Film Review: Boiler Room (2000)

Release Date: January 30th, 2000 (Sundance)
Directed by: Ben Younger
Written by: Ben Younger
Music by: The Angel
Cast: Giovanni Ribisi, Vin Diesel, Nia Long, Nicky Katt, Scott Caan, Ben Affleck, Ron Rifkin, Jamie Kennedy, Taylor Nichols, Bill Sage, Tom Everett Scott, Anson Mount, Kirk Acevado, Desmond Harrington (uncredited)

Team Todd, New Line Cinema, 120 Minutes

Review:

“[to the new recruits] And there is no such thing as a no sale call. A sale is made on every call you make. Either you sell the client some stock or he sells you a reason he can’t. Either way a sale is made, the only question is who is gonna close? You or him? Now be relentless, that’s it, I’m done.” – Jim Young

For years, until there was actually a second Wall Street movie, I saw this as that film’s spiritual successor. Which is also sort of fitting as the characters in this movie worship the Gordon Gekko character from Wall Street.

I actually still view this as a spiritual sequel, however, as it’s very apparent that it was strongly influenced by Wall Street and also because it is a motion picture of quality. While it might not live up to Wall Street or Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, it’s still damn good and at least in the same orbit as those movies.

The plot of the film is intriguing and it sucks you in from the get go. It’s about a smart, savvy college dropout who goes from running an illegal casino in his house to being one of the top brokers at a really young, lucrative and questionable brokerage firm.

Over the course of the movie, we see Giovanni Ribisi’s Seth Davis go from being a slightly timid rookie to a confident and smart salesman to being swarmed with immense guilt when he realizes that he has completely fucking people out of their life savings to reluctant antihero that tried to fix some of the damage he caused while taking the firm down.

I can’t quite call Seth Davis a hero, as it took his father disowning him and the FBI pinching him to get him to actually change his tune. It’s hard to tell if he would’ve arrived to a better place on his own but, at least he tried to undo some of his wreckage.

Beyond Ribisi, this is a film that is loaded with a lot of the up and coming male talent of the day. Vin Diesel and Nicky Katt really stick out and Ben Affleck’s performance is great, even if his scenes are few and his role feels more like a beefed up cameo.

I really loved the music in this film, as it’s full of east coast hip-hop of the early to mid-’90s, which has always been my favorite kind of hip-hop. It may be slightly dated for this 2000 film but it worked for me, as I started to ignore more mainstream rap music around 1998.

Anyway, this is a superb finance thriller. It has stood up to the test of time in the same way that Wall Street has. If you like these sort of movies but have slept on Boiler Room the last two decades, you should check it out.

Rating: 7.75/10
Pairs well with: other finance industry thrillers like Wall Street, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, The Big Short, Rogue Trader, etc.

TV Review: Star Trek: Discovery (2017- )

Original Run: September 24th, 2017 – current
Created by: Bryan Fuller, Alex Kurtzman
Directed by: various
Written by: various
Based on: Star Trek by Gene Roddenberry
Music by: Jeff Russo, Alexander Courage (original theme)
Cast: Sonequa Martin-Green, Doug Jones, Shazad Latif, Anthony Rapp, Mary Wiseman, Jason Isaacs, Wilson Cruz, Anson Mount

Secret Hideout, Roddenberry Entertainment, Living Dead Guy Productions, CBS Television Studios, 29 Episodes (so far), 37-65 Minutes (per episode)

Review:

I didn’t want to subscribe to CBS All Access just to have access to this show. There wasn’t much else on the service that I wanted to watch. So I figured that I’d wait till this was out and then I’d binge watch the first season.

However, based off of what I heard about the first season (and later, the second season) I refrained from subscribing, even for a month.

Well, I finally got to check it out on a Delta flight. I figured I’d watch the first two episodes and figure out if I wanted to continue on. I didn’t.

This show is a fucking abomination. My worst fears were true and this was just a shittier version of J. J. Abrams’ mostly shitty modern Star Trek stuff. Throw in a bunch of identity politics nonsense to boot and I’d rather wipe my ass with a sharp spoon than watch another episode.

A guy at work kept telling me, “Don’t believe all the negative hype, it’s not that bad. Give it a shot. I think you’ll like it.” I put in a formal request to have this guy fired. I don’t think that my employer will approve it just based off of my comments, so I also included a thumb drive with clips from the show.

On a side note, I really like Anson Mount. Dude is a stellar fucking actor but I couldn’t get through two episodes of this Dumbo-sized shite to even make it to his episodes. Between this fucktard show and Inhumans, dude might need to fire his agent.

The special effects aren’t as good as people have said yet this show is insanely expensive to produce.

Also, what the fuck is up with the Klingons? No, seriously? They don’t look like Klingons, they look stupid. I think that somewhere down the line, these Klingons reproduced with that tar monster that killed Tasha Yar on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

This is NOT Star Trek. It’s some fan fiction by a fan that isn’t even a fan, who got all their Star Trek lore from some drunk old hippie at the corner bar.

This is to Star Trek what Applebee’s Riblets are to A5 Wagyu.

It’s unwatchable, unexciting and will turn most people into somnambulists.

It’s fitting that this show is abbreviated as STD. I should have bought two condoms and just put them over my eyes because this is certainly the genital warts of the franchise.

All that being said, I hated this show like a vegan bitch hates Longhorn Steakhouse.

Rating: 1.5/10
Pairs well with: a bladder infection or anal fissures.

