THE BIBI FILES*****

Alexis Bloom (CATCHING FIRE: THE STORY OF ANITA PALLENBERG) returns to our screens with a meticulously constructed and excoriating documentary about Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu.  The documentary accuses him and his wife of gross and long-standing corruption, grifting jewellery and other perks from donors eager for favours.  It further argues that once these accusations became a criminal investigation, and Bibi was seen as beyond the pale by the centre right parties in the country, that he had an incentive to go further and further to the right to keep his hands on power.  She argues that his ultra-right nationalism is not necessarily authentic but a cheap, insincere means to an end. Moreover, leaked interrogation tapes show that Bibi himself had a hand in keeping Hamas in power because he didn't want the two Palestinian territories - one under Hamas and one under Fateh - to link up.  The documentary argues that this strategy of enabling Hamas AND stoking up of religious hatred had a direct hand in the appalling October 7th terrorist attacks. And that once those attacks occurred, Bibi had a convenient reason to further cling to power.

The documentary excels in intercutting the interrogation tapes of Bibi and his wife.  Bibi is all charm and charisma and blustering persuasion. By contrast his wife is far more strident and entitled and off-putting.  Neither seems to have any shame or guilt.  They seem to think leading Israel is their right.  We also get the benefit of insight from a number of talking heads from the Israeli establishment, including most damningly the former head of the Israeli intelligence service, Shin Bet.  All are united in thinking Bibi a leader who is both criminal in the literal sense, but also the moral sense, of dragging Israel into an extreme right position that cannot result in a peaceful and thriving Israeli state. 

THE BIBI FILES has a running time of 115 minutes. It played Toronto 2024 and was released in the USA and UK last December.

DUMB MONEY*

There is a really good movie to be made about the Gamestop sage, but DUMB MONEY is not it. Directed by Craig Gillespie (I, TONYA) and written by Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo, the movie aspires to be THE BIG SHORT but has none of its wit, its deep understanding of financial markets, or its sheer dynamism. I didn't laugh once. I didn't learn anything. And more than that I got increasingly angry at the film's inability to tackle the real issues at stake, or to actually get the point. In fact, I think DUMB MONEY may be the most wrong-headed, dumb film I have watched in a long while.

Now, full disclosure, this blog used to be called Movie Reviews For Greedy Capitalist Bastards. And maybe I know more than the average movie goer about how financial markets work. But that isn't the point. Films like MARGIN CALL and THE BIG SHORT did great work in taking complex financial issues and interrogating them clearly and even-handedly.  But instead of having the balls to be nuanced, what Gillespie gives us is a fake David vs Goliath story, with pantomime villains and a very bizarre take on what a hero is. I think the result is morally questionable, and certainly not entertaining.

So let's go back to the beginning.  Keith Gill (Paul Dano) starts off as a little known retail investor in the US stock market.  He decides that Gamestop is undervalued, and explains why in a little-watched youtube channel. At the start I think he was in earnest. He believed he had found Deep Fucking Value in a retailer that was oversold on fears of e-commerce. I have no issue with him at this point. Then he started gaining traction on a Reddit channel called Wall Street Bets and I think it went to his head.  He realised that not only was he pumping up the value of his recommended stock, but that he could actually get it up to a level where he could punish the big hedge funds that were betting against the stock - the kind of folks that had refused to hire him all those years.

What the film should have asked is at what point our supposed hero of the little man realised the stock price had gone beyond Deep Fucking Value to Fair Value (on his reckoning) and then to Over Valued.  Even allowing for some kids still liking to buy actual hard copy games, did he really believe a value of >$100 was fair? And if he did not, then continuing to pump up the stock was just as nefarious as the institutional investors he and his dumb money disciples said they were fighting against. If we had seen any of this moral questioning, Paul Dano might have actually had something to do worthy of his talent. 

But this film isn't actually interested in asking the hard questions about Gill.  And it sure isn't interested in asking the hard questions about the toxic online culture he was part of.  There are a couple of throwaway lines that dismiss the misogyny, racism and generally 4Chan nastiness as a "few bad apples". Riiiiight. That toxicity and populist fact-opposed bullshit is exactly why a bunch of normal ordinary people lost their savings in this meme-stock insanity. Shouldn't the film have asked if Gill had any remorse?

No, the bad guys here are the evil hedge funds and the tech guys who invented Robinhood, a commission-free trading platform. Never mind that the Hedgie (Seth Rogen) made a conviction bet just like Gill, but did not pump the stock artificially - he just sat back for years waiting for e-commerce and bad management to do its work. I do indeed blame the Robinhood folk for switching off trades when they couldn't post margin.  But the film actually let's them off rather lightly, over-excited about getting Sebastian Stan to do a Sean Parker in THE SOCIAL NETWORK-lite cameo.  The film also seems to imply in its end credits that somehow Nick Griffin at Citadel (Nick Offerman - excellently understated) got away with nefarious influence over Robinhood. Maybe if charges weren't posted it's because there wasn't a case? 

