Jackass 3-D (2010) * *

Directed by: Jeff Tremaine

Starring: Johnny Knoxville, Bam Margera, Weeman, Ryan Dunn

I didn't see the Jackass show on MTV or the first two movies of this series, but I figured I'd watch this one with my teenage son. He was much more familiar with the enterprise than I and let's face it: This franchise is aimed more for him than me. I also assumed correctly that watching the first two movies wasn't a prerequisite for watching this third installment.    It's not like I would get lost in the storyline.

For those unfamiliar, Jackass is a series of painful stunts and practical jokes designed to shock and disgust unsuspecting onlookers. The stunts range from jumping over a mudhole with a quad to getting tackled by All-Pro Minnesota Viking Jared Allen. The shock value comes from watching how much pain these guys endure. If you're wincing and expressing disgust while watching these stunts, then your response is the desired response. Some of the skits are funny, but after a while watching Jackass 3-D becomes tiresome. How many times can you watch someone nearly maimed?

This is a 3-D movie, as is nearly every other movie being filmed these days. Some of the scenes here were made with 3-D in mind, such as the dildo rocket and a port-o-potty being bungied up and down, but others don't really require 3-D technology.  But alas I was charged three extra dollars because the film was in 3-D.     I can't complain about this because I knew the price would be higher, but I paid anyway. Jackass 3-D made $50 million over the weekend, but the average price of this movie is $12.00 versus $9.00 for a regular 2-D movie, so it's easier to get inflated numbers that way.

But I digress. As I stated, there are some funny episodes in the film, such as a fight between midgets which evolves into something totally unexpected.   I was also amused by Johnny Knoxville masquerading as a perverted elderly man.   These are the practical jokes I mentioned earlier in which the onlookers are shocked by what they see.   Other stunts include cast member after cast member being whacked in the face with a giant hand. Seeing this once is OK, but watching it happen to three or four cast members gets wearying. And I also think I've seen enough guys crapping and vomiting for a while.

Jackass 3-D will no doubt entertain its desired audience. But the whole thing ran out of steam for me after a while. There is only so much of this I can watch without becoming saturated. I honestly wonder what causes these guys to put their bodies on the line for entertainment. The guys sure do laugh at each other as a donkey kicks one of them in the cajones, but is it really that funny when the scene is set up for the donkey to do that? I can't imagine what would make someone set themselves up to be knocked out by a football to the face, but I'm not here to be anyone's psychiatrist.

Apocalytpo (2006) * 1/2

Directed by: Mel Gibson

With the whole drunken diatribe aside, I find it difficult to figure out Mel Gibson's choices of material to direct. He has directed four films: The Man Without A Face (which I had only seen parts of), Braveheart (which won Gibson two Oscars and is a stirring action epic), The Passion Of The Christ (which is a high-budget snuff film), and now Apocalytpo, which seems to combine elements of Braveheart and The Passion Of The Christ.

Except for some obvious CGI inserts, such as a falling tree and one warrior tackling another, Apocalypto was pretty well made, but it's a rather unpleasant and depressing tale that winds up as basically a chase film with buckets of blood and gore, as if Gibson is trying to show the viewer various ways blood can gush from a head wound.

The plot of the film is fairly simple. A tribe of Mayans who live peacefully in a pre-Spanish settlement Central American forest are raided and captured by an aggressive tribe looking to take them to the eye of the Mayan empire as potential slaves or sacrifices to the gods. The film winds up centering mostly on Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood), a young man who protects his pregnant wife and son during the raid by hiding them in a well. The family is stranded in the well as Jaguar Paw and his other tribemates are taken hostage; hoping to survive while hoping Jaguar Paw will return to them in a big hurry.

Wounded and tired, the hostages go on a days-long journey to the Mayan capital (or what passed for a capital in those days). What happens here is rather gruesome, but is probably historically accurate. There are lots of noisy crowds, things for sale, and the big pyramid which is the center of the day's entertainment. The steps leading up to the top are covered in blood from severed heads and bodies that are tossed down them after the high priests made their sacrifices to the gods. What are the sacrifices? Well, on nearly three occasions, the high priest reaches into a man's chest and pulls out a beating heart, which he then burns while the now heartless (literally) sacrifice stares in terror at the whole ordeal.

