ESL Movie Review Magazine

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Hello. I am going to do a movie review of the film, 99 Homes. Now, this movie came out about eight years ago, and the movie deals with the housing crisis after the financial collapse in 2007 and 2008.

I love dramas, and I love movies that talk about economics. So this movie was very interesting to me. I really enjoyed it. And one thing I loved about the movie is it looked at the income disparities in the United States and how difficult it is for poor people to survive and how richer people are not necessarily smarter. They just know how to use the system to their advantage.

The movie centers around a construction worker who has lost his job because most firms are not building houses anymore. The construction industry has dried up, and this person needs to find work somewhere. So he gets a job with a man who buys and sells homes, and he needs to do simple repairs and fix them up, so new buyers will want to buy the house. But along the way, this construction worker sees that the person he is working with is not the most honorable person and is a bit dodgy.

The film really looks at how often poor people are very moralistic and they try to do the right thing, and rich people really just don't care about the system

They don't care about other people's feelings.

They just care about the system, and they game the system to their advantage. That's kind of why they're rich. Overall. I thought the movie was excellent. It has some excellent acting, and I liked it because it fits in well with two other movies that I really enjoy. One of the movies is Margin Call, which I talked about in another review and also the movie, The Big Short, which I also talked about in another review.

And those three movies together really tie together the situation for the economic collapse.

In Margin Call, you saw it from the banking perspective. And in The Big Short, you saw it from the investor perspective. And then in 99 Homes, you see it from the developer's perspective and the construction worker's perspective and even the buyer and homeowner's perspective. Overall, those three movies really work together. They really work well together and I really enjoyed them.

That's it. That's my review for 99 Homes. It's a really good movie. It has some big stars in it.

Laura Dern is in the movie, and there are a couple of other actors. I don't know their names, but I know that they're famous. The acting is fantastic. The story moves at a really good pace, and it's a very good look at what's wrong with the American economy and basically American society. I highly recommend it.

9/17/2020

Margin Call

Margin Call

Hello. In this movie review, we are going to look at the film Margin Call. Now this movie review is very special because Margin Call is probably my favorite film. And it's a film that a lot of people have not seen, and it's a film that does not get a lot of fanfare, but in many ways, I think it's the perfect film. There are so many things to love about this movie.

First, it has an all-star cast. It has some of the best actors and actresses in the film industry, or especially in America, or around the world, actually, I should say. For example, it has Jeremy Irons. It has Kevin Spacey, Stanley Tucci, Demi Moore and more actors than that. So there's a lot of people in the movie that are quite famous, but there's not one main character that's really the star.

The movie revolves around a young investment banker who discovers a secret about the bank and how the bank is in a very bad financial situation. The movie starts with Stanley Tucci's character getting fired, and on his way out of the office, he gives the file to this young investment banker. I cannot remember his name at the moment, but he's the same guy that plays Spock in Star Trek. But anyway, so he gets the file and he figures out that the bank is in dire financial straits. Things are going to get really bad, and basically the whole bank is going to collapse. And not only is the bank going to collapse, the whole financial industry is going to collapse.

So this young investment banker then passes on the information to his managers, one of them being Kevin Spacey, and then the information starts working its way up the command chain, eventually to the top, Jeremy Irons. And along the way, we learn how everybody in the bank realizes that they are doomed, and the movie deals with how people handle this stressful situation differently and what it must be like to be in an environment where you realize it's over. The party's over.

Everything is going to end.

And so then the movie delves into the moral dilemma of should they be open about what's going to happen or should they keep it a secret so they could save some money or make a little more money for themselves? And that's it really that's the movie in a nutshell. It's a little complicated because it deals with the financial markets and then the really complex security instruments that they had in 2007, 2008, the collateralized debt, if I could say that, referring to the debt markets for the housing market. So it's a little complex, but the movie does a good job of trying to lay out the situation.

