Tag: real estate

AMERICAN DREAMER – Review

(L-R) Shirley MacLaine as Astrid and Peter Dinklage as Phil Loder, in AMERICAN DREAMER. Courtesy of Vertical

In the comedy AMERICAN DREAMER, Peter Dinklage plays a curmudgeonly college professor with a dream to buy a home far beyond his limited means, while Shirley MacLaine plays a wealthy retiree who has just such a fabulous home for sale for an unbelievable price – with one big catch. Loosely inspired – very loosely – by real events, the major delight of this sometimes crazy comedy is in the pairing of Dinklage and MacLaine, who make a perfect, and perfectly insane, comedy duo in this film.

Dinklage plays Dr. Phil Loder who teaches economics from a sociological view at a small college. Loder may teach economics but his own economics are pretty dismal for a professor of the dismal science. Underpaid and twice-divorced, he doesn’t have tenure, and he can’t even seem to get a parking spot for his vintage car. Meanwhile, he spends his time dreaming about coming home to a grand mansion, preferable to be greeted by a beautiful wife. In fact, he has neither, and the twice-divorced professor is living alone in a dinky apartment. He spends all his free time searching for that perfect home, with his real estate broker Dell (Matt Dillon) inviting him to open houses for homes that fit his criteria but not his budget.

No one milks surly and begrudging for comedy like Dinklage, and he is entirely in his element here. While the college that employs him shows him little respect, his economics course has suddenly become popular with student, who enjoy his lectures peppered with snark and sarcasm representing his doom and gloom worldview. He has even drawn the romantic attention of a graduate student, Clare (Michelle Mylett) which he rationalizes is OK since she is over 21.

On the outs with his real estate agent after an outburst of temper, Loder scans the ads for a dream home – and finds an intriguing possibility. The grand waterfront property lists for millions but it has a second, special offer – if the buyer agrees to live on the property while also letting the elderly owner, a childless widow, remain for the rest of her life, the buyer can have it for mere $250,000. That’s still out of the professor’s range but he might be able to raise that amount.

Loder dispatches the real estate agent to make the deal, and sets out to sell everything to meet the price. When he gleefully shows up to move in, he finds matters are not quite as he imagined – or was told by the agent.

For one thing, he finds he must live in a rundown apartment over a garage instead of the huge main house. And the former owner, who Loder never met, turns out not quite to be the invalid teetering on death that the agent described. In fact, Astrid Finnelli (Shirley MacLaine) is pretty lively, puttering around the water-side property on her scooter and having no compunction about banging on Phil’s door regardless of the time if she has a question. Every day he’s there, a new wrinkle crops up, but the rule-breaking Loder doesn’t make matters any better, often being his own worst enemy.

The situation presents endless problems that challenge Loder, forcing him to adapt and change in ways he never expected. Dinklage milks the physical comedy aspects of this farcical tale, with perhaps a bit more bare skin than we really need to see.

MacLaine plays her character, who clearly is not on the verge of death, with the kind of imperious, aristocratic snobbery she does so well, with a touch of her “Downton Abbey” character. Her clueless, demanding aristocrat and Dinklage’s grumbling pro-proletariat academic make for a wonderful comic pair, and there are laughs in most every scene they share.

At one point, Dinklage’s Loder calls in a private investigator, played by Danny Glover, to try to figure out this twisty situation he finds himself in, and Glover brings a dry humor side to the humor proceedings.

Dinklage and MacLaine have great comic chemistry and as so good together, they draw laughs just glaring at each other. The film offers up a series of every escalating comic situations in classic comedy style. The humor is a bit raucous but never going too far, with each humorous scene building on the next. The humor in AMERICAN DREAMER is classic slapstick low-comedy, not sophisticated satire, but Dinklage’s character does go through a re-evaluation of his approach to the world and people, coming out with a fresh, more humane perspective. Astrid turns out to have another side, a more charitable, kinder one, which has a profound effect on Dinklage’s Loder, and gives the film am unexpected charm by its end.

The magic in AMERICAN DREAMER is in the unlikely pairing of Peter Dinklage and Shirley MacLaine, who light up the screen every time they share it, an effect grows more charming as the film unfolds.

As these comedies always do, the two start as adversaries but eventually begin to understand one another and even become friends. But the film goes further, and as the characters grow, they reveal unsuspected sides, with warm, generous hearts that reach out to those who need help, something we never expect at the film’s start.

AMERICAN DREAMER opens Friday, Mar. 8, in theaters and streaming on demand.

