BEFORE: Well, we were SUPPOSED to have our bathroom construction finished yesterday, only our builder had some kind of conflict and couldn't come on Saturday, so he swears he's going to finish up the details - the fan, the painting, the light switches - tomorrow. Three weeks is an incredibly fast turn-around time for tearing out a bathroom and replacing everything, the walls, the tile, the fixtures so we should be satisfied no matter what, but still, we were hoping to use the new upstairs bathroom this weekend, and then we had to wait two more days. We've got all our bathroom accessories and toiletries spread out over the upstairs office and the dining room, but everything should go back to normal if they can finish tomorrow and we can put everything back into the new bathroom.
Concerning the pandemic, I've heard it said that the whole thing could be over in three or four weeks, too, if only EVERYONE in the states with the most case would comply with wearing face masks and social distancing rules, and clearly they're just not. Look, I know it's summer and this is the time for going to the beach, or amusement parks, or just hanging out in a bar, and you can still do all that, just four weeks from now. Now is not the time to be selfish and think only of yourself and how much you want to have fun, it's the time to be considerate to your fellow Americans and continue to stay home if your state's statistics are not doing well. Look at me, I'm still housebound, and New York City's numbers are doing fine (because after remodeling the bathroom, who can afford to go out? Plus, with travel restrictions still in place, there's no place safe to go, except maybe Atlantic City.) Maybe once the construction is over we can hit a few more restaurants on Long Island, maybe get some BBQ or some soup dumplings. But also, it's too HOT to go anywhere. If you live in Florida or Texas, isn't it even hotter than NYC? I would relish the chance to stay home and not go outside during a super-hot Florida summer? Why not just look at this as an opportunity, to stay home and beat the heat?
OK, you can still go out if you want, but wear a damn mask? Why is this so hard, it's not a civil rights issue, it's a safety issue - YOUR OWN safety, and if you're too dumb to realize that, then do it for the safety of your friends and family, people who could catch the virus FROM YOU. Do you want to live in a world where your inactions spread the virus and caused the death of a beloved family member? I just don't understand the thinking here.
Chris Parnell carries over from "Hot Rod".
THE PLOT: A widow investigates an insurance fraud, chasing leads to a pair of Panama City law partners exploiting the world's financial system.
AFTER: Well, Chris Parnell was only in this film for a few minutes, it was just a cameo, which of course I had no way of knowing - but cameos count, too, for my purposes any appearance is an appearance, even if it's not credited or listed in the IMDB (this cameo is both, it turns out, but I've relied on plenty that are not). Parnell and Will Forte play two "Gringos" in a Latin American country who stumble upon a bar's backroom while looking for the bathroom, and they see something they shouldn't, apparently. But I'm not even sure how this scene tied in with the rest of the film, which is rather disjointed throughout. I can't even say it's "all over the place", even though it is, but that statement sort of implies that a plot is firing in too many directions at once, or jumping around without making a point, and I think even saying that would be giving this film too much credit. This one does jump around, but in an incoherent way, or perhaps it's in a way that was well-intentioned to bring about some understanding about the financial mess that our country and the world is in, only it could never quite get its act together to fully explain anything concrete about what's wrong, or what needs to be done about it.
Honestly, I was expecting a more tangible crime-based film, something like "The Kitchen", where people run rackets and rough people up and collect protection money - or based on the title, maybe a money-laundering scheme connected to drug dealers or extortioners. But the crimes here are much less obvious, basically centering around companies that set up offshore shell companies for any number of illegal activities, only the company that's the main focus here claims to not be aware of any criminal activity related to their companies, and apparently setting up offshore accounts and shell companies remains legal in certain companies, and tonight we're only concerned with the EFFECTS that these practices have on the average person, from time to time. Umm, I think?
The main point seems to be that everybody, financially speaking, is screwed - with some notable exceptions, those being for the people who are in power and MAKE the rules which are screwing everybody else. Stylistically, this film wanted so badly to be like "The Big Short", where a few people in power figured out what was going on and how to game the system, and certain points were made by talking to the audience and having anecdotes and diagrams to explain the technical bits. That's all here, too, but it doesn't really help - and there's a fair amount of "The Darwin Awards" mixed in, which was a film about the unusual and stupid ways some people die, which worked fine as a joke web-site but couldn't possibly function as a narrative film, only that didn't keep somebody from trying. So plenty of people here die (some literally and some just financially) because they were stupid in some way, or didn't take the proper steps to protect themselves or their money, only how were they to know what would be coming in their future?
I'm probably making a mess out of trying to explain this film, but that's only because I couldn't fully understand it. Well, I have said many times that this is the year of weird movies, I think this one certainly qualifies. I couldn't quite figure out how all the different segments were related to each other, or if they were even related at all - so picture "The Big Short" mixed with "The Darwin Awards" mixed with "Movie 43" and you may get some idea, even though that sounds like the worst "elevator pitch" of all time.
Apart from the segment I mentioned above that didn't seem to connect AT ALL to the rest of the film, there was another segment with a college girl finding out just before her graduation party that her rich African father is having an affair with her roommate - and to keep her quiet and not tell her mother, her father offers her ownership of one of her companies as a graduation present, and on paper, that company is worth millions. But through some miscommunications her mother finds out about the affair anyway, and so when the college girl goes to cash in her bearer shares of the company, she finds out that it's a shell company, and not worth nearly as much as she was told. Or the father somehow took the money away or devalued the company, it's not very clear what happened, only that he tried to buy his daughter's silence, and screwed her over in the process.
