Romance? “Fair Play” Shows High Finance Is The Real Nightmare
#244: "Fair Play," "Totally Killer," "The Best Man,” A24
Edition 244:
Hey movie lovers!
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This week: Masculinity is in the crosshairs of a new Netflix thriller set at a hedge fund, girls are traveling back in time for a Halloween horror spoof, and I toast to my brother’s wedding this weekend. Then, we’ve got to talk about the troubling side effects of A24’s ambition. In this week’s “Trailer Watch,” Nathan Fielder and Emma Stone co-star in a creepy new Showtime series.
Fair Play
Back in 2018, after rewatching Ex Machina, I remember writing in an early edition of this newsletter that tech billionaires made for perfect movie villains. They were standoffish weirdos, thought to be geniuses, and could wield infinite money like a superpower. Five years later and the trope totally played out — now articles have been written about how every villain is a tech bro.
This time I’ve come to tell you that the most fertile ground in all of storytelling is high finance. For starters, private equity runs the world. Yet no one understands it. The beauty of hedge funds is that they’re both incredibly complicated and ultimately so simple: you either make money or your lose it. It’s a high stakes environment, and at the same time pretty meaningless. It claims to be a meritocracy, yet everyone plays favorites. There’s drama to be mined!!
Fair Play is a great example about what a rom-com would look like within this world. Of course it’s dysfunctional. Our main characters are in a secret inter-office relationship at the bottom of the career totem poll. They’re strivers, “analysts,” who work long hours and kiss major a— in the hopes that one day they’ll make “PM,” a portfolio manager, the person calling the shots.
The rumor around the office is that Alden Ehrenreich’s finance bro is the favorite to move up. He accepts his fate like a birthright. It all makes perfect sense to him. He proposes to his colleague/girlfriend, played by Phoebe Dynevor, and in his mind settles into the life he always dreamed of….until it’s Dynevor’s character who’s given the promotion, and he loses his mind.
Of course, the movie is a study in toxic masculinity. Poor bro can’t handle his girlfriend making more money than him, and sets about ruining her life both emotionally and professionally.
A more accurate title would’ve been “Gaslighting: The Movie.”
Writer/director Chloe Domont has worked previously on “Billions,” “Ballers” and “Suits,” so clearly she knows what she’s doing in and around the board room. The visuals are engaging and the story hangs with tension from start to finish. All the scenes involving Eddie Marsan, who plays the demigod-like boss of the firm, make you want to hold your breath.
But it needs to be said — this movie is UNPLEASANT. The actions of the characters vary from mildly objectionable to totally monstrous, and as the situation devolves it’s almost like a nightmare playing out in real time. I think this discomfort is to the movie’s credit, because it’s the whole point of the movie and is really sharply observed, but taken as a whole it’s not the funnest watch. (The closest comp I can think of is Nightcrawler, which left me distraught upon first watch.)
This extends to the sexual appeal, which was certainly used in the marketing. I object to anyone calling this an “erotic thriller,” both because the sex scenes are chaste and because the sex itself doesn’t serve any narrative purpose in the movie, other than a thermometer for the state of the relationship. Ehrenreich and Dynevor certainly aren’t fooling anyone with their chemistry, which zaps the movie of its watchability but again serves the purposes of the underlying message.
I said in last week’s newsletter that I was willing to revisit my blanket condemnation of Netflix original films. This film continues a trend of movies that are not only competent but also interesting, and strive to be about something other than background noise while you do your laundry.
Something New
Totally Killer (Amazon Prime): My overall movies watched will be down this year, and a big reason for that is sparing myself the annoyance (read: agony) of sitting through a ton of movies I know from the outset I’m going to hate, in particular the Netflix brand of expensive and ill-conceived B movies (i.e. Heart of Stone). Buffeted by a great trailer, I truly thought that Totally Killer would be better than that, sort of a Back To The Future meets Scary Movie style spoof horror comedy.
And while it’s very self-aware about parodying those things — in fact, it explicitly name-checks them as well as Scream, from which it stole its plot — it’s much more like an amateurish recreation. The writing is just a little too weak, the characters to stereotypical, the acting not sharp enough, the jokes not funny enough, the horror not scary enough. It’s a well-intentioned but poorly executed movie in almost every way. Unless the idea of the 80s being un-woke and your parents being jerk teenagers once upon a time is hilarious to you, I am positive you can find more fun Halloween movies to stream this month.
Something Old
The Best Man (1999, Tubi): This Saturday is my brother’s wedding (a toast!) and I’m on best man duties. Of course, there’s no shortage of great wedding movies: My Best Friend’s Wedding, Father of the Bride and Four Weddings and a Funeral, to name a few. But I know I’m woefully behind on my classic Black cinema, so I figured this would be a great time to check out the first of what would become two hit movies and a mini-series starring an entire generation of recognizable faces: Taye Diggs, Nia Long, Terrence Howard, Regina Hall, Morris Chestnut and Harold Perrineau.
A best-selling author, an NFL superstar, a promising artist and a hotshot lawyer are all best friends reuniting for a bachelor party when the author’s new auto-fiction reveals old secrets that create drama. As much as the story or comedy, this experience is about vibes. It’s easy to buy these guys as friends, and even if the gender dynamics come off a little dated the chemistry between charming leads makes us believe in the romance. Because Tubi is free and this is so easily watchable, I definitely recommend!
Something to Stream
A24 News: This isn’t a recommendation, but I’m taking this place in the newsletter to discuss what I feel is a major industry development. If you’re a movie fan in any legitimate way, you’ve of course heard of and probably love A24, the independent studio behind tons of personal favs like Lady Bird, Ex Machina, Swiss Army Man, Boys State, Uncut Gems and two recent Best Picture winners Moonlight and Everything Everywhere All At Once. They’ve become a major force in the industry, and also maintained a rabid fan base — they sell branded merch and are the only distributor to whom people would say “I’m a huge A24 fan” … nobody is saying “I’m a huge Warner Bros. fan.”
The reason they’ve been able to cultivate this fandom is their championing of original, auteur-driven cinema. They make movies that are a little weird and a little ambitious and people connect with them on a deeper level, a zag against the zig of giant franchise IP that has dominated the major studios. It’s a strategy that has earned the company a $2.5 billion valuation.
Well well well…capitalism comes for us all. $2.5 billion is not enough. This week it was reported that A24 has gone around Hollywood inquiring about buying the rights to “action and big IP projects,” and as of Thursday had already bought the rights to the Michael Meyers/Halloween franchise. As much as we’d like to believe they could sprinkle the indie fairy dust on bigger projects, the long sweep of history tells us that as they scale up they’ll water down, and before too long A24 won’t be all that recognizably different from the Warner Bros. of the world, making a few good movies and a lot of bad movies and tons of money for its executives and investors. I guess that’s always how the cookie crumbles.
Trailer Watch: The Curse
Ok not a movie, but the most interesting trailer this week BY FAR was the new Showtime joint created by Nathan Fielder (“Nathan For You,” “The Rehearsal”) and Benny Safdie (Good Time, Uncut Gems). Anyone familiar with Fielder’s particular brand of off-beat…err actually more like bats—t crazy comedy knows how unhinged this show is going to be. Fielder co-stars with Emma Stone as one of those home-flipping reality TV show couples (with Safdie in tow as a long-haired producer), whose inner lives are far more sinister than their perfect on-screen personas would indicate. Fielder’s stuff gets me super excited and also a little scared, because there truly are no guardrails or safety measure in place with where he’s willing to take things.