The Big Short (Paramount, Blu-ray, DVD, VOD) – Adam McKay is not necessarily the guy you look to for dramatic outrage at the greed and failure behind the economic collapse of the last decade. He is, after all, the director who guided Will Ferrell through such comedies as Anchorman, Talladega Nights, and The Other Guys. Yet here he is, adapting Michael Lewis’ nonfiction book on the reasons behind the financial collapse and coming away with a hit movie, five Academy Award nominations, and an Oscar win for Best Adapted Screenplay (shared with Charles Randolph).
The Big Short is serious and angry. It’s also very funny, which is its secret weapon. What’s a subprime mortgage? Here’s Margot Robbie in a bubble bath to explain it to you. Need to explain what a CBO is without driving audiences away? How about Selena Gomez at a casino?
In the hands of McKay and his co-conspirators, the financial fraud of the 2000s is nothing short of a criminal farce with dire consequences. For us, that is, not the folks who perpetrated the crisis out of greed, criminal neglect, and reckless abandon. In this company of thieves and accomplices, the heroes of this story are a few men who saw through the façade and proceeded to bet against the house. They are, of course, outliers with idiosyncrasies.
Christian Bale is Dr. Michael Burry, a genius on the autism spectrum who doesn’t get sarcasm and fights anxiety with death metal. Steve Carell is Mark Baum, the outraged, angry head of a small investment team whose social skills are only slightly better than Burry’s. Brad Pitt is Ben Rickert, a disillusioned trader intrigued by the findings of two young guys (Finn Wittrock and John Magaro) with a private investment fund. These guys, independently of one another, figured out that the so-called Triple AAA mortgage bonds were built on a foundation of ready to collapse at the first tremor of panic.
Ryan Gosling is the junior Gordon Gekko who narrates the story and provides color commentary with a cynical wit. A slick suit with a feral bloodlust for money, he’s not like these outsiders who, to some degree or another, are appalled at the degree of corruption and lack of accountability they discover in their respective campaigns of due diligence. He’s just a man who smells profit and signs up for his share, but it also makes him an effective master of ceremonies. He’s got no illusions to be shattered, which makes his incredulity all the more effective.
Let’s be clear: the characters of The Big Short are constructs with no dimension beyond their surface quirks and McKay, who has the chops for ensemble comedy and visual humor, hasn’t any idea how to stage or shoot a dramatic scene. This isn’t a film so much as an illustrated screenplay sustained by screen personalities and directorial momentum.
Given that, The Big Short is the film that we needed at this time. Its star power alone brings in folks who wouldn’t think of watching a documentary, and the jumpy pace and steady laughs are just the thing to pull viewers through the arcane details of the investment business to understand how it fell apart. At least in its broad strokes. You may not remember all the economic details once the film is over but you should come away with a sense of outrage, a checklist of those responsible, and a realization that the marketplace is not some pure self-correcting financial ecosystem but a free-for-all built on greed, faith, blind obedience, ignorance, and a disturbing lack of accountability. That the film has you laughing instead of crying is bonus.
The Blu-ray edition includes five featurettes and bonus copies of the film on DVD and Ultraviolet Digital HD.
The Forbidden Room (Kino Lorber, Blu-ray, DVD, Netflix) – Canadian iconoclast Guy Maddin has been making strange, surreal films that evoke the images and storytelling traditions of silent movies for decades. The Forbidden Room (2015), which he co-directed with his former student Evan Johnson, is like a compendium of his obsessions and cinematic fetishes. It opens on a mock-instructional film on “How to Take a Bath,” shifts to a submarine trapped at the bottom of the sea where a lumberjack (Roy Dupuis) inexplicably appears, shifts to his story of a feral forest adventure and a damsel in distress, who finds herself transported to an exotic nightclub out of an old Hollywood movie, and so on.
The film arose from a project called “Séances,” a museum installation at the Centre George Pompidou in Paris where he “remade” lost films and unfinished projects from the silent and early sound era. The Forbidden Room, partly shot concurrently with that project, is a collection of scenes and movie clichés reworked with campy exaggeration and absurd, cartoonish twists. Shot on a minimal budget, with a production design that favors ingenuity and creativity and a cast that includes such major European actors as Geraldine Chaplin, Mathieu Amalric, Udo Kier, and recent Oscar nominee Charlotte Rampling (some of them in multiple roles), it has a whimsical, absurdist sense of humor. The actors engage in the exaggerated performance style of silent movie melodramas and comedies and Maddin digitally “ages” his films with scuffs and scratches and cracks and even distorted frames as if they were from decaying nitrate prints from the 1920s. Those distortions are given a life of their own with his digital tools and even become cinematic devices of their own, morphing from one image to another as if released by the ghosts of early cinema.
The result is something that defies explanation, let alone description. Maddin make no effort to make sense of any of it, or even worry about any kind of dramatic closure. It’s all about the texture, the weirdness, the quality of the cinematic moment. This is not for audiences who demand story and character and narrative logic. But if you can put expectations aside and lose yourself in the ravishing dreamscapes and absurd situations that Maddin creates on his tiny stages with his mad collaborators, you’ll discover a cinematic experience like no other.
Blu-ray and DVD with filmmaker commentary, two featurettes, and a bonus short, plus a booklet.
