the viewer question the protagonists’ moral standing as a whole.

The A-list cast certainly carries the film, but perhaps the most notable aspect of the film as a whole is the manner of which complex real estate and mortgage terms are explained in layman’s terms by the likes of Margot Robbie, Anthony Bourdain, Richard Thaler, and Selena Gomez.  When key terms and complex mortgage phrases are introduced, Gosling inevitably throws a quick cut to a cameo. Each cameo is essentially an informational vignette that gives both a humorous and informative explanation of the term. Again, instead of reproducing each individual informative vignette, just know that one involves Margot Robbie in a bathtub (eerily similar to Wolf of Wall Street), Anthony Bourdain in a kitchen, and arguably the best of the three, economist Richard Thaler and pop star Selena Gomez explaining synthetic CDO’s (Collateralized Debt Obligations) and the “Hot Hand Fallacy” over a game of blackjack.

The Big Short is the smartest movie in 2015. It’s sharp, divisive, engaging, and humorous, without sacrificing any ounce of information in the name of Hollywood dramatics. It is a movie that focuses on subprime loans, something so complex, even the banks that doled them out failed to fully grasp exactly what they entailed. McKay manages to take a bewildering piece in history and craft it into a digestible package that does not sacrifice any wit or edge so audiences can understand more clearly. The Big Short observes and utilizes the events (24-hour celebrity news cycle) that obfuscated the eventual recession, and in turn illuminates the situation so viewers can make their own decisions on what went wrong, and who (if anyone) is to blame.

From the outrageous mind of director Adam Mckay comes THE BIG SHORT. Starring Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt, in theaters Christmas. When four outsiders saw what the big banks, media and government refused to, the global collapse of the economy, they had an idea: The Big Short.