Lesser Known Movies you must watch - 22

Margin Call

Cast: Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons, Paul Bettany, Stanley Tucci, Zachary Quinto, Simon Baker, Demi Moore (big star cast with mere 3.5 Million budget)

When we talk about movies made on 2008 Recession of sub-prime (financial) crisis , we think about The Big Short or Wall Street or Inside Job but there is one movie which shows the impact of recession from the other side i.e. on the investment banks specifically just one bank who realizes that it will be a victim of financial collapse and takes a decision to sell off its assets within 24 hours before market realizing the risk.

The reason for such a big star cast was mainly to show the emotions and ensuring that the financial talks between the actors are compelling. The movie has done justice and scored full marks practically in all the areas specially considering the fact that it’s a directorial debut for J.C.Chandor who was accoladed by an academy nomination for Best Original Screenplay for this movie. The best part about the movie is that the financial bank is never named throughout even though you would find similarities with falling of Goldman Sachs and Lehman brothers during financial crisis.

The movie begin with the usual mass layoffs happening in the bank where the head of risk management  Dave (Stanley Tucci) is also requested to go. When he leaves, he is handed over a USB drive by one of the risk Analysts Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto) to investigate. Sullivan while working on Dave’s project discovers that company’s current volatility of market securities has exceeded its levels and due to the company’s excess leverage if the firm assets are decreased by 25% , the loss for the firm is greater than its total value i.e. firm will go bankrupt.

In starts the round of meetings between Floor head Sam (Kevin Spacey) , Divison heads Jared (Simon Baker) , Chief Risk Management Officer Sarah (Demi Moore), and CEO John tudd (Jeremy Irons) hindsight how it had happened and why was it not reported. The discussion is to sell the firm toxic assets to save their grace which would mean creating lot of enemies in the financial market or finding other alternatives to stop the crisis or minimize its impact. The dialogues between Spacey and Irons are breath-taking  specially seeing Spacey on the other side who is opposing the sale of assets. This movie also shows that gains and losses are part of economic cycle along with the layoff’s and there are just few people who would gain from such catastrophe. Do watch our 22^nd Recommended movie for yourself to see if they succeeded in selling the assets and to which limit they went to sell-off the same.

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Lesser Known Movies you must watch - 21

Eddie The Eagle

Cast: Taron Egerton , Hugh Jackman, Christopher Walken, Jim Broadbent

This week movie mention (21st) is a biographical sports comedy-drama about a loser who with his determination and positive spirit became a public hero. This movie is about a Britain first competitor (Eddie Edwards) in Olympic Ski Jumping since 1928 (after 6 decades) who even against all the odds went on to participate in the winter Olympics and was able to record his jump successfully.

We are going to begin with a dialogue from the movie between the winner of 1988 Ski Jumping event and Eddie Edwards, where the winner before the 90m jump tells Eddie that “You and I are like one o'clock and eleven o'clock. You see, we are closer to each other than to others. Winning, losing, all that stuff is for the little people. Men like us, we jump to free our souls. We are the only two jumpers with a chance to make history today. If we do less than our best with the whole world watching, it will kill us inside. For all time.”

The movie begins, with 10-year-old Eddie dreams of Olympics and tries his luck in various sports but fails miserably in all of them. He gets support from his mother, but his father discourages him calling it a waste of time. As an adolescent he decides to participate in Winter games instead of summer games in the Skiing event. Although he is decent at sport, he is rejected by the officials due to lack of manners and irrational behavior. He Stills doesn’t give up his dream and instead goes to Germany to self train himself in the training facility with other seasoned jumpers.

In the camp he meets an alcoholic snow jumper Bronson Peary who himself was former American champion but left the sports due to conflicts with his coach. He reluctantly agrees to train him by using the most unorthodox techniques that one can think of (you will literally laugh at some of the scenes). Eddie is able to 40 m hill but to qualify for the Olympics he would have to successfully complete one jump from 70-meter hill. He does complete that but the officials due to his behavior and being afraid that he might spoil the games decides to change the rules to a jump of 61 meters at-least to qualify for the Olympics.

This is where we would leave you to see the movie for yourself to know how was he able to qualify with a 61 meter jump when he was merely reaching 40 meters during training sessions. Once again, you will feel a sense of happiness and energetic with the climax scene and the ending. Hugh Jackman like always has been brilliant in his role (this man can do hardly anything wrong)  and Taron Egerton is amazing as Eddie. See this movie , and you will get the feeling that giving your 100% will give you more satisfaction than winning.

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Lesser Known Movies you must watch - 20

Nightcrawler

Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Rene Russo, Bill Paxton, Riz Ahmed

Nightcrawler was a directorial debut for Dan Gilroy (brother of Tony Gilroy- Michael Clayton) and is one of the low budget movies like Man from Earth where most of the movie was shot at midnight before sunrise. The main tone of the movie is not to let its visuals take over but to show it as close to reality as they could which is why you would see a wide-angle lens camera is being used.

Jake Gyllenhaal is a gem of an actor who has showed his versatile acting skills from Brokeback Mountain to Donny Darko to Source Code to Nocturnal animals but I think Nightcrawler was the one where he was truly snubbed by Academy for not nominating him. He was acclaimed by every critic for his acting skills shown in this movie specially the scenes with Rene Russo.

The movie starts with a thief lou (Jake) who is caught stealing from a security guard in Los Angeles. While looking for a job and getting rejected from the places Lou on one night sees a car crash where photojournalist (Freelance) are trying to record the entire proceedings. On conversing with one of them, Lou finds out that they are selling this footage to local news stations and earning money.

Lou gets into the same profession by stealing a bicycle and exchanges it for a camcorder and police radio scanner. After few unsuccessful attempts Lou gets his hands on the footage of carjacking and sells the same to a news channel (KWLA6). The news director Nina (Rene Russo) tells him that she is interested in such violent news accidents. This is where story gets interesting where Lou to gain popularity starts tampering the accident scenes for creating a good footage. With all the money, he buys better equipment and car to cover more areas.

He gets into a sexual relationship with the director who when not getting a good footage reprimands him for getting more footage. Lou to keep his reputation he sabotages another freelancer Rick’s (Riz Ahmed) van by getting into a tussle with him and records the accident. The movie gets further interesting when Lou gets the chance to record a footage of gunman leaving in SUV and of victims in the house (Case of home invasion) and Nina plans to show the footage even though the staff is anxious over the ethics of the footage. The story gets further interesting when but Lou and Rick plans to catch hold of gunmen who killed the family in the home invasion.  We will leave it for you to see what becomes of Lou on the dark path he has taken. The story is all about betrayal, struggle and survival in the city of fallen angels. Riz Ahmed and Rene Russo have portrayed their character’s to perfection and Gyllenhaal has been compared with Robert D Niro of Taxi driver by some critics for his portrayal as Lou in this movie.

Let us know your views on our 20th recommended movie.

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