I'm no doctor, but I would assume that once a heart is ripped from your body, you won't get much of a chance to be terrified of anything, since the shock and loss of blood would cause almost instant death. But since we're talking about a film here, why was it necessary to show two men having their hearts ripped out? Isn't once enough to get the point? I remember in Braveheart when William Wallace was eviscerated at the end, but this was implied and never seen. I guess Gibson got over his shyness about showing such things. That or he just didn't want to show it when it was happening to him.

After a couple of near-death episodes, Jaguar Paw escapes to the forests with his captors chasing him. That leaves me with two questions: 1. Why does it seem to take him a lot less time to get back home from the capital than it did to get to the capital from home? 2. What happened to the other captives since it appears every one of the remaining captors chased Jaguar Paw and left the captives behind?

The movie runs about 2 hours and 15 minutes and although it has a lot of action, there is little energy in the whole enterprise.  Jaguar Paw's plight didn't arouse much sympathy from me, since it took me nearly half of the movie to differentiate between the characters in the first place.  

The Dark Knight (2008) * * * 1/2

Directed by:  Christopher Nolan

Starring:  Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, Eric Roberts


When The Dark Knight first came out, I gave it a two-star review and wrote "it is a colossal disappointment." I also wrote that Heath Ledger was "fine as The Joker." Upon subsequent viewings, I realize I underestimated both the film and most definitely the sweep of Ledger's performance. Ledger, of course, won a posthumous Oscar for his role, and at the time I doubted how much he deserved to win, but his performance and his presence sets the tone for the movie and its theme.  He isn't just a villain out to make a few bucks or kill some good guys.  He is out to corrupt Gotham with carefully devised moral quandaries for his victims.

For instance, his plan at the end to arm two ferries with bombs and the detonators will be in the hands of the hostages. The game: Press the detonator and you will blow up the other ferry. What makes this more interesting is that one of the ferries contains prisoners and the other ordinary citizens. How this is resolved is something of a masterstroke. The Joker also wants to corrupt the incorruptible, as in Batman and Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), who is turned into Harvey Two Face through an explosion and again stays with the theme of the film, which is would you sacrifice your soul to fight evil? By the end, we know the answer for some of the characters, but others aren't so lucky.

There are some things about the film which still don't work, such as Bale's Dirty Harry voice as Batman. It's rather distracting. And I also think Michael Caine is underused somewhat here. His presence in a film is always welcome and I like to see more of him. Perhaps in the next one. It's not fair to compare Ledger's performance with past Jokers such as Jack Nicholson and Cesar Romero because The Joker is the same here in name only. Here he is much more evil, maligned, and not a typical villain with a loud cackle. Ledger is charmisatic and is able to carry the film and underline its theme with each scene he is in. He's even scarier than most villains because as he explains in the scene where he is in jail, "You have nothing to threaten me with."

So after a couple of years, I'm officially changing my mind on The Dark Knight. Why it didn't work for me the first time remains a mystery, but it works better now. I remember that I wrote that I didn't like the way Bruce Wayne and Batman were so down all the time. I said, "If you do good, it should make you feel good." But I suppose when Gotham considers you a vigilante and is ungrateful despite your services, maybe you'd be a bit dour also.

C.S.A. The Confederate States Of America (2004) * *

Directed by: Kevin Wilmott

What if the South won the Civil War? According to this mockumentary, slavery would still exist today, Canada would be our Cold War enemy, and we would have to subjected to documentaries like this one. Yes, the concept is intriguing, but the execution is all wrong.   It suffers from lack of imagination and chooses to play a lot of the material as parody, which is not the tone one should depict with this kind of material.   I think of the film Fatherland, which bases its story around the idea that Germany won World War II and controls Europe.   Fatherland is a film in which Germany's sins have political and economic consequences that lead the nation to doom nearly 20 years after it wins the war.

No such problem exists in C.S.A., in which the continuation of slavery apparently leads only to a Cold War with Canada, while the rest of the world doesn't really seem to care.   Remember when South Africa was forced by the world to end its policy of apartheid two decades ago?   Remember when Communism fell in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe because Communist rule simply couldn't cover up the internal decay going on within the countries themselves?    It seems that the C.S.A pretty much exists as an island unto itself, which overall isn't very compelling.   The filmmakers seem to believe that the audience will be so intrigued by the film's "what if" ideas that it won't notice that some of the material is inexplicable and not presented realistically.

