Review of 'Moonlight'

Not sure why this was Best Picture - a film about a gay black drug dealer's coming of age in Miami. Bits were very poignant and well done, other parts seemed boring and over-long. I had a little doze now and then. I suspect that there were lots of significant details that I just missed; both the main character, Chirone, and his mentor Juan, had the gold crown on the dashboard of their car - I had to look that one up.

Perhaps someone could explain why it's called Moonlight, too. I was clearly in a minority; everyone else who watched it with me was more touched by it than I was. I actually preferred La La Land, which most people seem to have hated.

Watched in the Common House in Springfield from a version obtained by informal distribution.

Review of 'The Big Short'

I was rather disappointed with this. The book was great - it explained complex things and unfamiliar institutions without being patronizing - and left me feeling better informed and more angry. The film didn't do that. Some of the illustrations were silly and annoying. Some things that were complicated weren't really explained - including CDSs, which were really the toxic time-bomb under the property finance market. From the film you wouldn't even learn what a short is.

Not helped by the fact that it's really hard to tell who is who - apart from the really florid Asperger-inflected character and the one with anger management issues, and the two jock kids, they all look similar. Not clear who is working for which institution, or about the conflicts of interest within the big banks.

On the plus side it did manage to show that finance isn't separate from the real world - we get to see the families whose houses are repossessed, and there is some talk about the impact on the 'real' economy.

One of the things that made me so angry reading the book was the way that the heroes - the big shorters - made a lot of money, but nothing bad happened to the people who so carelessly created the opportunity for them to do so. The big stupids lost their companies billions, and none of them are sleeping rough. I didn't get that from the film.

Watched via HDMI cable from laptop to TV, obtained via informal distribution network.

Review of Lion

A thoughtful, moving film about adoption and lost children. A little Indian boy gets lost from his family, swept in to an orphanage, and then adopted away to Australia; eventually, and improbably (but this is a real story) as a young adult he finds his way back to the village and his birth mother. The credits sequence shows the real young adult visiting his real birth mother in the company of his adoptive mother; hard not to be moved by that if you've watched the film.

Some beautiful filming, and a reminder of why I didn't actually enjoy visiting India. Hard to be comfortable amidst so much misery.

Watched on TV via cable from PC and informal distribution network.