I just can't take a film seriously that doesn't have its basic thesis straight. These meme stock traders were not heroes who started a revolution, as the end credits argue.  They were literally dumb money that didn't invest but gambled, refused to close out their positions out of greed, and lost their shirts.  To argue that they are somehow the righteous Davids, inherently morally better than the evil Goliaths, is nonsense. 

DUMB MONEY is rated R and has a running time of 105 minutes. It played Toronto 2023 and is now on global release.

CATCHING FIRE: THE STORY OF ANITA PALLENBERG***** - BFI London Film Festival 2023 - Preview

The more docs I watch about the supposedly glamorous sex drugs and rock'n'roll 60s and 70s the more dark and toxic I realise it actually was. CATCHING FIRE: THE STORY OF ANITA PALLENBERG does nothing to over-turn that opinion, but impresses with its crisp well-organised construction, its access to key players, and its superb use of Pallenberg's unpublished memoirs and previously unseen home video footage. All of these give the film an intimacy and understanding of what it must have been like to be at the centre of the Rolling Stones whirlwind.

Directors Svetlana Zill and Alexis Bloom try hard to make the case that Italian-born German model and actress Anita Pallenerg was worthy of notice in her own right. They speak to her charisma, her intelligence, her style, and the fact that she might have been a great actress.  Kate Moss speaks of her as the original Boho Rock Chick.  I was not convinced.  Sure, with her European upbringing and language skills, Anita was streets ahead of the Rolling Stones in style and confidence, and contributed to THEIR success, but what was actually hers? Do we really get a feel for her acting talent from a cameo in BARBARELLA or her role in PERFORMANCE? If nothing else those roles show how exploitative that era was. Roger Vadim notoriously abused his wife Jane Fonda in their relationship and the latter film was a vehicle for Mick Jagger who Anita inevitably slept with. And in the most telling moment of all, the radical revolutionary Stones were actually good old fashioned patriarchal misogynists - or at least Keith Richards was - making Anita give up her acting when they got together. So, from my perspective, while the film wants us to think of Anita as this strong, smart, inspirational woman, she actually comes across as yet another victim of men who wanted her, and her addictions.

The film opens with a young Anita falling into the orbit of the neo-famous Stones. She starts dating Brian Jones, but his addiction spins out of control and she ends up as physically abused carer, falling into addiction herself to cope. Did we know he was physically abusive before this doc? Listening to Scarlett Johansson's emotionally affecting reading of Anita's unpublished memoirs gives us a hitherto unknown insight into how horrific that time was for Anita. It broke my heart. We now know that she didn't so much jump from Brian to Keith Richards out of love, or lust, but as a means of self-protection.

And so we come to the period when the Stones were on the run, threatened with prosecution for drug use. They start recording Exile on Main Street in a French mansion that attracts free-loaders and junkies. Keith and Anita are using heavily despite the fact that they now have a young son, Marlon.  By the time they get to Switzerland, they also have a daughter, Angela, and in the words of a neighbour, interviewed here, Marlon though a toddler, is basically the man of the house.  At this level of neglect, it becomes abuse, and it speaks volumes to the character of Marlon and Angela that they speak of their mother with compassion and understanding.  It's also telling they refer to her as "Anita" rather than "mum".

The most heartbreaking moment of the film is when Keith and Anita's third child, Tara, dies of what we would now understand to be SIDS. She questions if she could have done more if sober. He goes on stage that night, weirdly numb, but in his explanation to stop him shooting himself. They seem to love their kids, but they simply are too high to be parents. 

Eventually they split, she gets sober, and has a second life away from the shadow of the Stones, taking a degree, modelling, acting again. She seems happy. In a sense it becomes a story of survival and reinvention - maybe discovering who she really was all along.  But one really thinks about those wasted years of addiction and oppression, of not working as an actor because Keith didn't let her, of basically running a flophouse for junkies in France.  You can only describe it as tragic. 

CATCHING FIRE: THE STORY OF ANITA PALLENBERG has a running time of 110 minutes. It played Cannes 2023 and will play the BFI London Film Festival. 

IMPERIUM

IMPERIUM is a film that chronicles the true story of a young idealistic FBI agent who went undercover in a white supremacist movement to try to uncover Unabomber type plots to terrorise America.  The agent is played by Daniel Radcliffe, his handler by Toni Colette, and the movie was written and directed by first-time feature director Daniel Ragussis. Unfortunately, the movie fails on almost every count.  The script is under-written and the direction creates no tension whatsoever.  Radcliffe is made to look over-geeky to the point of parody as the desk-bound agent, and is unconvincing as an Iraqi war veteran turned racist thug.  The alacrity with which he's accepted by the terrorists is just too easy and the ease with which he bats away their suspicions sucks the tension out of the movie. As the movie drips along toward its flaccid final set piece the only emotion I felt was thanks that it was all over. Ultimately, it's laudable that Radcliffe is willing to handle such politically incendiary material, but given the times in which we live, this feels like a missed opportunity to really mine the motives of people to turn to such a cause, and to explore what is really going on in these movements.  

IMPERIUM has a running time of 109 minutes and is rated R.  The movie was released in the USA, France, the Philippines and Turkey earlier this year. It is currently on release in the UK in cinemas and on streaming services.  It opens in Singapore next week.