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Review: DUMB MONEY

DUMB MONEY

GameStop lives, and is probably open late at a location near you. The fate of the often troubled videogame retailer is at the core of Dumb Money, a fast-paced and funny movie about the 2021 amateur stock trading craze on which the retail chain’s fortunes rose, fell, and then rose again. And if the filmmakers neglect to cap their tale with news of the store’s unexpected survival (the chain just posted a quarterly profit), well, the GameStop saga was never really about the store, was it?

Keith Gill (Paul Dano), a 32-year-old Massachusetts financial broker must have been a loyal customer because in the fall of 2019, he began singing the praises of GameStop in online videos recorded in his basement. To the astonishment of the few people paying attention to his initial posts, Gill reported buying 53 grand in stock, an idea that struck most as laughable. Everyone knew the hedge fund guys (“smart money”) were going to cash out big when GameStop crashed and burned. That’s how the world works, a truth Gill and his followers (“dumb money”) were destined to upend.

Gill calls himself Roaring Kitty on YouTube and DeepFuckingValue (DFV) on the subreddit thread, WallStreetBets, which is where he really takes off. His videos, recorded while wearing cat T-shirts and a red bandanna, catch on during lockdown. Soon, all manner of first time investors are using trading platforms such as RobinHood to invest their hard earned dollars just like their new hero, Roaring Kitty, who wins their confidence by posting spreadsheets of his entire stock portfolio. “If he is in, we are in.”

Director Craig Gillespie (I, Tonya, Lars and the Real Girl) and first-time screenwriters Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo, aided by ace editor Kirk Baxter (The Social Network), shift rapidly between connected story fronts: Keith at home, with his wife (Shailene Woodley) and baby and

the two-house estate of the initially derisive but gradually panicked hedge fund king, Gabe Plotkin (Seth Rogen). There are profiles too of Gill’s regular folk investors, including America Ferrera as a nurse and single mom, a loan-poor college couple played by Talia Ryder and Myha’la Herrold, and Anthony Ramos as a GameStop clerk with a boss (Dane DeHaan) who thinks him foolish for investing.

That boss isn’t exactly wrong. Surely none of these people should be pouring the little money they have into an online pipe dream, but an emotionally nimble cast makes the character’s faith in Roaring Kitty easy to believe and to root for. At one time or another, we’ve all hoped that the Pied Piper is one and true.

While all the characters are types, without any backstories, there’s pleasure in watching good actors shade in the empty spaces, and more than once, real laughs to be found in the easy villainy of the hedge fund guys. Arrogant zillionaire Ken Griffin (Nick Offerman) may be gleeful when Plotkin needs bailout cash but he deflates like a bully in the principal’s office when called to testify before Congress. That hearing is prompted by nefarious machinations by the RobinHood app, whose leader, Vlad Tenev (Sebastian Stan), suggests that you can indeed earn a billion and still be a complete moron.

Back in Massachusetts, Keith Gill’s GameStop stock keeps going up, and so too does the estimation with which his brother, Kevin (Pete Davidson), holds him. A bicycle riding DoorDash delivery guy (“I’m a first responder”), Kevin hasn’t amounted to much but he’s loyal– to his brother, to the memory of their late sister and to their working class parents (Kate Burton, Clancy Brown).

The cajoling interaction between the brothers gives Dumb Money its heart.  Kevin the slacker keeps surprising Keith the genius, just as, one senses, Dano and Davidson surprised and delighted one another. A movie about heartless one percenters being taken down a peg by folks who shop at the mall, Dumb Money may really be about two brothers giving each other the business.

Chuck Wilson

Review: The Nun II

THE NUN II

Unexpected blessings abound in The Nun II, an inevitable sequel to The Nun, the 2018 Conjuring-inspired horror film many saw and few loved. Fans watching the original again this week as prep (scary movie devotees do their homework), will note that it had a nifty bit of business involving bells, which signaled a living being inside a buried casket. Otherwise, it was heavy on howling demon CGI effects and a super-dull portal-to-hell backstory. 

We might have expected more of the same for the sequel, but instead, incoming director Michael Chaves (The Curse of La Llorona) and a trio of writers new to the series, have fashioned a story that gives the expanded cast (including some gifted child actors) an increasingly amped-up series of run-for-your-life action sequences that prove to be quite diverting. 

The Demon Nun (Bonnie Aarons), as we’re meant to call her, does indeed howl, but sparingly, while her history grounded in dime-store Catholicism, is disposed of quickly. The filmmakers are actually jazzed about their living characters, and it’s clear they’re anxious to get to the third-act appearance of a wonderfully ridiculous horned hellhound, whose scene-stealing presence surely wasn’t approved in advance by the Demon Nun.

She, of course, was meant to have been banished back to Hell at the end of the first film by a priest (Demián Bichir), the psychically gifted Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga), as well as a irresistibly sweet caretaker (Jonas Bloquet), working at a haunted Romanian abbey, circa 1952. 

Four years later, nuns and priests begin to die, gruesomely, including, as The Nun II opens, a priest who burns to death while seeming to float in midair, in a church in western France. The Vatican summons Sister Irene to investigate, a journey she’ll undertake with a younger nun, Sister Debra (Storm Reid). Together, they become a Holmsian pair of sleuths, with Debra, wonderfully played by Reid, bringing a welcome sense of skepticism to the story and a witty hit-the-demon-on-the-head logic to the big moments.

Maurice, meanwhile, is in Provence, working at a Catholic girls’ school housed in a 13th century convent so ragged, rundown and creepy that any parent who sends their child there should be prosecuted for cruelty. Stéphane Cressend’s production design, right down to a bit of plaster that is imprinted, ever so faintly, with the shrieking face of the Demon Nun, is terrific. Sophie (Katelyn Rose Downey), the 12-year-old daughter of the teacher (Anna Popplewell) on whom Maurice is smitten, finds him a perfect match for her lonely mother, but she’s noticed that his body sometimes stiffens strangely, and that he can be scarily quick-tempered. At these times, it’s like he’s someone else, and indeed, poor Maurice is possessed by the Demon Nun. (This is not a spoiler). 

It takes director Chaves and screenwriter Akeela Cooper (Malignant), as well as the writing team of Ian Goldberg and Richard Naing (The Autopsy of Jane Doe), most of the film before they reunite Sister Irene and Maurice, whose sense of delight in one another, with a tasteful hint of romance, gave the first film a spark missing from the story itself. Their reunion comes at the end of a frightening few days at the girls' school. 

Bullied by three mean girls, Sophie is enticed into a forbidden chapel in which the son of the headmistress (Suzanne Bertish) died years ago. The girls scare Sophie with tales of a devil-haunted stained glass, and later, the headmistress herself is lured there by laughter that sounds a lot like her dead son. All of this is nicely unnerving, and occasionally gruesome. Young teens, who are sure to see The Nun II, with or without their parents, are likely to dig the Hogwarts-gone-wrong vibe. 

It is unexpected to like The Nun II so much, but in its over-the-top horror and action filled finale there is the sense of a filmmaker looking to shock and surprise, but to do so playfully. The Conjuring universe, as it's known, which includes the Annabelle haunted doll movies, takes itself very seriously. There’s not much joy in the telling. But The Nun II dares (gasp!) to have some fun. 

Chuck Wilson