Movie Monday: Trumbo, Spotlight and The Big Short

There seemed to be a large period of time for films that sounded appealing and worth going to the theater to see until recently. The film industry must think that people on the whole don't go see content driven movies during the Summer and early Autumn. During those months in 2015 we were hammered with plenty of animated films, romantic comedies, horror flicks and super hero movies, ugh! Remakes and ongoing stories from comic books have also been super popular.

Luckily "award season" is approaching and thus Hollywoodland is showing some of their gems under limited release in smaller theaters. Besides getting the film out in time for the awards the likely theory is that they are hoping for some word of mouth buzz before officially opening.

I've lumped Trumbo, Spotlight and The Big Short into one short review since these three films share a similar backbone. Each of these stories is based on actual events where we witness the ignorance of the masses and how power hungry, morally corrupt and greedy groups attempt to control their special interests. In one way or another what is depicted is fairly depressing content told in a provocative story, especially in The Big Short. Each film contains fabulous performances like Bryan Cranston playing the very witty and morally driven Dalton Trumbo, Mark Ruffalo as Boston Globe journalist Michael Rezendes and Christian Bale as the barefooted, awkward visionary Michael Burry.

Although I adored and sympathized the most with Bryan Cranston as Dalton Trumbo I was most affected by Mark Ruffalo in Spotlight. There was also an element of familiarity for me in this film since I use to illustrate for the Boston Globe and other publications back when journalism had balls and wasn't controlled by huge multi-national corporations.

Then there is The Big Short with a plethora of performances worth mentioning but instead lets discuss how absolutely disgusting it is that Wall Street is one horrific Godzilla of a monster is still playing puppeteer to our government leaders along with the pharmaceutical, food and other mega cartel sectors that kill the free market.

The issues in all three of these films disturb me to no end, but what I find even more troubling is that these type of stories are shared over and over with no collective awakening or shift in consciousness. It's pretty obvious that Michael Burry is indeed smarter and wiser than Alan Greenspan.