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Movie Review: The Creator

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On Wednesday, September 13, 2023, the leaders of all the major tech companies testified to the United States Senate about their concerns to regulate and control AI technology. These leaders included the CEO of Microsoft, Tesla and Google. Some of the comments after the 3 hour meeting included, “The consequences of getting AI wrong are severe.”, from Elon Musk. Bill Gates spoke of AI’s potential to feed the hungry. Satya Nadella from Microsoft said “When it comes to AI, we shouldn’t be thinking about autopilot. You need to have copilots.” Someone always has to be overseeing AI to make sure it does not fall into the wrong hands, or go haywire.

AI has been one of the most important topics of conversation for over a year now, it is the new reality of the world. It was obvious that given the possibilties that will follow AI that tens of thousands of screenwriters around the world have started screenplays and there will be many AI movies in our future.

Unfortunately one of the first AI movies is the new movie “The Creator”. The story is basically about an ongoing war between AI-created machines and humanity. After a software error, according to the AI robots humans created a massive nuclear explosion, destroying the city of Los Angeles. The story starts from the aftermath of this nuclear accident and different battles between humans and robots, but not much else. There is nothing new in this story, other than a few well-done special effects. With something as interesting and new as AI, one would expect a much more imaginative script.

The movie stars John David Washington as the main character Joshua, who is a soldier who loses and then tries to find his wife Maya played by Gemma Chan. Joshua also befriends a young child robot Alphie played by Madeleine Yuna Voyles, a story line that seems more about chase scenes and explosions than any interesting story. The story of this film is all over the place, with many disconnected scenes, that also include lead soldier Colonel Howell, played by Allison Janney.

Unfortunately the first of what will probably be a string of AI movies that will follow, is a big miss. The Rotten Tomatoes ratings are a low 68%, with my rating 60% and a recommendation to miss this film.

Movie Review: Saw X

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On a recent entertainment talk show, the host talked about horror movie franchises like Saw, Haloween, Friday 13th and correctly stated that movies like these make millions and billions of dollars, on a low budget, virtually guaranteeing that there will be many sequels. This is the 10th movie in the Saw franchise.

Of all the Saw movies, that are all about horrible people who committed horrendous crimes and got away with it, being tortured and killed with elaborate mechanical devices, with scenes of dismemberment and horrific death that make you wonder how the writers and producers could ever think of these insane ways to kill people.

Throughout almost every film in this Saw franchise, the main character is John Cramer played by Tobin Bell, takes it upon himself to force justice on deserving bad people, but always gives them a chance to save themselves while trapped in the most horrific contraptions designed to kill a human being. Within all 10 of these movies, you cannot help but admire the imagination to conceive of and then build these mechanical killing machines.

This 10th movie is much different than the previous nine, entirely about John Cramer and his brain cancer and terminal diagnosis. Through another person at a cancer support group, who tells John his 4th stage Pancreatic cancer was cured, John falls prey to medical scammers in Mexico who promise to save his life. What follows is the obvious revenge on all the scammers involved, this time around showing some extremely horrific new methods of mechanical death.

The problem with this story, is that there are at least 3 major holes that a few more re-writes could have been fixed. The last stage of the revenge-death scenes is too risky and convoluted for someone at the level of genius of John Cramer would ever attempt. I thought the ending was not satisfying enough on two levels, with the final scene too abrupt.

Of all of the Saw movies, this tenth movie has by far the highest Rotten Tomatoes rating of 87%. I give this movie credit for the new perspective on the story, but I have to subtract for 3 glaring holes in the plot, with my rating a passable 70%. Odds are very thigh that there will be many more Saw movies, even though Cramer has terminal cancer, because these movies just make too much money. My guess is that his protege Amanda Young, played by Shawnee Smith, might carry on this series.

Movie Review: Dumb Money

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The new movie “Dumb Money” is about probably the only “David and Goliath” story in the history of the stock market. This true story required a series of highly unusual circumstances to happen at the same time to create an environment that enabled everyday average people (what the rich elite used to call “Dumb Money”) to destroy several billion dollar hedge funds and a few billionaires along the way. This all happened due to the attempt to short sell and put out of business one company GME (Game Stop).

When you short a stock, which means you are selling a stock you do not even own, you are hoping that the stock goes down so you can buy it back and make a profit. However if the stock goes up, or in the case of GME skyrockets, losses can theoretically have no limit. It is the massive shorting of GME, more than any other that changed the stock market forever.

The story of Dumb Money starts and ends with the main character Keith Gill, who in 2021 was a married man with one child and mostly unemployed. Gill used social media and mainly chat rooms on Reddit to talk about his stock purchases and early on, he risked most of his net worth to buy 50,000 dollars of GME stock that was priced less than 4 dollars at the time. All of the reasons why an average and lower middle-class person like Gill would risk so much money on a stock worth less than 4 dollars should have been researched more for this film. At one point later in the movie, Gill just states, “I like the stock”. Then Gill started a podcast and turned himself into a cat-like cartoon character and over weeks and months, the heavily shorted GME stock skyrocketed, only because of Gill’s popularity on Reddit.

At this same time, the new online and free brokerage service called Robinhood started a business. Then millions of Americans received their Pandemic checks, setting the perfect stage for an unprecedented stock market boom for GME and other shorted stocks that cost billions to several prominent hedge funds, with some of them going out of business due to their huge losses.

Unfortunately many people who were doing so well when GME was skyrocketing, missed their chances to get out with a profit, many of them losing money they could not afford to lose. One reason for this was when Robinhood was forced to prevent the selling and buying of GME stock for a period of time, due to pressure from hedge funds that were trying to stave off more losses.

The acting throughout this film is outstanding, starting with Paul Dano as Keith Gill, Pete Davidson as Keith’s brother Kevin, Seth Rogen as the head of hedge fund Melvin Capital Management Gabe Plotkin and Vincent D’Onofrio and Nick Offerman and hedge fund billionaires. Actress Shailene Woodley is also outstanding as Keith Gill’s wife, it was good to see her again in the release of a major new movie.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings for Dumb Money are a very high 84% and I agree with this rating and recommend this movie all about the insanity of the stock market – the first very good movie of its kind since the “Big Short”, released in December 2015.