It doesn't do as good of a job as let's say The Big Short, which had short little clips that made fun of the situation, or did it in a light way. This movie kind of has a dark tone to it, a serious tone to it, so it really couldn't take that approach. But overall, the movie did a good job of explaining the situation, and also what it was like to be in a bank at that time.

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9/17/2020

Margin Call

And one thing I really liked about the movie is that it humanized the bankers. It made the bankers seem like real people. So the bankers were not these stiff, greedy, malicious, evil people. They were just normal people actually, and they did a lot of these bad things just because they were under pressure. They had to perform for the bank. And when everything went down, went south, they actually felt bad about it. There really wasn't a lot of greed in the room. There was actually a consensus that what they did was wrong and they all felt bad about it, which I thought was the surprise element of the movie. It really looked at these bankers from a humanistic level, and I thought that was really good.

But overall, like I said, Margin Call is pretty much perfect in my eyes. I love the movie. It has great acting. It moves at a really fast pace. It tells a very important story in history, and overall it's just very entertaining to watch.

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Hello in this movie review, we are going to look at Moneyball. Now, Moneyball is one of my favorite movies for a variety of reasons. First it's about baseball, which is one of my favorite sports. Two, it stars Brad Pitt. He's one of my favorite actors and three, it is about my favorite baseball team, the Oakland A's. And as a cherry on top, it also talks about business and how small teams or small companies can compete against bigger enterprises.

So the movie is based on a book by Michael Lewis called Moneyball. And as Michael Lewis says, he got the idea for the book because he was watching the Oakland A's compete against the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees. And he wondered how they did it with such a low budget. So the New York Yankees would have a budget of, let's say $200 million a year to play, to pay really good players.

And the Oakland A's would have a budget of, let's say, $50 million. So they had 25% of the budget yet they were fielding a team that was just as competitive. So the book looks at baseball from a business perspective, which I think makes it very interesting. And in the movie, the star of the book, Billy Beane, who was the general manager of the Oakland A's is played by Brad Pitt. And it goes over in detail how the A's became such a good team by looking for players that didn't cost very much that had a much lower salaries, but had very specific skill sets.

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Now I like the movie because it's a good example for anybody that's starting a business, that you can go after the big competitors on the cheap, you can do things in creative ways, look for ways to get the same result, but at a much lower cost, and that's really what the movie deals with. So rather than hit a lot of home runs or get a lot of base hits, which might cost a lot of money, the Oakland A's looked at players who just got on base and didn't strike out much, which would actually increase your chances of scoring runs. And so that was pretty much the baseball part of it in a nutshell.

They also looked at pitchers that didn't throw that many balls, had low pitch counts, things like that. But Brad Pitt is just really entertaining in this movie. He's very charismatic. Of course, he's Brad Pitt and the movie moves along quite fast and it just shows how hard it could be to work in a dysfunctional organization or an organization that's not really turning on all cylinders. And so for that reason, I really enjoyed the movie.

At that time I was starting my business myself, and it really gave me hope that you could accomplish things even if you did not have the resources. It's built inside of us, it's human ingenuity to always do things that need to be done. That even though maybe you don't have the tools or the resources to do it.

So for that reason, I really liked Moneyball. I think it's a great movie, highly recommended. And even if you don't like baseball, I think it's a good film because it shows how to go against the big guys and how to transform people in your organization that don't have the same mindset as you and how you shouldn't be afraid to go against the grain and really stick to your guns so to speak, and what you believe in to try to accomplish a larger goal. So for that reason, I love Moneyball.

If you get a chance, check it out.

In this movie review, I'm going to go back in time and look at a movie from the mid 1990s, and it's called The Paper. And the paper deals with a newspaper that is facing some financial strains and the people that work at the paper and how they interact with each other and how they compete with each other. The movie has a lot of really big name actors. It has Robert Duvall, it has Michael Keaton, it has Glenn close. So it has a superstar cast, and the movie mainly revolves around a controversial story where these two teenage boys are framed for a crime they didn't commit, they're both African American, so it's very racially charged at the time, and how the newspaper realizes that some of the facts are not correct, but maybe they should go ahead and print the story because they'll get good ratings. They'll sell a lot of papers. They need the money.

