Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005, documentary) or, Something Wrong in America

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The corporate villains of Alex Gibney's Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room smirk on its deft poster

The story of giant energy corporation Enron gets unfolded: Its fraud, key figures, culture, sins and victims.

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room is a fabulous documentary by New-Yorker master documentary writer-director Alex Gibney (The Ruling Classroom (1980)), based on the same-titled 2003 book by Bethany McLean (All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis (2011)) and Peter Elkind.
Gibney keeps an impressively high number of balls in the air and somehow still manages to serve this fundamentally exciting, scandalous story with what feels like the perfect number of plot points, experts, words and minutes. More than once the film uncovers decidedly horrifying details. It is an alarming and dispiriting, blessedly sober journalistic accomplishment.
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room achieves an added gleam of absurd theater from Gibney's use of Tom Waits songs. Along with many other also fine choices from popular music, he skillfully applies a side character to the Enron disaster; namely that it was more than a unique one-time incident based on a gathering of especially rotten apples in one executive branch, - that the real reason behind it must be a larger, cultural issue.
- Ouch!

 

Related post:

 

2005 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I] 

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 0.7 mil. $
Box office: 4.8 mil. $
= Huge hit
[Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room premiered 22 April (USA) and runs 109 minutes. The film opened #40 in 3 theaters to a 76k $ first weekend in North America, where it peaked at #16 in 151 theaters and grossed 4 mil. $ (83.3 % of the total gross). It was released in 6 foreign markets. The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets for it were Australia with 419k $ (8.7 %) and the UK with 303k $ (6.3 %). Roger Ebert awarded the film 3.5/4 stars, one notch harder than this review. The film was Oscar-nominated as Best Documentary, which it lost to March of the Penguins. It was also nominated for the Grand Jury Prize in Sundance and won the Best Documentary Award from the Film Independent Spirit Awards. Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room is certified fresh at 97 % with an 8.1 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room?

The Revenant (2015) - Nature outdoes itself in Iñárritu's showy, solemn macho-spectacle

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Leonardo DiCaprio looks fierce on the icy poster for Alejandro Gonzáles Iñárritu's The Revenant

The Revenant is the 6th feature from Mexican master filmmaker Alejandro Gonzáles Iñárritu (Babel (2006)). It is the true story of tough frontiersman Hugh Glass, based on Michael Punke's (Last Stand (2007)) 2002 novel The Revenant: A Novel of Revenge. Iñárritu wrote the script with Mark L. Smith (Vacancy (2007)).

Glass and his half-Indian teenage son are part of a larger pelt group in the high north, who are attacked by Indians and have to flee without their pelts. But the road back to camp is long, fraught with dangers from outside and within the group.

Leonardo DiCaprio (Revolutionary Road (2008)) gives what appears a trooper's performance here in his Oscar-winning moment, and his glamorous star persona is a real hurdle to get past here in this for him unusual role. 'Leo the trapper' is a reach. But the strong performance, surrounding male ensemble, - in a truly macho movie, - and fabulous nature and cinematography slowly wins you past it.

Tom Hardy (Warrior (2011)) is great as a homicidal psychopath in Revenant, - but we already knew that. Hardy's ability to play violent, unstable men have by now been established to the point where his great performance here as one more also becomes semi-comical to me. (Remember Bronson (2008), Warrior, Lawless (2012), The Dark Knight Rises (2012), Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) or Legend (2015), for instance...?) Revenant suffers a bit from the same overwrought ominousness that plagued Dark Knight Rises. There is a lack of let-up, of contrast, levity or calm.
In a supporting part, Domhnall Gleeson (Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015)) gives another impressive performance. This Irish actor is among the most exciting shooting stars at the moment.
Revenant is technically incredible, - especially the battle scene in the beginning, - and it becomes a rousing, violent adcenture.

Related posts:

2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]

2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]

Iñárritu with DiCaprio on the set of The Revenant

Watch the trailer for the film with German and French subtitles here

Cost: 135 mil. $
Box office: 224.9 mil. $ and counting
= Too early to say
[Glass' story was adapted before, in Man in the Wilderness (1971). Development began in 2001. The production went way over budget, (it was supposed to be a 60 mil. $ film) and months over schedule: Filming took from October 2014 - August 2015 in the US, Canada and Argentina. Hardy had to drop out of Suicide Squad (2016) for the film, thereby losing a part as another homicidal maniac I'm sure, (damn!...) It was an exhausting shoot also due to Iñárritu's insisting on shooting only using natural light and chronologically, although Hardy has claimed that this wasn't possible. Several crew members were fired or quit. Revenant had a 39.8 mil. $ first wide weekend in North America, # 2 behind Star Wars VII. It was #1 two weeks later, and was also #1 abroad collectively. It is the top-nominated film for the Oscars in February with 12 nominations. It is likely to become a commercial success within the next couple of months. The Revenant is certified fresh at 82 % with an 8 critical average on Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of The Revenant?

This Must Be the Place (2011) - Sorrentino's Nazi-hunting stoner cracker

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The art designer of this poster for Paolo Sorrentino's This Must Be the Place might have gone for the look of one of the album covers of the band The Cure, whose front man Robert Smith, Sean Penn's look in the film is inspired by

QUICK REVIEW:

Retired rock-veteran Cheyenne does nothing at home in Ireland, when his father dies and he sets out to find the old Nazi, who humiliated his old man decades ago in Auschwitz.

Sean Penn (Milk (2008)), Frances McDormand (Fargo (1996)) and other actors do well here in Paolo Sorrentino's (Il Divo/Il Divo: La Spettacolare Vita di Giulio Andreotti (2008)) English-language debut, which gets its title from a classic song by Talking Heads, which David Byrne (Lulu on the Bridge (1998)) performs in the film in its probably most memorable scene.
The structure of the story, written by Sorrentino and Umberto Contarello (The Great Beauty/La Grande Bellezza (2013)), is offbeat, just as the protagonist. Unfortunately its ending was, to me, very unsatisfying.

Related reviews:

The day after ... The Oscars 2014 
Paolo Sorrentino: The Caiman/Il Caimano (2006) - Moretti's unfunny political comedy - strictly for Italians (actor)

Watch the trailer for the film here

Cost: 28 mil. $
Box office: 11.6 mil. $
= Huge flop
[This Must Be the Place was an Italian majority production with co-producers from Ireland and France. It premiered in 2012 in North America to an incredibly paltry 0.1 mil. $ result (just 1 % of the total gross!) It was a big hit in Sorrentino's native Italy, where it made 6.1 mil. €. He is such a hot ticket in Europe at the moment that the flop didn't hurt his career much: Especially because he followed it up with the Best Foreign Film Oscar winner The Great Beauty (2013).]

What do you think of This Must Be the Place?