Thursday, January 25, 2018

Molly Bloom

I seem to be falling into a pattern of short movie reviews, given my wife and I are regularly seeing movies since the holidays.  Today was "Molly Bloom", with good performances by Jessica Chastain and Idris Elba, written and directed by Aaron Sorkin.  With that talent it's a good movie, not great. Part of the problem is the male-female dynamic: Bloom fights to gain a position, and is beaten down by men, three times.  She loses her first game, she's beaten up for refusing to cooperate with Russian gangsters in laundering money, and she's arrested by FBI and has her money confiscated.  Finally her dad shows up and explains her psychology based on family trauma.  So the "arc" (any reviewer has to discuss a character's arc or have the reviewer license taken away) is failure leads to self-knowledge. 

Bottom line: it's worth seeing.

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