So there's a lot of internal fighting inside the newspaper about whether they should print the paper and save money and get it out or if they should hold the story, which will be a lot more expensive, and also cost them viewership, but then get it right and print the story the next day. It sounds like kind of a tense situation, but actually the movie is really funny. It's directed by Ron Howard and it's basically a comedy, a drama comedy.

Michael Keaton is really, really funny in the movie. Actually, all the actors are really funny and the pace moves along quite quickly. It's set in New York. I love movies that are set in New York. And I also like movies that have internal friction within an organization.

In the movie, Glenn close is the bean counter, so she wants to save money and make profit where Michael Keaton, he's the guy that wants just to get the story right and he's the purist. So they butt heads in the movie about what they should do. So there's a competition between them and some of the other employees. And the movie also kind of makes fun at jaded employees who really don't care very much and dodgy characters that might work at a place. So it's just a fun movie. A little side note. It actually did not do well at the box office, and one reason is because when the movie came out, I think it was the same time of the OJ Simpson car chase scene, so that kind of took over the media and some people speculated that this movie did not do so well because of that important event in history.

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The Big Short In this movie review, we are going to look at "The Big Short." Now, "The Big Short" is a movie about the financial crisis in 2007 and 2008. And you will notice from my other podcasts that I love movies that are based on economics and especially this time in history.

"The Big Short" is very similar to the movies "Margin Call" and "99 Homes," in that it deals specifically with the financial collapse of 2007 and how it affected many people across the country. And "The Big Short" looks at how some investors, some people that ran investment firms really went against the grain and the common investment trends at the time and bet that the housing market would collapse. each other. I can't think of another movie that's done that. So I really liked that approach.

So, there are multiple characters in the movie that realize that the market is very fragile.

And what's kind of interesting is the movie shows you three separate groups that figure this out. Actually, four separate groups, but two of them kind of joined forces. It looks at three separate groups that figure this out, and it parallels their journey to basically earning a lot of money by betting that the housing market is going to collapse. And it's interesting to see the three stories at the same time. These characters don't know each other, they're completely independent of each other, but they're going through the same psychological problems, the same intellectual problems that all of them are going through in trying to bet against the housing markets. And so I think that's really what makes the movie tick is to see three people tackle the same problem at the same time, and they have nothing to do with

Watch the trailer Also, the movie is quite funny/ Steve corral, he's great in it. Brad Pitt is funny in his role as kind of a really reserved investment banker who's no longer in the game. And there's just a lot of really good actors in it. Christian Bale, of course, is in it. And he's this various centric investor who is really making his senior management or the people that invest in his firm upset. So, overall it's a really good movie.

The characters really come through. The acting really comes through. It's a very tight script. I love movies with an ensemble cast. You'll see that's a common theme in a lot of my reviews. I love movies that have an ensemble cast with many characters. So, I really liked that about the movie. And I thought the movie also did a really good job of trying to explain the intricacies of the financial crisis. Overall, I would say the movie was near perfect. I can't think of any flaws. I wouldn't say it was perfect, but I can't think of any flaws at the moment.

Overall, the story moved quickly. It was funny. I guess maybe I wish they went into a little bit more detail. It was so good, I kind of wish the movie was a little bit longer, but yeah, that's pretty much it. So, overall, I would say that "The Big Short" is a really good movie and it was also written by Michael Lewis, who also wrote the book "Moneyball," which I did another movie review for. So, obviously, I'm a big fan of Michael Lewis and his books. So, if you ever get a chance to read any of Michael Lewis's books, I highly recommend it. So anyway, that's my review for "The Big Short." Overall, it was a really good movie.