Also new and notable:
Brooklyn (Fox, Blu-ray, DVD, VOD) – Saoirse Ronan makes good on the promise she showed in “Atonement,” for which she was nominated for an Oscar. She earns her second nomination playing teenage girl who emigrates from a dead-end down in Ireland to America on her own (Jim Broadbent is a paternal priest who helps her get settled) and finds life is full of possibilities. Nick Hornby adapts the novel by Colm Toibin and John Crowley directs this lovely, touching coming-of-age drama with a romantic optimism. It earned three Oscar nominations in all. The Blu-ray features commentary by director John Crowley, deleted and extended scenes with optional director commentary, six promotional featurettes, and an Ultraviolet Digital HD copy of the film.
Carol (Anchor Bay, Blu-ray, DVD, VOD) – Todd Haynes directs this beautifully-realized adaptation of the novel by Patricia Highsmith (originally titled “The Price of Salt”), a love story between a society woman (Cate Blanchett) separated from her husband and a department store shopgirl and budding photographer (Rooney Mara) in 1950s New York City, where such a love cannot be named. It was nominated for six Academy Awards, including acting nods for Blanchett and Mara. The Blu-ray features about 35 minutes of interviews with members of the cast and crew and 30 minutes of highlights of audience Q&As with director Todd Haynes, actors Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara, and other members of the cast and crew from three different screenings.
Sisters (Universal, Blu-ray, DVD, VOD) stars Tina Fey and Amy Poehler as the title characters, who reunite after years apart when their parents sell their family home and decide to through one last bash before it’s gone. The Blu-ray features the R-rated theatrical version and a bonus unrated version.
In the Heart of the Sea (Warner, Blu-ray, Blu-ray 3D, DVD, VOD) tells the true story of Essex, a whaling ship destroyed by mammoth whale in 1820, and the harrowing lengths they went to survive. Chris Hemsworth stars and Ron Howard directs the seafaring epic.
Macbeth (2015) (Anchor Bay, Blu-ray, DVD, VOD, ) stars Michael Fassbender as the Thane of Cawdor and Marion Cotillard as his Lady. Justin Kurzel directs this screen version of The Scottish Play.
Coming Home (Sony, Blu-ray, DVD), a Chinese drama directed by Zhang Yimou set during the Cultural Revolution, stars Gong Li as a woman who gets amnesia after her husband (Chen Daoming) is sent to labor camp and doesn’t recognize him when he returns.
Paris Belongs to Us (Criterion, Blu-ray, DVD), the debut feature by French New Wave co-founder Jacques Rivette, is reviewed on Cinephiled here.
Classics and Cult:
The Manchurian Candidate (Criterion, Blu-ray, DVD)
Alexander the Great (Twilight Time, Blu-ray)
Lilies of the Field (Twilight Time, Blu-ray)
Exodus (Twilight Time, Blu-ray)
Anastasia (Twilight Time, Blu-ray)
10 Rillington Place (Twilight Time, Blu-ray)
Rage of Honor (Arrow, Blu-ray+DVD)
Jane B. Par Agnes V. / King Fu Master! (Cinelicious, Blu-ray)
The Vikings (Kino, Blu-ray, DVD)
Comin’ At Ya 3D (Shout! Factory, Blu-ray+Blu-ray 3D)
The Wrong Man (Warner Archive, Blu-ray)
I Confess (Warner Archive, Blu-ray)
Xanadu (Universal, Blu-ray)
The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (Universal, Blu-ray)
Howard the Duck (Universal, Blu-ray)
*batteries not included (Universal, Blu-ray
Species II (Shout! Factory, Blu-ray)
Species III / Species: The Awakening (Shout! Factory, Blu-ray)
Invasion U.S.A. (Shout! Factory, Blu-ray)
Braddock: Missing in Action III (Shout! Factory, Blu-ray)
Mae West: The Essential Collection (Paramount, DVD)
TV on disc:
Grease Live! (Paramount, DVD)
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Season One (Universal, DVD)
Game of Thrones: The Complete Fifth Season (HBO, Blu-ray, DVD, Digital HD)
Manhattan: Season Two (Lionsgate, Blu-ray, DVD)
Community: The Complete Final? Season (Sony, DVD)
Rookie Blue: The Final Season (eOne, DVD)
Hogan’s Heroes: The Complete Series (Paramount, DVD)
Mayday (Acorn, DVD)
In the Beginning: The Bible Stories (Abraham / Moses / Jacob / Joseph) (Shout! Factory, DVD)
The Bible Stories: Abraham (1993) (Shout! Factory, DVD)
The Bible Stories: Moses (1995) (Shout! Factory, DVD)
CHiPs: The Complete Fourth Season (Warner, DVD)
The Nanny: The Final Season (Shout! Factory, DVD)
More new releases:
The Peanuts Movie (Fox, Blu-ray, Blu-ray 3D, DVD)
Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip (Fox, Blu-ray, DVD)
Love (Alchemy, Blu-ray+Blu-ray3D+DVD)
Victor Frankenstein (Fox, Blu-ray, DVD)
The Benefactor (eOne, Blu-ray, DVD)
Victoria (Cinedigm, Blu-ray, DVD)
The Tribe (Cinedigm, Blu–ray, DVD)
10,000 km (Cinedigm, DVD)
Flowers (Music Box, DVD)
Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine (Magnolia, Blu-ray, DVD)