Film you recently watched: part 3

Me neither , I liked the first one, but I was 7 years old. Empire Strikes back was good, but the rest just went increasingly key downhill from there .

I work in film VFX and everybody in the whole industry is a Star Wars geek. I feel like a pariah in the workplace, who has to keep quiet about it in case I get ostracised and have to go and work in MacDonalds.

 

Creed.

It's essentially a bit of a rehash of the original Rocky in a lot of ways, but it's pretty bloody well done.

8/10.

 

The book is fantastic.

 

Not out yet - where did you find a link/watch it?

 

I'll PM you a link.

 

You'll need to clear down you PM Inbox as it says it's full.

 

The Hateful 8 - didn't enjoy it as it's become a Tarantino staple...too much talking not enough moving the plot along. That film could have been done in about 40 minutes and I won't watch it again.

The Revenant - don't see what all the fuss is about - the cinematography is stunning, performances are good but they spend so much time trying to build the climactic tension that they ran out of ideas and decided to rush the ending. No rewatchable factor for me as I was screaming at the screen "Get on with it"

 

Bridge of Spies - I enjoyed this one, typical Tom Hanks, Hollywood royalty so you can rarely go wrong.

Burnt - it was ok.

Spotlight - I actually really enjoyed this as it's about the Boston Globe's investigation in the child molesting scandal in the church.

Trumbo - Enjoyed this one, centred around the McCarthy Communist witch hunt and the blacklisted Hollywood screen writers

Steve Jobs - Quite liked it

Bone Tomahawk - preferred it to Hateful 8, however it took it's time to get going.

Had a lot of holiday to take and watched alot of films

 

Definitely watch The Big Short if you liked Inside Job.

It gets quite technical which is where it started losing me, so they cleverly include some famous cameos to explain how it works and it made perfect sense.

 

Watched 'Room' tonight. Tough viewing because of the subject material but very good.

Brie Larson was superb and I predict she will win the Best Actress Oscar next month. She deserves to.

(With Di Caprio claiming his first statuette too)

 

Sicario - 6/10 - Was really hyped for this film, but it didn't quite live up to it.

I thought the way it was shot was excellent, but the plot was quite odd! I certainly didn't expect the main reason for doing what they were doing towards the end.

Emily Blunt was hot, but not the person to play the role unfortunately.

 

Delighted to see Brie win the Golden Globe (see my post above)

Now for the big one!

 

Watched Room on your recommendation, and it was very good...my only problem with it was I wanted to learn more about how she got there etc...a bit more background...but it was very good nonetheless.

She's lost alot of weight since 21 Jump Street.

 

yes agree..it did make a few assumptions didn't it..

Glad you enjoyed it though. It's a strange film and while I was watching it, I wasn't totally sure if I was enjoying it or how good I thought it was. It was one of those films you took to bed with you and started analysing it as you tried to sleep. I thought the best thing about it was the dynamic between mother and child, both of whom were superbly played. How good was the young actor..just 8 years old I think...amazing performance. And I loved Brie Larson's performance too, as I mentioned at the time. I'm certain she'll win the Oscar.

 

I quite liked it, the suspense and guessing kept it interesting, although I do agree it was far too long. Although I slightly ruined it for myself by

Spoiler

knowing beforehand that Channing Tatum was in it, yet not in the Haberdashery with the rest so guessed that he would be involved towards the end in some shape or form

 

Creed.

Predictable, boring, wooden. Highlight seeing Stallone in a wig and pumped full of botox.

 

Watched Maggie with Arnold Shwarzenegger and I have to say I really liked it.

Slow burner and different take on the zombie genre.

Also took on a challenge from a friend to watch 5 movies which are of a disturbing and horrfic nature:

Audition
Grotesque
Martyrs
Cannibal Holocaust
Wolf Creek

For me the most upsetting was Martyrs...stayed in my head for days.

Audition was a slow burner, but it was a good film.

Grotesque is pure mega-graphic torture porn, but maybe I'm de-sensitised as I was bored after 40 minutes and the ending was ridiculous.

Cannibal Holocaust - the first 'found footage' film from 1980, controversial because the director was actually arrested and charged with murdering the actors. SPOILER ALERT animals are killed on film. Apparently this was the inspiration behind Eli Roth's Green Inferno which was just plain bloody awful, acting, plot and directing wise....but I'll get to him later.

Wolf Creek - based on the Australian back pack serial murderer Ivan Milat - this film annoyed me as they had so many opportunities to take out the murderer, it just became farcical. I believe everyone has a 'survival' mode, but one of the girls was constantly hysterical that I would have shot her myself she was so annoying...and loud.

Finally, the scariest film I have seen recently...Knock Knock with Keanu Reeves...scary for these reasons:

1) Eli Roth is given money to make films this bad
2) Eli Roth is allowed to make films this bad
3) Eli Roth is allowed to write screenplays and scripts this bad
4) Eli Roth casts his talentless wife in films this bad
5) Keanu Reeves' acting is bloody awful in a film this bad
6) That I wasted my time watching a film this bad
7) The plot and ending were the worst nonsensical arse gravy in a film this bad
8) It's not a 'so bad it's good' it's a 'so bad that self immolation is preferable'

Eli Roth was the baseball bat soldier on Inglorious Basterds and as a result of his films...hate him with a passion.

