HUSTLERS is about as subtle as a pole dance when it comes to making a case for the poetic justice of what a gang of strippers did to the very Wall Street bankers who plunged the country into financial chaos back in 2008. And that is how it should be. The script written by director… Read More »
EQUITY — Meera Menon, Sarah Megan Thomas, and Alysia Reiner Interview
Gender equity is the inevitable topic of conversation when talking about EQUITY, a sharply observed and uncompromising examination of women on Wall Street in the 2010s. And so it was on July 15, 2016 when I talked with director Meera Menon, and co-stars/co-producers Alysia Reiner and Sarah Megan Thomas, who is also one of the… Read More »
THE BIG SHORT
If there is one point THE BIG SHORT makes, it’s that just because something has never happened before, don’t make the mistake of thinking that it can’t. And that it takes someone with the comic sensibility of co-writer Adam McKay, a director known for THE OTHER GUYS and TALLADEGA NIGHTS: THE LEGEND OF RICKY BOBBY, to… Read More »
WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS
The death of one person is a tragedy, so the saying goes, but the death of a million people is a statistic. This is the model Oliver Stone has chosen for his latest history lesson for the masses, WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS, an explication of why the world financial markets collapsed in 2008. By… Read More »
EMPIRE
EMPIRE is a nitty, gritty look at life on the mean streets of the wrong part of New York. Its message, crime doesn’t pay, isn’t a new one, but any film that proffers a moral compass is one worth paying attention to. Also worth paying attention to is co-producer John Leguizamo’s performance as Victor Rosa,… Read More »
John Leguizamo’s EMPIRE
Fearless is a good word to describe John Leguizamo. Think of the roles he’s chosen over the years, Toulouse-Lautrec in Baz Lurhman’s MOULIN ROUGE, a tortured loser in Spike Lee’s SUMMER OF SAM, a sassy transvestite in TO WONG FOO and, especially, the one-man shows that he writes as well as performs where he opens himself… Read More »