Thursday, February 2, 2012

Margin Call

I really enjoyed this movie, and the core of why it was good was the acting.  It was a wonderful cast (Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons, and the story seemed so real:  it seemed like these were the perfect actors to play these roles.  Something that helped was that the story seemed "ripped from the headlines."  It seemed to be about a company like Lehman Brothers, whose failure caused a lot of losses for a lot of people - because a lot of people held the worthless securities, based on high-risk mortgages, that Lehman and many others held and sold.  The film explored the ethics - or absence thereof - of selling securities that were secured by so little of real value.

I think it's the acting that makes something like this .. that is why Downton Abbey is so successful even though the same territory has been covered before, not only in Gosford Park but in the Shooting Party and the Forsyte Saga, and, most famously, Upstairs Downstairs.

The screenwriter was also the director, and his screenplay won a nomination in the best original screenplay category in this year's Oscar nominations.

There's a scene in which Simon Baker is reading Zachary Quinto's resume, and says, a tone that is more contempt than marveling admiration, "So you're a rocket scientist."  Perfect.
This film seems especially timely in light of the Chase losses.

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