 

Film yuo recently watched: Part 3

My only quibble was how Old Nick, having obviously been so careful to keep them hidden in the shed, suddenly became so lapse once the escape plot was hatched. I won't say too much here in case people are planning to see the film in the next few weeks, but I'm sure you and Hornetgags know what I mean!

I'm sad the young actor didn't get an Oscar nomination. He was wonderful. I guess he had long hair in the storyline because his mum had no way of cutting it? Once it was cut, it symbolised the transition from captive to free spirit?

I've put my money where my mouth is and had a bet on Brie to win best actress.

 

The Martian - 9/10 - Humour, suspense, thrills, spills, injuries, potatoes.

Legend - 8/10 - Tom Hardy :love2:

 

Excellent film

I've seen criticism that it was a 'dumbed down' explanation of the crisis, yet even as someone who works in Investment Banking, I thought it was pitched at a perfect level between the intricacies of something like Inside Job and the silliness of films like Wall Street

It lost one mark from me at the end when Steve Carrell said that line about "i'm worried people will do what they always do and blame the poor and immigrants", which felt extremely ham fisted and shoe horned in, especially as the film had done such a good job of telling that story/message already, the forced grand standing felt unnecessary and jarring

Other than that, no complaints, some great performances from an all star cast as well

9/10

 

The question I wanted answering and as someone who works in that field, maybe you can answer is the synthetic CDOs. I understood the concept as it was explained very well in terms of the black jack example. How is that policed? As from what I understood, you're effectively betting on or against someone else making money or a loss on a trade. Something as intangible as this can't really be policed so you can effective bet on anything.

What I got out of it was there were lots of questionable mortgages with no credit ratings blocked with good quality mortgages, surely the SEC should have seen the sizes of the trades and investigated the packages being shorted and then looked at the credit rating agencies who over rated the crappy CDOs.

 

Watched American Sniper.

Very disappointing, not sure what I expected but I expected a better film. Just got very boring, and they could have probably explored the irony of the ending a bit more

 

Watched The Prestige again...love that film.

 

I just went to see The Big Short as well and I loved it. Amazing that they made such a depressing story so watchable and genuinely funny. I loved the directing, especially the bits where Selena Gomez et al explained things.

I love Steve Carrell, one of my all time favourite actors and it's great to see him doing serious films now too.

It certainly helped to cement my position as left of centre... Amazing that the bankers got away with it so easily.

 

CDOs are just pools of assets split into tranches with different risk profiles. The underlyings are clearly defined in the trade document at the start of the trade. Receivers of coupons (i.e. the guys who lose out when there are defaults) are just making a financial trade like any other.

The ratings agencies are just giving their opinion - they have reputation risk but I don't see how they need to be policed/punished, unless we think they are deliberately in cahoots with the banks to sell these products.

You mention pooling poor quality mortgages with good ones - I worked with synthetic CDOs so not the mortgage ones in 2007 but I think if you're buying a senior tranche adding some toxic garbage into the pool will get you a better return and it "should" be minimal risk because the lower tranches get munched through when the duffers default and your tranche remains intact. (i.e. sticking some garbage in there can be a positive depending on your attitude to risk).

Of course if all the underlyings turn out to be poor quality then you're taking a bath.

 

I see, so if you have some crap in pool, if they default the stronger ones maintain the value of the CDO. That's where I got confused as I was thinking that individual defaults would affect the overall value.

At the end, when the arse was falling out of the market, all the mortgages within the CDOs were defaulting however they weren't devaluing the CDOs, then selling them to other banks and then betting against them. How was that not a criminal offence as they would surely be committing fraud in false valuation of a crap product? Or is it more a case of the buying bank didn't carry out proper due diligence so tough sh!t life's hard get a helmet?

 

Defaults do impact the value but Cdos have different tranches. So if you at the bottom you get hit by the first 5 defaults (for example). If you at the top you get hit only once the tranches below you are destroyed by defaults. (So these tranches may attract high credit ratings) The top tranches pay a much lower coupon than the lower tranches. A big part of cdo tranche pricing is correlation between the underlyings. If correlation is perfect (to use a silly example) then if one underlying defaults they all default hence the top tranche plummets in value in that scenario.

 

Cool thank you.

 

Yeah. Value is very subjective in terms of credit curves and correlation. If I sell you an overpriced CDO it's just a bad trade by you at end of day. Banks quite rightly don't get protection like retail investors so its buyer beware. The problem comes when they mess up and then taxpayer bails them out. If you're a hedge fund then you go bust which is how it should be.

 

I should note I'm talking about synthetic Cdos here. The Cdos with mortgage underlyings behave a bit different I think but we didn't have any of those.

 

With regard to Room, the book is so, so much better than the film.

Read the book.