RATING: 3 out of 4 stars

THE BANKER – Review

Anthony Mackie, Nia Long, Samuel L. Jackson and Nicholas Hoult in “The Banker,” coming soon to Apple TV+. Photo courtesy of Apple TV+

In the true-story based THE BANKER, two black businessmen have an audacious plan in pre-Civil Rights 1954: use a white former handyman as a front to to buy real estate in whites-only areas of segregated Los Angeles, circumventing then-legal discrimination, with the intention to rent to black lawyers and doctors who integrate those neighborhoods. Having made a fortune with that plan, the pair come up with an even bolder one, to buy a small town bank in Jim Crow-era Texas, with the intention of making home loans available to black families.

Anthony Mackie and Samuel L. Jackson star as the two black entrepreneurs, young, buttoned-down, math genius Bernard Garrett (Mackie) and born-rich, playboy club owner Joe Morris (Jackson). THE BANKER starts out with a fun, caper film vibe to it. Nicholas Hoult plays Matt Steiner, the young white handyman who works for Garrett on the first buildings the would-be real estate entrepreneur buys and renovates in LA, who gets tapped for the role of front The three form an unlikely partnership to do an end run on prejudice and disrupt the rules of real estate in 1954 Los Angeles, then move on to even more ambitious plans for buying a bank in 1963 Jim Crow segregated Texas.

THE BANKER is based on an amazing true story (although why it is “banker” instead of “bankers” is entirely not clear) and so the filmmakers deserves credit for bringing it to the big screen, even though the film has been criticized for historical inaccuracies. This is Apple TV+’s first foray into film releasing, and it features a top-notch cast, nice production values, and an appealing mid-’50s to early ’60s period visual style with plenty of gorgeous costumes and cool cars. However, the film itself is pretty conventional film-making, and not everything about it works, despite the strong efforts of the cast, particularly Mackie. Still, the first half is entertaining, fun and inspirational, with a classic underdog story and a winking caper film approach. Add to that a sepia-toned visual style and loads of period details, it has plenty of popcorn movie appeal. But when the story turns more serious in the second half, when they relocate from California to Jim Crow-era small town Texas, the film struggles to shift from the playful caper film approach to something more appropriate to the more dramatic material, which makes THE BANKER feel a bit like two different films.

This story takes place before the Civil Rights era, when Jim Crow segregation laws severely restricted the rights of blacks in the South, and racial prejudice and restricting neighborhoods to whites-only neighborhoods and redlining were perfectly legal in other places of the US. After a brief prologue to set the period tone, we meet young Garrett in 1954 Los Angeles, as he relocates from his native small town Texas with his wife Eunice (Nia Long) and young son, with an ambitious plan to become a real estate mogul. A math genius, Garrett picked up basics of finance and banking as a young boy, by listening to bankers while he shined shoes outside the town’s bank. Hoping to find some place more open to black entrepreneurs, Garrett is frustrated to find he can’t even get LA bankers talk to him, much less lend to a black man. Eventually, he forms a partnership with a white real estate owner Patrick Barker (Colm Meaney), an Irishman who has encountered prejudice himself, Barker serves as the public face for their real estate purchases, which makes it easier to get loans and buy property in whites-only areas.

When Barker suddenly dies, Garrett is left in a bind, and he turns to the brash Joe Morris for cash to restart. But as two black men looking to buy property in areas still legally restricted to whites-only, they need a white face to negotiate with would-be white sellers. They hatch a bold plan, to re-make Garrett’s working class handyman Matt (Hoult) into the kind of fellow that white bankers and upper-crust real estate moguls will see as one of their own.

This is the most fun part of THE BANKER, thanks largely to the talented cast. Reversing the familiar movie trope, Jackson’s born-rich Joe Morris teaches Hoult’s working-class Matt Steiner how to pass himself off as part of the bankers’ upper-class world, coaching his clueless charge to how to play golf like a pro, which fork to use in formal dining, and generally how to present himself as a social equal to the wealthy bankers. Meanwhile, Mackie’s Garrett launches the overwhelmed Matt on a crash course in finance and math skills, with equally comic results.

They form a partnership in which all three names appear as owners of the properties, although the sellers only ever see Matt. But as the brains and money behind this business, Morris and Garrett are the ones really running the business, and Matt is really more an employee than a full partner. To keep their front on track, Morris even dresses up to pose as a chauffeur, to listen in and provide help in a bind.

In the first half of the film, the caper film style works well and the film is entertaining, largely thanks to the efforts of Jackson, Hoult and Mackie. The heaviest dramatic acting load falls to Mackie, and his strong performance often lifts the film above its conventional trappings and grabs the audience’s heartstrings with a stirring, inspirational appeal.

The scheme proves wildly successful, making the partners lots money while racially integrating large areas of previously segregated LA. But when Garrett returns to his home town in Texas, he confronts the hardships that Jim Crow laws place on the black community. He is seized with the urge to do something for the community where he grows up, and he decides the best way to help is to buy the local bank, and make home loans to worthy black borrowers. However, the idea proves a hard-sell with Morris and Steiner, as it seems more about social activism than just making money – and it is.

