Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. Worth watching?

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Now before I start talking about this film, I was advised by a friend of mine not to watch this film because it was slow. When I hear films are slow I don’t even bother, but I fought that urge and watched it anyway. Little did I know that Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is an actual sequel to the 1987 adaptation Wall Street but I didn’t struggle to keep up to the storyline at all, so don’t let that put you off. It doesn’t take you to be a stock market expert to understand what happens in the film, if you see a red arrow pointing down you know it’s a ‘Holy S**t’ moment.

The film is rather slow, and I don’t know why they didn’t try to make it a little fast paced, but I carried on watching to see the outcome. You follow a character called Jacob Moore, a prospective stock trader and also another character called Gordan Gekko who is released from prison in October 2001 after being sentenced for Insider trading and securities fraud. Shia LaBeouf’s portrayal of Jacob Moore is very good, however I am too used to seeing him in Transformers and was half expecting a robot to pop out at any minute to liven the film up, but unfortunately that never happens. Micheal Douglas’s portrayal of Gordan Gekko is also good, he acts like a bitter man imprisoned for years trying to get his own back at society.

As the story moves on Jacob see’s the company slowly collapsing and after seeing his manager being forced to bail out his shares which ultimately led to him committing suicide he resorts to seeking help from Gordan, who is the father of his girlfriend, which complicates things a little bit because they lost their relationship whilst Gordan was in prison and she does not trust him. That  there is practically the whole story and the more I talk about it the more I’ll bore you with details, I wouldn’t make the effort to go to the cinemas and watch it but I would rent it out or buy it on DVD when it’s out because with patience it is a good film to watch if you have no other films to watch. Just please don’t make  a third Wall Street. Please.

Rating: 3/5

The Social Network: A good insight to the creation of Facebook?

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The Social Network has been one of the films this year I’ve being looking forward to, not because I want to know how Facebook was made, but because Mark Zuckerberg is the youngest billionaire in the world, and who wouldn’t want to know his story. There’s been a lot of press relating him to this film and he’s recently come out to the media and announced ‘I will not be watching this film because it’s over exaggerated’ . Well it is a film, based on real life, so I don’t know what he was expecting, but then I watched it and realised they made him out to be the most smug man in the world. So maybe that’s why he didn’t want to watch it. The film is slow in parts but keeps you interested, the boardroom meetings with the lawyers trying to make settlements with Mark on how much he owes the others, who helped him make Facebook makes good viewing, but I got the underlying feeling that they kind of missed a point. A Harvard teenage student who creates Facebook and is making more money that you could ever dream of, doesn’t seem to be that happy, I expected to see him jumping around, excited and attending the most luxurious parties,  living the dream but instead he’s walking around trying to battle off his enemies who used to be his friends. I can’t help but compliment Jesse Eisenberg’s acting of Mark, I visualised Mark Zuckerberg just like the portrayal in the film; smug, smart, sarcastic and arrogant.

Mark Zuckerberg’s arrogant side adds to the comedy of the film. You can’t help but laugh at the moments where he out smarts the lawyers or leaves his enemies speechless. The film cleverly shows how he created Facebook aswell for those who care. Would I watch it again, probably will. Would I recommend you go out to the cinemas and use your hard-earned money to watch it, yes. But keep your expectations at bay because even though I really enjoyed the film I can already hear the criticisms from reviewers already.

Rating:  4/5