According to the film, Abraham Lincoln flees to Canada in blackface after the war is lost and is captured.   He attempts to convince his captors that he is really a black man by acting in a way that would make Amos N' Andy appear realistic.   Lincoln is captured and imprisoned, later banished to Canada.   He lives until 1905, but before his death is caught on film discussing his regret over what happened to the former United States.   Never mind that talking pictures weren't invented until 1927, it's amazing how crisp and clear both the audio and the film are, despite the fact that most films made in 1905 are barely watchable due to the film quality, if they still exist at all.    This film of Lincoln is about as believable as a film showing Lincoln playing with the Internet.  C.S.A. also shows commercials pushing products and drugs which keep slaves in line.  Some of these products were actually real way back when and the makers of C.S.A. seem to put more thought into the commercials than they do the actual documentary.  In fact, some of the film's alternate view of history represents sheer laziness. It keeps some of the same historical events, such as Reconstruction and simply changes the sides around. President John F. Kennedy is also elected in 1960 and asassinated in 1963, the only change being that he ran as a Republican. World War II is also presented in a strange way. According to the film, Germany and the C.S.A. become friendly (due to their similar racial policies) and thus Germany remains neutral when the C.S.A. attacks Japan on December 7, 1941.

It is not made clear why Japan was attacked and it is also impossible for Germany not to declare war on a country that attacks its ally.  As mentioned before, much of this material is played for laughs, which is an odd choice.  Many of the blacks in the film are depicted as eye-bugging Uncle Toms or "stepinfetchits" who of course never had the chance to be educated due to the continuation of slavery, but this doesn't shed any new light on the subject.   In actuality, it is yet one more criticism of America's slavery & racial stereotypes. C.S.A. doesn't cover any new ground here.  The last fifteen minutes of the film are devoted to a slave that drops a bombshell about a fictional Presidential candidate who runs in the 2002 election.   It treats this section of the film as if we actually care about this, but by then C.S.A. has developed tunnel vision.   Oh, and one can't help but notice the parallels to Bill Clinton's sex scandal here.

What a missed opportunity!   C.S.A. would've been much better if it actually led somewhere and actually showed how the birth of the Confederacy impacted the world and how the world impacted it. There are events that happen, like the Cold War with Canada, an abolitionist movement, and a very racist football league, but all of these events don't really add up to the shaping and changing of this alternative nation.    The history of a nation that is formed and doesn't really evolve is pretty much underwhelming.

The Simpsons Movie (2007) * *

Directed by:  David Silverman


The Simpsons TV show has been around for nearly eighteen seasons, which is rare in the world of TV. Very few shows have had longer runs.   If you count their run on Fox's Tracey Ullman Show, The Simpsons have been around close to twenty years. The show's animation is hand-drawn and crude, but the sly, subversive, and sometimes gross-out humor is what viewers enjoy the most.   They exist in a timeless world of Springfield. Maggie is still a baby sucking on a pacifier after all of these years and Homer's father is still alive, despite being only slightly younger than God.

Truth be told, I think the show has outlived its sell-by date by nearly a decade.   There are only so many (sometimes) obscure pop culture allusions you can make without starting to become too clever for your own good.    If you don't believe me, check out a Dennis Miller stand-up routine.    These days, any given episode starts out with a couple of good jokes before sputtering toward the episode's conclusion.    The movie is a ninety-minute version of this, and quite frankly it began to drag early on.

I won't divulge too much of the plot.   The movie opens with an Itchy and Scratchy movie clip.   If you consider what these two have done to each other in the past seventeen years on the show, how much more over-the-top sadism can be mustered up?   Not much apparently.   Then, Homer interrupts the movie screening stating, "Why are we paying to watch something that we can see at home for free?" This, of course, is a wink to the paying audience of this movie and, soon after, I found myself agreeing with Homer.

The movie itself is actually very plot-driven, as if anyone cares about plots with The Simpsons. However, to summarize quickly, Homer adopts a pig about to be slaughtered and brings him home. There is no place to store the pig's excrement, so Homer builds a cheap metal silo to store the crap. Once filled, he dumps it into Springfield's already toxic (maybe even radioactive) lake.
This sets off a chain of events that ultimately leads to Springfield being encased in a dome by the EPA and U.S. President Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I won't go any further into plot details because it's not really why one would see a Simpsons movie. However, as the movie plodded on, I started to feel as if the movie was altogether unnecessary. Many of the more popular characters, like Mr. Burns, appear in what amount to cameos.   It's quite telling when a Tom Hanks cameo gets more lines than Mr. Burns or Moe get in the whole movie.   Did the movie expand on anything or present anything different than the show does every week?   No.