THE BANKERS starts out strong with its winking caper film vibe, and there is a lot of fun as the three partners circumvent the racial restrictions of 1954. However, when the film shifts to more serious territory in the second half, as the partners take on buying a bank in a small town in 1963 Jim Crow Texas, the film’s playful caper film vibe has to give way. And it does, largely, but the change is not smooth and makes it feel like two different films. When the partners become embroiled with a Southern senator who wants to change banking rules for his own political advantage, things get really dicey. Further, returning to the caper film style near the film’s end feels particularly awkward.

THE BANKER has its flaws but deserves credit for presenting this untold true story of creative black entrepreneurs, and for the fine work of its talented cast. THE BANKER opens Friday, March 6, at the Chase Park Plaza Cinema.

RATING: 3 out of 4 stars

THEY’RE WATCHING Review

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Be honest. We’ve all done it. Some of us willingly and with no apologies, while others of us are closet fans, but those reality real estate shows are popular and addictive. Perhaps it’s because they tap into a core element of the American dream, but whatever the reason, they’ve made an impact on what television looks like these days. With that said, it only seems logical that some creative soul would take this phenomenon and mash it up with another modern cultural trend.

The graphic novelists and animators Jay Lender and Micah Wright have done just that, they wrote and directed this melding of reality-based home shopping shows with found footage, faux-documentary style horror-comedy. That’s right. No, I didn’t stutter or lose my mind. This is a thing. A real thing. I know, your reaction right now is probably quite similar to mine when I first heard of this film, but after reading a bit more about the plot and then watching the trailer, I saw an intriguing level of potential just under the surface.

THEY’RE WATCHING, despite our most instinctual better judgment, is actually a fun, smart and entertaining romp. Blending a filmmaking influence from the Raimi brothers with tongue-in-cheek humor and a subtle knack for the breaking of the fourth wall, the film makes fun of it’s multi-faceted genre base, makes fun of itself and makes for a good time. The story takes place in Moldova, which provides a setting and a backdrop combined with it’s sense of humor that will please any fan of Bruce Campbell’s THE MAN WITH THE SCREAMING BRAIN. I realize that’s a double-edged sword, but take you’ve got to take this film with a grain of salt and appreciate it for what it is, by design.

Stereotypes abound. Akin to Sasha Baron Coen’s BORAT, but less extreme, the Moldovan town folk in the film are simple, creepy and primitive in comparison to the western crew. The town’s constable is a stern, dictatorial man resembling Stalin and the town’s one and only real estate agent, aka “broker,” is an Eastern European mix of Johnny Bravo and Cousin Eddie from National Lampoon’s VACATION films. All the town folk are heavy drinkers and are afraid of the cameras, but in the end, they are merely play as pawns and fodder, as the plot slowly unveils their secret about a witch that must never be mentioned.

Becky (played by Brigid Brannagh) is the latest client on a popular real estate reality show, an artist who wishes to settle down to a simpler, slower life in Eastern Europe. Six months after Becky decided to buy a fixer-upper deep in the backwoods of a small, rural town in Moldova, the production crew of the show returns to shoot the second half of the episode and see what improvements Becky has made to the property. Fully expecting disaster, the crew arrives to find she’s pulled out a miracle and the property looks great. Seems like it’s going to be an outstanding episode after all…

That’s about the time things start getting weird. THEY’RE WATCHING is a title that has a duel meaning, referring both to the Moldovan town folk, and [of course] acknowledging the meta element of the film, about a reality TV show, that has an audience separate from those of us watching this film. Follow that? Anyway, Lender and Wright make no effort to be taken seriously. That’s not the goal. The entire film feels like an inside joke, and for the most part we get it. And it’s funny. The production looks like hi-definition digital video because it’s supposed to, and most likely is as it’s not a big budget film. On the other hand, it looks good, as good as any well-made respectable TV movie. This is higher caliber production than the Syfy Channel but not quite prime time. For the most part, the acting follows this same scale.

As the plot thickens and the tension increases — for the characters, not quite so much for the audience — THEY’RE WATCHING prepares for the money shots… or, shots, as the film’s final act is the cherry on top. Whatever minor flaws and discrepencies may exist are easily forgotten once the rib-jabbing jokes and cliche horror movie tendencies segway into the big showdown with the witch at the end.

If you thought witches were boring 17th century borefests or cheesy kids’ fare, beware. The film ends on a high note with a bloody, goretastic, over-the-top splatterfest that will make genre lovers proud, or sad, depending on what expectations you had going int the film. For those who enjoyed TUCKER & DALE VS EVIL and CABIN FEVER, you should most likely find THEY’RE WATCHING to be a satisfying, lower-calorie samplng of cinematic junk food.

THEY’RE WATCHING  — In Theaters and On Demand — March 25th, 2016

Overall Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

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