Margin Call

Margin Call takes place in 2008, on the night before the global financial system went into free fall. It begins with an analyst in a major financial firm's Risk Management department smelling a rat, snowballs into late-night and early-morning meetings of increasingly powerful and terrified members of the firm, and culminates in the run that was the next day's market activity. It's terrifying stuff, way more terrifying than any number of dudes in any number of masks chasing any number of college kids through the night.

It's also annoyingly writerly. Many of the characters get big speeches, and those speeches nearly always sound more like the finger-wagging of hippie writers than the misgivings of mathematicians. Whenever Margin Call pulled me into its world through its spot-on set design and world class performances, it pulled me right back out again when some character started moaning about how he could have been building bridges instead of getting rich.

Nevertheless, the film's sense of mounting dread giving way to panic was effective; and its snappy editing and kinetic (for a film that felt like a stage adaptation) photography kept things moving along. Margin Call caught me up in its narrative in spite of its preachiness. Further, even though I knew how it was going to end, I wanted to know how it was going to end. Overall, I call this one as a good film. But I'd rather see the play.

Star Trek

STAR TREK does all the things a good summer action movie should do. It has pathos. It has jokes. It has sex. It blows lots of stuff up real good. It's also a surprisingly good picture, one made to entertain the general public while throwing plenty of bones to the trekkies in the audience.

Here's the deal: the charismatic and dangerous Eric Bana (Really, you should see CHOPPER) plays an angry guy out for revenge through multi-planetary genocide. BOTTLE SHOCK's terrific Chris Pine is li'l Captain James T. Kirk, the only cat in the Federation bad enough to take him on. Joining li'l Kirk is li'l Spock, li'l McCoy, and the rest of the gang. They crack jokes. They have conflict. They blow stuff up. Li'l Spock gives li'l Kirk one of those manly nods of the head saying, "I guess you're ok, after all." Most importantly, Leonard Nimoy shows up as Big Spock, and there is no such thing as a film that is worse off for the presence of one Leonard Nimoy.

The thing about "Star Trek" that the post - original series showrunners never got was that nobody cares about make believe diplomacy among imaginary alien races. Nobody cares about heavy handed, though well meaning, depictions of of the Marxist utopia of the future. People care about the friendship of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. That's the dynamic that has always made Star Trek worth watching, and J.J. Abrams gets it. STAR TREK may spend lots of time on space battles and angry villains, but it's really about that friendship, about sharing in the feeling that there are people around you who've got your back. It's a good feeling, and it's a good way to spend a couple of hours at the movies.