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A horrific car accident connects three stories, each involving characters dealing with loss, regret, and life's harsh realities, all in the name of love.
Director:
Alejandro González Iñárritu
Stars:
Emilio Echevarría,
Gael García Bernal,
Goya Toledo
A computer programmer's dream job at a hot Portland-based firm turns nightmarish when he discovers his boss has a secret and ruthless means of dispatching anti-trust problems.
Director:
Peter Howitt
Stars:
Ryan Phillippe,
Rachael Leigh Cook,
Claire Forlani
The movie is based on the infamous "Stanford Prison Experiment" conducted in 1971. A makeshift prison is set up in a research lab, complete with cells, bars and surveillance cameras. For ... See full summary »
Director:
Oliver Hirschbiegel
Stars:
Moritz Bleibtreu,
Christian Berkel,
Oliver Stokowski
A wealthy New York investment banking executive hides his alternate psychopathic ego from his co-workers and friends as he escalates deeper into his illogical, gratuitous fantasies.
In 1984 East Berlin, an agent of the secret police, conducting surveillance on a writer and his lover, finds himself becoming increasingly absorbed by their lives.
Director:
Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Stars:
Martina Gedeck,
Ulrich Mühe,
Sebastian Koch
A veteran high school teacher befriends a younger art teacher, who is having an affair with one of her 15-year-old students. However, her intentions with this new "friend" also go well beyond platonic friendship.
Some scenes were actually shot on the uppers floors of a major bank's corporate headquarters in Melbourne. See more »
Goofs
In the first scene at the school house, the date, Monday 20th March 1977, is written on the chalkboard. March 20, 1977 was a Sunday. See more »
Quotes
[Explaining to the bank's board why he wants to protect the shareholders]
Simon:
They are our people. They are our "society". The public can take care of themselves.
See more »
It's obvious that the screenwriter/director doesn't much like banks - and not many people do. You're only likely to get friendly attention from them when you have large sums of money to deposit, otherwise you are regarded as one the pests they have to put up with to get enough of the aforementioned type of customer - and they take sizeable fees from you for the privilege. The screenplay here is at its best when fuelling that perception, particularly by the attitudes of the bank's CEO, here portrayed (unnecessarily) as an American being pressured by the bank's directors to make higher profits (having closed most of the branches to achieve that wasn't enough). The guy is greed-driven and doesn't care about people. We get two cases of people's lives being ruined by the bank's loan foreclosures. So far so good. But some things don't quite square with reality - the mentality of bankers generally is not suited to gambling and a CEO isn't likely to test a mathematics whizzkid's theories with real money right at the start. It's improbable that a bank's board would agree to a gamble involving the bank's entire capital. Could the mathematics whizzkid really hide a previous identity so easily, and his real motivation as revealed at the end doesn't go with the ethical disinterest he shows throughout. But the film is very good on a technical level - the science presented (generally) suspends disbelief superbly, the characters are credible, acting passable and the editing is excellent. My acid test of a good film is whether it holds my attention throughout and this film certainly does that. 8 out of 10.
9 of 13 people found this review helpful.
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It's obvious that the screenwriter/director doesn't much like banks - and not many people do. You're only likely to get friendly attention from them when you have large sums of money to deposit, otherwise you are regarded as one the pests they have to put up with to get enough of the aforementioned type of customer - and they take sizeable fees from you for the privilege. The screenplay here is at its best when fuelling that perception, particularly by the attitudes of the bank's CEO, here portrayed (unnecessarily) as an American being pressured by the bank's directors to make higher profits (having closed most of the branches to achieve that wasn't enough). The guy is greed-driven and doesn't care about people. We get two cases of people's lives being ruined by the bank's loan foreclosures. So far so good. But some things don't quite square with reality - the mentality of bankers generally is not suited to gambling and a CEO isn't likely to test a mathematics whizzkid's theories with real money right at the start. It's improbable that a bank's board would agree to a gamble involving the bank's entire capital. Could the mathematics whizzkid really hide a previous identity so easily, and his real motivation as revealed at the end doesn't go with the ethical disinterest he shows throughout. But the film is very good on a technical level - the science presented (generally) suspends disbelief superbly, the characters are credible, acting passable and the editing is excellent. My acid test of a good film is whether it holds my attention throughout and this film certainly does that. 8 out of 10.