Film Excess - Free Ukraine - Stop Putin - End the war NOW!!: Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps/Wall Street 2/Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps (2010) - Stone's sequel is an entertaining spectacle

10/28/2016

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps/Wall Street 2/Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps (2010) - Stone's sequel is an entertaining spectacle

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2 Film Excess nominations:

Best Cinematography: Rodrigo Prieto (lost to Wally Phister for Inception)
Best Music: Craig Armstrong (lost to Treme S1)

Michael Douglas and Shia LeBeouf both look tight in expensive suits on this poster for Oliver Stone's Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

Gordon Gekko is released from Sin Sing prison to a greedier world, he says. The home loan bubble, green energy and insider trade are ingredients in the drama that follows between him, his daughter and her fiancée.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, written by Allan Loeb (The Switch (2010)) and Stephen Schiff (True Crime (1999)) and directed by great New-Yorker filmmaker Oliver Stone (Snowden (2016)), is the sequel to Wall Street (1987). It circles around the bubbles of financial systems (that's been around for for centuries) and the topical issue of bail-outs, and is exciting and visually flashy in a concept of looking expensive, telling a story of the very rich, which works like a charm. - No expense is spared, it appears.

The entertainment value of Money Never Sleeps is high, helped along by an ensemble cast with Michael Douglas (The Jewel of the Nile (1985)), Shia LaBeouf (American Honey (2016)), Frank Langella (Stardom (2000)), Carey Mulligan (The Greatest (2009)), Charlie Sheen (Wall Street), Josh Brolin (Milk (2008)) and, in his last feature before his death in 2014, Eli Wallach (Eye of the Cat/Attenti al Buffone (1975)) is first-rate and truly a treasure in the film. LaBeouf and Mulligan are good enough actors, - and make a damn cute couple, - that Douglas gets the necessary counterweight.

Rodrigo Prieto's (The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)) cinematography lifts the spectacle that the film is, and the score by Craig Armstrong (The Great Gatsby (2013)), featuring songs by Brian Eno and David Byrne, is outstanding, especially if you (like my) are a fan of those artists in the first place.

The ending of the film drags out some and seems to testify to a process where the filmmaker maybe couldn't really make up his mind about how to properly end this saga. Stone seems to have attempted to make the financial crisis '08 movie here, which I must quietly remark failed, however. That came a few years later, in The Big Short (2015). Still, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is recommendable and a respectable sequel.

Oliver Stone: Snowden (2016) - Stone's inflammatory political thriller is a powerful must-see

2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]

2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]

2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]

Born on the Fourth of July (1989) or, Beautiful Struggle

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 70 mil. $

Box office: 134.7 mil. $

= Big flop

[Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps premiered May 14 (Cannes) and runs 133 minutes. Stone was unwilling to make a sequel until the 2008 financial crisis came and changed his mind. Much research was done by Stone, Loeb, LaBeouf and Douglas to make the film accurate. Filming took place in New York and in Dubai from September - November 2009. Sheen reportedly couldn't remember his lines on his one day of shooting. Douglas was, according to LaBeouf, an "open wound" on set due to his son being arrested for drug trafficking prior to filming. LaBeouf has also elaborated that Stone at times would order him to get drunk in a bar before filming to get him into an aggressive mindset. The film opened #1 to a 19 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it stayed in the top 5 for a total of just 2 weeks and grossed 52.4 mil. $ (38.9 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were China with 7.1 mil. $ (5.3 %) and Spain with 6.7 mil. $ (5 %). The film was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor (Douglas), which it didn't win. It made in excess of 15.5 mil. $ in addition on home video sales in North America alone, which, if added to the theatrical gross, would change the film's status to simply 'flop'. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is rotten at 55 % with a 5.9 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps?

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Donald Sutherland has passed away

Born in Canada, Sutherland battled polio as a child. His first credit was in Suspense (1963, TV-series) and his first film was The Castle of the Living Dead (1964). Later credits in his remarkable career include The Saint (1965-66), The Dirty Dozen (1967), M*A*S*H (1970), Kelly's Heroes (1970), Klute (1971), Don't Look Now (1973), 1900 (1976), Casanova (1976), The Eagle Has Landed (1976), Ordinary People (1980), A Dry White Season (1989), JFK (1991), Outbreak (1995), Fallen (1998), Virus (1999), Fierce People (2005), Pride & Prejudice (2005), Lord of War (2005), The Hunger Games (2012), The Undoing (2020, miniseries) and many more. He passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

Roger Corman has passed away

Born in Detroit, Michigan, Corman had a sprawling, intellectually hungry life as a youth and young man before arriving with his first film in 1955, Five Guns West. He would follow that with titles such as Apache Woman, It Conquered the World, Attack of the Crab Monsters, Teenage Cave Man, A Bucket of Blood, House of Usher, The Little Shop of Horrors, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Intruder, The Raven, The Terror, The Masque of Red Death, The Tomb of Ligeia, The Wild Angels, The Trip, Bloody Mama and many more. As a producer he was behind almost 500 films. Arguably among the most important filmmakers of the 20th century, Corman passed away at age 98. R.I.P.