The movie had a couple of chuckles, but it ran out of comedic gas fairly early and stopped trying altogether at about the 45-minute mark.   Did the makers think that a few allusions here and there would keep things afloat? Probably.   But unlike a thirty-minute weekly show, you have a lot of screen time to fill and a few cute references aren't going to do the job.   You judge a movie like this based on whether it made you laugh fairly consistently, but I must say it did not.

Maybe this is the beginning of the end for The Simpsons. I can't imagine what more there is to say about the world of Springfield that hasn't already been said. The movie pretty much exemplifies why The Simpsons is becoming stale. You've heard 10,000 jokes about Homer's hair, weight, and stupidity if you've heard one. Perhaps I'm in the minority with my opinion. At the end of the film, there was a lot of clapping, but maybe because longtime Simpsons fans have waited too long for a movie to be disappointed in it.

10 Best Movies Of All Time (circa 2006)

10. Damage (1992)- Jeremy Irons and Juliette Binoche star in this tragic story of a well-to-do British government official (Irons) who has an affair with his future daughter-in-law (Binoche). It's a tale of obsession and its consequences that you can't look away from.

9. Titanic (1997)- I've always loved this movie and it works on every level; as a love story and as a visually stunning action epic. Painted in broad strokes with passion, it puts a large dose of humanity to a disaster that could've been avoided.

8. Tombstone (1993)- The ultimate good vs. evil story in which one side must totally obliterate the other to win. It is bloody, violent, and riveting. What happens to the bad guys in this one shouldn't happen to a bug on a windshield.

7. Goodfellas (1990)- Memorable mobster movie that transcends that genre to become a fascinating story of a gangster who spends decades in the mob only to wind up in the witness protection program, far away from the dangerous, yet alluring world of organized crime.

6. Field Of Dreams (1989)- The ending still causes me to tear up. It is a fantasy that is both otherworldly and touchingly human. "If you build it, he will come" is a promise and boy does the movie deliver that.

5. Indictment: The McMartin Trial (1994)- An HBO movie starring James Woods about a family that operated an LA preschool unjustly accused of running a child molestation ring. The McMartins' innocence is obvious, yet the city of Los Angeles continues to pursue the case mostly for fear of embarrassment and a public fear caused mostly by media hype. It is a film that challenges and angers, but it is a great entertainment all the way through.

4. Schindler's List (1993)- A stirring character study of an industrialist who saved a thousand Jews during World War II by employing them in his factory, a factory that produces nothing of any real value to the Nazis. Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson) is a con man who did more than most nations to save the lives of others during the Holocaust. The film is Steven Spielberg's complete masterwork, with an ending that packs an emotional wallop.

3. The Godfather (1972)- Whenever this movie is on, I watch it, no matter how or early or late into the movie it is. There are so many things going on in it that it takes several sittings to catch them all.

2. JFK (1991)- Did Lee Harvey Oswald kill Kennedy alone? Did he even partake in the assasination plot? Who did it and why? JFK is a film that powerfully examines a belief that what we were told happened on November 22, 1963 wasn't correct and more answers are out there. Is the conspiracy theory correct? We'll never know, but it's very convincing.

1. Ordinary People (1980)- There are so many people who say that Raging Bull should've won Best Picture the year this one did. But I completely disagree. Raging Bull was good, but one-dimensional. This film is a visceral and absolutely wringing work by director Robert Redford, about a suicidal teenager coming to terms with the horrible truths that may destroy him or set him free. Timothy Hutton's performance as the teenager won him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar and may very well be the best screen acting performance I've ever seen.

Here's a bonus from almost 20 years ago:

I came across some notebook recently that was a journal I had to keep for my senior year English class. One entry involved my 10 favorite films of all time, circa the summer of 1988. Here they were. Laugh if you must:

10. Revenge Of The Pink Panther
9. Dragnet
8. Tootsie
7. Rocky III
6. Moonstruck
5. Raiders Of The Lost Ark
4. Return Of The Jedi
3. Amadeus
2. The Sure Thing
1. The Graduate

The 11 Most Overrated Movies Of All Time (Originally posted 2006)

Before I get into this, the word "overrated" is based on each person's taste. And in these cases, I'm not necessarily saying that these are awful movies. Some are fairly decent, but in comparison to how great others seem to think they are; to me they just don't hold water.

