TNL Movie Club - Double Feature: Wall Street and Boiler Room
In light of recent finaincial crisis's around the world. Typically, Hollywood and film makers usually start making films to highlight such tragedies. Well, we have two movies already made. And I proudly introduce these to you. I am well aware you all watched these when they came out, but the funny thing happens to well made movies. They either stay the way you remember them ... Ghost Busters OR they get better.
Wall Street:
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Gordon Gekko (Micheal Douglas) is a Multi-Billion dollar man. He buys up and tears down any company he takes over. Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) idolizes the man and wishes to be him in every way. He finally gets to met Gekko at his office and the movie takes off from there. Leading to one of the greatest lines in recent movie history ...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gordon Gekko
Greed for the lack of a better word ... is good.
Carl Fox (Martin Sheen) is the father of Bud and he epitomizes the hard working American. And he belives hard work and a little axle grease is the way to the American Dream. Darien Taylor (Darryl Hannah) is a lady that Bud chased just as hard as Gekko and he gets her in his arms as well. Sir Larry Wildman (Terance Stamp) is the antithesis of Gekko. He builds when he buys. Gekko tears down and liquidates the whole lot. And finally Bud uses his old friend Roger Barnes (James Spader); who works as a Corporate lawyer, to get some inside trading.
But everything comes apart when Bud wants to buy up Blue Star Airlines. His dad's airline company. He wants to reinvigorate it with new destinations and update the corporate infastructure. He proposes this to Gekko and he unenthusiatically takes it.
Great movie, great music highlighting the late '80's, and the acting is suberb.
side note: Wall Street 2 is in pre-production with Douglas rumored to reprise his role as Gekko.
The unofficial sequel to Wall Street. They mention and highlight the Greed speech in the movie and in many ways catches the essence of Wall Street as well.
The film takes a look at the world of "boiler room" (seedy, dishonorable) brokerage firms. The film centers around college dropout Seth Davis (Ribisi), a budding underground casino owner in Queens whose life turns upside down when offered employment at J.T. Marlin, a less-than-reputable brokerage firm. Davis' opposition to his disapproving federal judge father drives the plot as Davis goes deeper into the operation at J.T. Marlin than he'd like, learning how the firm scams its clients. The company is a chop shop brokerage firm that runs a "pump and dump", using its brokers to create artificial demand in the stock of defunct companies by cold calling investors and selling them shares at prices set by the brokerage firm, which include a large commission to the brokers (up to three dollars a share for a penny stock). When the firm is done pumping the stock, the investors then have no one to sell their shares to in the market, and the price of the stock plummets. As Seth learns more about the firm, he realizes he needs to get out. When the FBI confronts him, he agrees to help them bring down the firm. Although he feels bad about the many affluent investors (whales) that he lied to and scammed, he only tries to help one client who could not afford to be scammed in the first place.
I loved this movie as well and I really need to see this one again. It was a great movie and Ribisi in this movie acted as well as he's ever done. And Vin Diesel had one of his best performances in this film.
24 Oct 2008, 02:07 PM
Rumpy
I have yet to see Boiler Room, good picks.
26 Oct 2008, 02:12 PM
animegirl
I have seen Boiler Room and it's excellent. I haven't seen Wallstreet though and that's considered a classic. Off to Netflix!
26 Oct 2008, 03:23 PM
Razor Ramon
Netflix doesn't have it.
27 Oct 2008, 08:52 PM
Brand X
Both are available on Netflix. Both are awesome movies too. Our AP Econ teacher in high school even showed us Wall Street, not because it related to the class at all, but because it was such and awesome movie and had money in it.
Its two words btw. Seems like Netflix's search engine was like TNL's old search engine 2006.
28 Oct 2008, 12:49 AM
Razor Ramon
I've had it in my queue for months, they don't have the normal DVD. I don't give a fuck about BR since I don't have a player.
08 Nov 2008, 01:44 AM
Brand X
FYI, Boiler Room is now up on Netflix "Watch Instantly".
30 Nov 2008, 03:28 PM
Rumpy
Forgot to mention I watched Boiler Room! Good movie through and through. Really like the cast and I think it was a good choice to ditch that alternate ending, don't think it felt right for the movie.
