Ciwt's Xmas Season Report --- Day 4/322

Walk: Sundance Kabuki (The Big Short)
Distance: 2 miles and small home yoga

Ciwt's Christmas Season means Ciwt's more-movies-than-ever season.  After seeing
 The Lady in the Van at her Cinema Club (See Day 4/314) and 


Star Wars on Christmas Eve Day (See Day 4/318) she took in:

   The Hateful Eight which she liked a lot because she thinks Tarantino is a genius and really likes/respects his films.  The Hateful Eight isn't his best but is  still in genius territory - and still in territory anyone who doesn't follow Tarantino should avoid.  If you've never been to one of his films, do not start here.  Serious warning because they are always very bloody and violent.  If you follow him, you pick up (marvel at, really) the reasons for the audacious grimness and everything in his films. But if you don't, you are always in for a very unpleasant experience - if you even stay in the theater.  Tarantino buffs have probably already seen it; the theater was completely full.

 Carol.  Ciwt will let a friend and her husband review this one.  From a text message: I love Cate Blanchett.  (My husband) thought the movie was beautiful.  He thought Rooney Mara in particular was. The subject matter made him uncomfortable, and the movie was slow.  Rooney Mara drove me nuts, though.  She had one expression: deer in the headlights.  I didn't sense any on-screen electricity between the two actors or reason for the two characters to be together; they hardly spoke to each other so the relationship was unfathomable to me. But the filming, lighting and costumes were lovely. 
    Ciwt wrote back saying "Agree with All!!"  And "Overall, lushly sensual and furtive between two people portrayed solely by their social stations, looks and sexual orientation.  Therefore to me alluring but uninteresting, and kind of annoying."

  It was touch or go whether Ciwt would go to this movie.  With its large, multi-star cast, she assumed it would be a send-up entertainment based on the abominable 2008 financial collapse precipitated by the housing bubble collapse that ruined millions and millions of people all over the world - and almost our entire economy.  But all her friends and a reviewer on Fresh Air thought The Big Short was superior, so off she went.

And glad for it.  The movie uses that stellar cast to show in an entertaining but factual way that sad/outrageous/infuriating/sickening/terrifying catastrophic episode - the negative adjectives go on but never really capture. (It's based on Michael Lewis's non-fiction book: The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine the title of which comes much closer to describing it all).  The film isn't bombastic, lays out the enormity of the financial crisis and shows great respect and sympathy for all who suffered - which includes much of the world - except for, frankly, a comparative handful of bankers and Wall Street brokers.  So Ciwt joins her friends and many reviewers in recommending The Big Short.