11. The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King (2003)- I could put the whole series on this list, but this is the one that won 11 freakin' Oscars. It won for every category it was nominated for. Visually, it is tremendous, but just like the other two, it runs very long and the story is rather thin for the time it takes to tell it.

10. Raging Bull (1980)- It's a pretty good movie, but the way critics and others bow to it is rather puzzling. The performances are top-notch, with DeNiro winning a Best Actor Oscar, but the film itself seems to repeat the same scenario again and again. Vickie LaMotta does something innocent, jealous Jake mistakes it as something sexual and pounds the guy involved senseless. After a while, it becomes less compelling to watch.

9. Taxi Driver (1976)- Again, a decent movie, but it's nowhere near as incredible as I've heard. It is good in spots while in other spots it's slow and meandering. The performances are very good, but Martin Scorcese sometimes has trouble reining in his material. (See also Gangs Of New York)

8. Rain Man (1988)- It's essentially a road/buddy movie, this time involving an autistic Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise. Hoffman's performance is unique and probably authentic, but the character has limitations. Overall, I never found the film to be stirring or anything I cared about all that much.

7. A Night At The Opera (1935)- Groucho's oneliners and putdowns are pretty funny, but then the movie wanders off into endless musical interludes and singing. Groucho is funny. Chico, Harpo, and the others drag the movie down. Overall, the Marx Brothers themselves are the epitome of "overrated".

6. Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)- Here's a movie that Bush haters love simply because the movie hates GW. Considering the wealth of material that Michael Moore had to work with, the film is a missed opportunity. Lots of stuff is thrown at the wall in the hope that something sticks, but it wastes too much time attacking Bush for the wrong reasons.

5. Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb (1964) A satire that quickly grows tiresome. It makes the mistake of having its characters act overtly ridiculous and turns everything into slapstick. Having Sterling Hayden's character named Jack D. Ripper is something out of a Marx Brothers movie, which isn't exactly comforting.

4. Shakespeare In Love (1998)- Won 7 Oscars including Best Picture and a Best Actress win for Gywneth Paltrow. You have to be kidding. This is a movie that doesn't know whether it wants to be a farce, tragedy, drama, or whatever. The juggling of tones leads to whiplash for the viewer. This movie beat out Life Is Beautiful and Saving Private Ryan for 1998's Best Picture. Come on now.

3. The Usual Suspects (1995)- This movie has been described as "a long ride for a short day at the beach." The movie hangs everything on its surprise ending, which really wasn't much of a surprise and everything leading up to it wasn't exactly thrilling to begin with. The ending doesn't solve much anyway. Kevin Spacey is Keyser Soze. So?

2. Reservoir Dogs (1992)- A crime drama that after a while simply becomes a talkathon. It assembles a cast of good actors and lets them drone on in endless conversations. Tim Roth's character spends the whole movie lying on the floor gushing blood from a gunshot wound. Yet, he is lucid and able to carry out a whole dialogue with others and even shoot someone with deadly precision. Wouldn't he eventually go into shock from that much blood loss? Or die, quickly? John Lennon died within 15 minutes of being shot due to blood loss. Roth must laugh at him. He probably could laugh, even if half of his blood is spilled out on the floor.

1. Crash (2005)- I will eventually get over the fact that this piece of shit movie won Best Picture. It just missed being on my top 10 Worst List and the fact that people don't see this movie as a two hour episode of The Real World is amazing to me. Crash is proof that movies involving numerous characters and intertwining stores all dovetailing at the end have seen better days. In the beginning, Don Cheadle's character talks about the human need for touch. In his mind, people in LA are having car accidents because they need to touch someone else so much that they crash into each other to get it. If anyone you knew spoke those words, you would send the guys in white with the nets after him.

