Star Trek Beyond Movie Review

One of the great things about Star Trek, be it any of the series or many of the feature films, is the way it has always put ideas at the forefront of its stories, valuing philosophy and political science above action and swashbuckling. Even First Contact, my absolute favorite of all the movies, found a way to work some excellent action sequences into a film that was mostly about ideas and really developed some of the characters.

Margin Call Movie Review

The financial crisis that started in 2008 is far too complicated to explain in one 2 hour dramatic film. The experts on the subject can hardly understand exactly what led to such a tremendous financial crash. Some films have tried to get into it, including documentaries, all of which are too all-encompassing to make much sense or to coalesce the details into something understandable to a layperson.

J.C. Chandor’s Margin Call, however, is a smart little financial drama that takes place basically in the 24 hours before the big crash really started. Chandor, the son of a Wall Street investment banker, and a man who clearly understands a lot more about financial institutions and brokerage deals than I ever will, has crafted a screenplay and a film unlike anything I’ve ever seen on similar topics. Your typical Wall Street drama is so often fast-paced high tension designed to make what is otherwise cinematically uninteresting material more visually arresting. Chandor eschews the bells and whistles for a story that is character based.