The link between the stories is very flimsy, in my opinion - the same Panama-based corporation that set up all the offshore shell companies is run by two men, one German and one Panamanian, who serve as narrators of the film, giving us economic lessons on things like credit, but never really admitting how shady their business practices are, we have to sort of figure that out from seeing all the bad effects that happen to other people. Ellen Martin gets the worst of it, as she appears in several segments, one where she doesn't get as big a settlement as she was promised after a tragic accident that happens to a family member, and another where she doesn't get the retirement condo that she wants in Las Vegas because someone else made a better offer and paid in cash. I sort of see how the first story connects to the "shell companies are evil" message, but I'm not sure I see the connection in the second one, which is rather frustrating.
The tide does turn after an anonymous hacker releases all the secrets from the corporation to the world, and this is based on a real incident, the Panama Papers scandal, which revealed the inner workings of a company called Mossack Fonseca in April 2016. Financial information for over 214,000 offshore companies was leaked to the press, and since many of these shell companies were used for fraud, tax evasion and avoiding international treaties and laws, many high ranking political officials around the world, plus celebrities and business moguls suddenly found themselves in hot water. Basically upper crust folks around the world were using these tricks to keep more of their money, and thanks to a hacker, everybody now knows about it - there was a FIFA scandal that resulted, too, if I recall correctly.
The good news is that some countries have taken steps since then to recover back taxes owed, plus the resulting fines. This I suppose was also good news for tax attorneys, who suddenly had a wealth of celebrity clients to defend, or had to come up with other ways to instruct their clients to save on taxes, and one way is to set up charitable foundations to offset taxes, instead of hiding their money in offshore accounts. But still, the movie seems to not present a clear message at the end about what needs to be done - Meryl Streep, the actress who played Ellen Martin, removes her wig and make-up and talks directly to the audience about the need for campaign finance reform. What, WHAT? I thought the problem was shell companies and international banking, not finance reform, doesn't this feel a bit like changing horses in mid-stream?
I suppose that if we had campaign finance reform, that would change the fact that lobbyists, such as the banking industry, can contribute massive sums of money to Presidential and Senate candidates, which therefore controls the way that those officials govern and legislate once they're elected. We would theoretically need an impartial President and legislature going forward in order to change the laws on taxes and banking, but this seems like a bit of a stretch, plus what are the chances of this happening? In order to change the world, a candidate has to get elected, but it's unlikely that anyone's going to win an election without getting enough money to do so, and that apparently makes that candidate beholden to those industries that contributed to his or her campaign.
My thoughts on campaign finance reform are the same as my thoughts on election reforms, and for that matter, the vagaries of the electoral college. An election goes poorly or there are signs of malfeasance or shenanigans (cough) 2000... (cough) 2016... and then everybody starts screaming "Something's got to be done, we need to change the system! We need to improve the voting system! We need to get off paper ballots!" and now it's "We need mail-in paper ballots!" but nothing ever gets done. And then right after the election, people say, "Well, we've got four years to fix things before the next election..." and they do NOTHING for three years, and then when the next election is on the horizon, the shouting starts again, but all of a sudden it's too close to the election, we can't possibly fix the system with only 12 months to go, we've got primaries coming up, after all. It's kind of like the old joke about the leaking roof - whenever it rains, you realize the need to fix the roof, but then when the rain stops, there doesn't seem to be a need to fix the roof, so the roof never gets fixed.
If everyone agrees we need some kind of election reform, or campaign finance reform, then why don't we start tomorrow and work on that around the clock, until it gets fixed? Just wondering. It couldn't possibly be that nobody's really serious about making the system better, could it? Why are we still hearing about gerrymandering, voter suppression, votes being lost in some districts, voting machines not working, and now poll-workers who are afraid to work because of the pandemic? Just FIX IT already.
As for "The Laundromat", I'm not sure that can be fixed, either. It's darn near incoherent and I felt like it circled around some valuable points but never really landed on potential solutions. Why point out these problems without a clear road to recovery, just to make us all feel helpless and terrible? Plus, what happened to the guy who fainted in the airport after flying in from Nevis? You can't just have a character drop like that and not follow up, that was very sloppy.
Also starring Meryl Streep (last seen in "Little Women"), Gary Oldman (last seen in "Darkest Hour"), Antonio Banderas (last seen in "The 33"), Sharon Stone (last seen in "The Disaster Artist"), David Schwimmer (last seen in "Six Days Seven Nights"), Matthias Schoenaerts (last seen in "Our Souls at Night"), Jeffrey Wright (last seen in "Game Night"), Will Forte (last seen in "Good Boys"), James Cromwell (last seen in "Marshall"), Melissa Rauch (last seen in "Are You Here"), Larry Wilmore (last seen in "I Love You, Man"), Robert Patrick (last seen in "Kill the Messenger"), Rosalind Chao (last seen in "Just Like Heaven"), Jesse Wang, Nikki Amuka-Bird (last seen in "The Omen"), Nonso Anozie (last seen in "Atonement"), Jessica Allain (last seen in "Eddie the Eagle"), Amy Pemberton, Cristela Alonzo (last heard in "The Angry Birds Movie"), Jay Paulson, Charles Halford (last seen in "Darling Companion"), Shoshana Bush, Norbert Weisser, Marsha Stephanie Blake, Veronica Osorio (last seen in "Hail, Caesar!"), Jane Morris (last seen in "Frankie and Johnny"), Jeff Michalski (ditto), Juliet Donenfeld, Brock Brenner, Myron Parker Wright, Miriam A. Hyman, Brenda Zamora, Frank Gallegos, Miracle Washington, Kunjue Li, Ming Lo, with archive footage of Lester Holt (last seen in "Bombshell"), Barack Obama (last seen in "The Report").
RATING: 4 out of 10 IRS special agents
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