Date Night (2010) * * *

Directed by: Shawn Levy

Starring: Steve Carell, Tina Fey, Mark Wahlberg, Ray Liotta

Phil and Claire Foster are not unlike any other suburban married couple with kids who wake them up with kneedrops at 5:00 am. They spend so much time on their kids, jobs, and house that they rarely have time for each other. They are so tired at the end of their day that they are too tired to make love and even too tired to fight over not having it. "I could rally" says Claire, in a poor attempt to get herself in the mood. They look at their friends who are splitting up because they only have sex twice a week, something the Fosters would consider a pipe dream.

So when they go on a "date night" in Manhattan and attempt to get a table at a trendy restaurant named Claw (in which the host answers the phone, 'Claw, you're welcome.'), the adventure that follows is very much a break from the mundane.  Without giving away plot points, the Fosters can't get a table as a walk-in, so they pose as a couple who made a reservation to get in.   Turns out, the couple they are pretending to be is sought after by thugs and a case of mistaken identity turns into one dangerous situation after another.

But since this is an action comedy, you know things will turn out okay for the Fosters. Date Night is elevated by the sheer likability of Carell and Fey.   They're nice, square people caught in an unlikely series of events, so they're easy to root for.   But even with all of the craziness that surrounds them, they remain grounded and believable.   Carell and Fey don't turn into James Bond types who can instinctively adapt to any situation.   When they steal a sports car, they hardly know how to operate it. And I laughed at their attempts to get away from the cops in a motorboat.

I was entertained and amused by Date Night.   It won't be one of the 10 Best Picture nominees this year and anyone associated with it can sleep in the morning the Oscar nominations are announced, but it works well for what it is.    Its goals aren't any loftier, but that is ok. 

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010) * * * 1/2

Directed by: Oliver Stone

Starring: Michael Douglas, Shia Lebeouf, Carrie Mulligan, Josh Brolin, Frank Langella

Oliver Stone's 1987 Wall Street was intended as a cautionary tale about the self-defeating effects of greed. The opposite effect happened. Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas in his Oscar-winning role) became a cult figure and a reason why many young men and women went to work on Wall Street. The superficial lust for money and possessions became a lure.  Any cautions Stone and Douglas intended were thrown to the winds.    23 years later comes Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps in which Gordon Gekko is a pariah in the very same economic world guys like him helped create . It's ironic how Gekko becomes the voice of reason against an impending economic disaster based on speculation and mountains of bad debt.

As the film opens, Gekko is released from prison after an eight-year prison sentence for various illegal activities in pursuit of the dollar.  He is far from the slick charmer from the late 80's.   He is gray-haired, scruffy, and alone.   No one is there to greet him, certainly not his estranged daughter Winnie (Mulligan) who blames him for her brother's death and the destruction of her family.  We soon meet Winnie, who runs a blog website and lives with Wall Street broker Jacob Moore (Lebeouf).   They are a happy couple until the brokerage firm he works for is sold to Wall Street shark Bretton James (Brolin) and the firm's founder (and Jacob's mentor) commits suicide.

It is at this point that a vengeful Moore seeks out Gekko, who is now a best-selling author condemning today's market practices.  Gekko, wishing to reconcile with his daughter, agrees to help Moore bring down James for reasons of his own, which are made clear later on.   It is at this point that Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps becomes a more human drama.  The participants, with the exception of Brolin's James, are three-dimensional, while Brolin plays James as the type of charmless, cold rat perhaps Stone intended Gekko to be in the first movie.

I won't reveal any more plot points because a.) it would be mean and b.) doing so would take another 25 paragraphs. But I will discuss the fact that this is an Oliver Stone film in which smaller human truths are more pronounced than larger, broader points about the economy.   The original Wall Street comprised its drama with broad strokes while here the quieter, melodramatic aspects are more on display. It is a very un-Stone-like approach, but I'll be damned if it didn't work.

Douglas' Gekko here is smart, ruthless in his own way, but wise and more fallible.   While in jail, he lost everything including his family, which eats at him more than you would think.   In the original Wall Street, Gekko's family was an afterthought.  But after losing so much time, what's left of his family is now in the forefront of his mind, but yet...   I also liked Lebeouf here.    If you think he is simply a latter-day Bud Fox, then you would be incorrect.    Lebeouf is especially strong in his unwillingness to be corrupted.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps works as a commentary on the current economic crisis and works even better on the human level.   If Stone had simply made another Wall Street circa 20 years later, then what would've been the point?   Moore comments, "The definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing over and over, expecting different results." I'm glad Stone and company didn't follow that definition.