2010 Movies: #36, 35 & 34

Ref: Mulhern

#36 Wall Street II: Money Never Sleeps

I never saw Wall Street. Let's just get that out of the way off the bat. I found its sequel to be mostly stand-alone, although I did feel like I was missing a little something as far as the characters' backstory relationships were concerned.

The get-out-of-jail scene evoked the classic beginning to The Blues Brothers, a perennial favorite, so that endeared the movie to me at once. Giant cell phone = classic. It was interesting to look back into the recent past and relive the crash of the late aughts through the lens of a fictionalized Lehman Brothers - I could believe that the type of backdoor fate determination that the movie showed really existed, acquiring or bailing out companies based on smooth talking and personal vendettas.

The relationship drama didn't hold my attention all the way through, and I had recently seen Carey Mulligan as a *spoiler alert* pregnant, newly-single woman in The Greatest (I wept) - which also featured Susan Sarandon, now that I think of it. I appreciated her portrayal, in Wall Street II, of a realistically annoying character.

The name Bretton? So ridiculous.

Also, I now have Shia LaBeouf's phone ringtone from this movie. That's what.

#35 Get Him to the Greek

Hard rock and painted-on trousers. Excessive drinking and substance abuse. Awkward sexual references and situations. Poor overworked assistant trying to wrangle out of control star. Larger-than-life Diddy.

Yeah, I didn't see this film.

#34 How Do You Know

Reese Witherspoon, a.k.a. "The All-American Girl," is joined by Paul Rudd ("The American Hugh Grant" = charmingly befuddled), Owen Wilson ("The American Hippie Man-Child"), Kathryn Hahn ("The All-American Girl-Next-Door/Best Friend") and Jack Nicholson ("The American Icon") in a film that explores what you become when you aren't what you think you are.

There were a lot of plot threads going on in this film - financial finagling, career counseling, soul searching, corporate conniving, relationship ruminating. Tying them all up neatly felt a little tricky or forced.

As Mulhern mentioned, Wilson's Matty was endearingly dopey, to the point where you wondered if he'd been hit by a wild pitch in the noggin one too many times or if his ego was slowly devouring the logic centers of his brain. Rudd was convincing as he waffled between fleeing and facing up to financial ruin (hello, Wall Street II). And Witherspoon, as ever, was perky and practical as a woman trying to figure out her next move after being blindsided by a change in situation.