William Friedkin has died

Born in Chicago, Friedkin accrued TV credits prior to his advance to the big screen as the director of Good TImes (1967), The Birthday Party (1968), The Night They Raided Minsky's (1968) and The Boys in the Band (1970) before his major breakthrough, The French Connection (1971), for which he won his only Oscar. He followed it up with the even bigger smash, The Exorcist (1973), arguably the best horror film of all time, for which he was Oscar-nominated. Later credits include Sorcerer (1977), Cruising (1980), To Live and Die in L.A. (1985), Rampage (1987), Rules of Engagement (2000), Killer Joe (2011) and The Devil and Father Amorth (2017, documentary). Friedkin passed away at age 87. R.I.P.

Louise Fletcher has passed away

Born in Alabama to deaf parents, Fletcher got her first credits in late-1950s TV-series.She took a 10 year-long sabbatical to devote her time to motherhood after the release of A Gathering of Eagles, but then came back and soon saw her career's most important part, as Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), for which she won her sole Oscar. Later credits include Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), The Lucky Star (1980), Brainstorm (1983), Two Moon Junction (1988), Cruel Intentions (1999), A Perfect Man (2013) and many more. Fletcher passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

Jean-Luc Godard has passed away

Born in Paris, France, Godard lived much of his life in Switzerland. He wrote for French film criticism magazine Cahiers du Cinema and became foundational for the New French Wave that inspired new waves in scores of other countries across the world with his Breathless (1960). Later credits include A Woman Is A Woman (1961), Vivre Sa Vie (1962), Le Petit Soldat (1962), Contempt (1963), Alphaville (1965), Pierrot le Fou (1965), 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (1967), Weekend (1967), Every Man for Himself (1980), King Lear (1987), Century of Cinema (1995, documentary), Goodbye to Language (2014) and many more. Godard died of assisted suicide at age 91. R.I.P.

Wolfgang Petersen has died

James Caan has died

Caan was born the son of Jewish immigrants from Germany in New York. He got his start on TV in the early 1960s. His credits include El Dorado (1966), The Rain People (1969), Brian's Song (1971, TV movie), The Godfather (1972), - for which he earned his only Oscar nomination, - Slither (1973), The Gambler (1974), Funny Lady (1975), Rollerball (1975), Silent Movie (1976), Hide in Plain Sight (1980), - the only film he also directed, - Thief (1981), Misery (1990), Honeymoon in Vegas (1992), Bottle Rocket (1996), Eraser (1996), Dogville (2003), Elf (2003), Las Vegas (2003-07), Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009) and many more. Caan passed away at age 82. R.I.P.

Jean-Louis Trintignant has died

Born in Vaucluse, France, Trintignant's theatrical debut as an actor was in If All the Guys in the World... (1955). Later credits include ...And God Created Woman (1956), The Seven Deadly Sins (1961), Inferno (1964), A Man and A Woman (1966), My Love, My Love (1967), A Man to Kill (1967), The Great Silence (1968), Z (1969), The Assassination (1972), Three Colors: Red (1994), Amour (2012), Happy End (2017) and many more. He also wrote and directed two films in the 1970s. Trintignant passed away at age 91. R.I.P.

Ray Liotta has died

Adopted from an orphenage at a young age, Liotta got hooked on acting in high school. He had various TV credits in the late 1970s and early 80s, with his film debut in The Lonely Lady (1983). Later credits include Something Wild (1986), Field of Dreams (1989), Goodfellas (1990), Cop Land (1997), Hannibal (2001), Blow (2001), Narc (2002), John Q (2002), Identity (2003), Observe and Report (2009), Youth in Revolt (2009), The Details (2011), Killing THem Softly (2012), The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), Shades of Blue (2016-18), The Simpsons (2018, TV-series), Marriage Story (2019), The Many Saints of Newark (2021), Black Bird (2022, TV-series) and many more. Liotta passed away at age 67 in his sleep while on production in the Dominican Republic. R.I.P.

Philip Baker Hall has died

Born in Ohio, Hall didn't start acting until he was 30. His long list of credits include Zabriskie Point (1970), Miami Vice (1987, TV-series), Midnight Run (1988), Ghostbusters II (1989), Cheers (1993, TV-series), Hard Eight (1996), The Rock (1996), Air Force One (1997), Boogie Nights (1997), Seinfeld (1991-98), Rush Hour (1998), The Insider (1999), Magnolia (1999), The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Bruce Almighty (2003), Dogville (2003), The Zodiac (2005), Zodiac (2007), Curb Your Enthusiasm (2004-09), Mr. Popper's Penguins (2011), Modern Family (2011-12) and many more. Hall passed away at age 90. R.I.P.

Film Excess - Free Ukraine - Stop Putin - End the war NOW!!

Eagerly anticipating this week ... (17-24)