TV Review: Inhumans (2017)

Original Run: September 29th, 2017 – November 10th, 2017
Created by: Scott Buck
Directed by: various
Written by: various
Based on: Inhumans by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby
Music by: Sean Callery
Cast: Anson Mount, Serinda Swan, Ken Leung, Eme Ikwuakor, Isabelle Cornish, Ellen Woglom, Iwan Rheon

ABC Studios, Marvel, Devilina Productions, IMAX Entertainment, Walt Disney, 8 Episodes, 42 Minutes (per episode)

Review:

Well, this show has been trashed by just about anyone and everyone who actually took the time to give it a watch. Being that I have seen everything within the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe, I couldn’t just ignore this and knew that I’d have to give it an honest shot.

It’s pretty damn bad but it isn’t as horrendous as many have claimed. I saw that it was expiring soon on Hulu, so I figured I had better binge through this quickly before losing the opportunity.

To start, this should have really excited me. It stars Mr. Bohannon from Hell On Wheels a.k.a. Anson Mount. He also plays Black Bolt, a character I have loved in the comics for years. Sadly, Mount can’t speak in this part because his voice is like getting bitchslapped by God. He spends most of his time talking in sign language as Medusa translates for him. When Medusa isn’t around, he just gives very intense stares that make me think he is going to crack my television screen.

Medusa is pretty terrible and unlikable but then so are all the heroes. Crystal is damn cute but she always has this look on her face like she just sipped on a cup of tea and noticed a cat turd floating in it.

Speaking of Crystal, her story is the worst thing about the show. It is a little teenage love story that comes off like one of those Miley Cyrus Disney movies before she cut all her hair off and got her boobs out a lot. Crystal’s boyfriend is some Hawaiian surfer brah that tells her to “hang ten” all the time. In fact, Crystal is lost and trying to locate her family and surfer brah says, “Hang ten! Jump in the water with me! We’ll look for your family later!” Dude’s a total Disney Channel douche nugget and he probably calls his mom “brah”.

Iwan Rheon who was a big deal on Game of Thrones, a show I don’t like or care about, plays the bad guy but he’s just a human being. Actually, he’s a sour, jealous bitch that didn’t get magic powers like the other Inhumans and he somehow kicks them out of the kingdom and takes over the Moon. I loved Rheon on Misfits though and that was, by far, an infinitely better show than this or Game of Thrones.

I don’t know, the more I think about this show, maybe it is as bad as all the detractors are saying.

On a positive note, it was filmed in beautiful Hawaii. So all the scenery was breathtaking and amazing but I’d rather just watch Lost, Hawaii Five-O, Magnum P.I. or Saved by the Bell: Hawaiian Style.

Rating: 4.5/10
Pairs well with: The other MCU TV stuff but this was so bad and short-lived that I’d imagine it will be ignored in the future and that Disney will revisit these characters in a completely different way, years from now.

TV Review: Hell On Wheels (2011-2016)

Original Run: November 6th, 2011 – July 23rd, 2016
Created by: Joe Gayton, Tony Gayton
Directed by: various
Written by: various
Music by: Kevin Kiner
Cast: Anson Mount, Colm Meaney, Common, Dominique McElligott, Tom Noonan, Eddie Spears, Ben Esler, Phil Burke, Christopher Heyerdahl, Robin McLeavy, Kasha Kropinski, Dohn Norwood, Jennifer Ferrin, MacKenzie Porter, Jake Weber, Tim Guinee, Byron Mann, Reg Rogers, Angela Zhou, Chelah Horsdal

Nomadic Pictures, (Gayton)2, H.O.W. Productions, Endemol, Wirthwhile TV, Entertainment One, AMC, 57 Episodes, 43 Minutes (per episode)

Review:

*written in 2016.

I didn’t start watching Hell On Wheels until recently. I watched the pilot when it originally aired but it didn’t immediately capture me and I didn’t have a lot of time, back then, to keep up with the show on a weekly basis. Shows play much better for me when binge watched.

Having a strong desire for a good western television series and after years of friends touting this show, I figured that it was time to give it a real shot.

Well, AMC has kept their track record of stellar television alive with Hell On Wheels. It is the best western TV series since HBO’s Deadwood and it has actually surpassed it a bit, at least for me.

The cast of Hell On Wheels is marvelous. Anson Mount as lead character Cullen Bohannan is the perfect western protagonist. He is ex-military, has a vendetta against some evil men, is good with a gun, is no nonsense and just a good old badass. Colm Meaney, most famous for playing the lovable and nice Chief O’Brien on Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, is better than fantastic as Thomas Durant – a mean and sometimes sinister railroad baron. Common has his best acting role to date, as Bohannan’s friend and badass partner, Elam Ferguson. The cast is rounded out with other great talents and every regular on this show is perfect. But the absolute cream of the crop has to be Christopher Heyerdahl as Thor Gunderson a.k.a. The Swede, who is quite possibly the best villain in television history. The guy is magnificent, his execution is absolute perfection and he seriously gives you the chills.

This show is a work of art. It feels meticulously crafted and the writing is superb. I have read where some people don’t like the direction of the show after the second season but I am fine with it. The show evolves, it changes from year-to-year after the first two seasons were very similar. There just isn’t a low point for me. Granted, there is still a half of a season left where it could go off the rails but I’m pretty confident that when the show returns in a few months, we won’t get an ending on par with the crappy final episodes of Sons of Anarchy or Dexter. And we hopefully won’t get a big unanswered cliffhanger like the similar Deadwood.

I love Hell On Wheels. I would have liked to see it go on for more than five seasons but many great shows don’t make it past a single year. Luckily for us, this solid show got half a decade to shine and develop. One thing is for certain, I will be paying close attention to the careers of Mount and Heyerdahl after this show ends.

Rating: 9.5/10
Pairs well with: Deadwood and Longmire, both shows with a western feel and a modern edge.