The Big Short, Our Brand is Crisis, The Assassin Film 2016

Hello and welcome to the first Film 2016 of the year.

We'd love to hear from you, so do tweet us.

Gosling, Bale and Pitt in credit crunch drama,

You know you're not supposed to use this line.

Sandra Bullock in political satire, Our Brand is Crisis.

How far are you behind? 28 points. I'm ready for this.

And Charlize Theron seeks out the truth in murky thriller,

Plus, we'll take a look at award-winning martial arts epic,

Joining me as ever is Danny Leigh and alongside us tonight

is The Independent's critic, Ellen E Jones.

Hello. Happy New Year Hello. Etc. And to you. And to you.

When the US property market collapsed and threatened

Credit crunch and collateralised debt may not make for easy viewing,

The Big Short stars Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt.

Michael, how are you? I found something really interesting. The

whole housing market is propped up on these bad loans. They will fail.

It's a time bomb. And then that happens. What is that? That's

America's housing market. It's the story of a group of outsiders in

Wall Street who saw what no-one else saw, which was the impending 2008

collapse. How do you know the bonds are worthless I read them. No-one

reads them. It's about the crash in 2008 in the United States. It's

about a handful of people who bet against the US economy and won. It's

like insurance, if it goes bust you can make 10-1 even 20-1 return and

it's already slowly going busts. You were rooting for them. At the same

time you're thinking - their win is everyone else's fail. They know that

too. I think there's that moral dilemma that's going on inside of

these characters. Everyone is walking around like they are in an

Enya video. They are getting screwed. You know what they care

about, the ball game or what actress went into rehab. Each one is a

strange outsider character, Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan

Gosling, Brad Pitt. You guys said you wanted to get rich, now you're

rich. I haven't seen a good debt comedy in months. This figured to be

- at least the best one this year! How can you sleep at night knowing

that you're ripping off working people? We made a choice to not just

gloss over the financial terms but to really let people know what

happened. Adam brings a unique perspective. I think he has a great

quality of being outraged about something without losing his sense

of humour. How did the banks let this happen? It's fuelled by

stupidity. That's not stupidity, it's fraud. The banks acted like it

was all so complicated. It's complicated. We'll fix it. Don't

worry about it we are the professionals. It's not that

complicated. They use terms to make it seem like it is. It's moving debt

and capital around. That is all it is. The banks got greedy. I can

profit off their stupidity. I didn't know what had happened much I didn't

know the level of fraud and it's shocking and kind of terrifying

while being funny at the same time. Do you smell that? What is that

What? What is that smell. Cologne. No. Opportunity. No, money. That

doesn't make you laugh immediately? It's fun and it's accessible. Even

if you don't get every little part of it, it's fine because you'll

understand the sort of over arching dilemma these guys are facing. Stop.

Dude, talk to the director, he asked me to do this. I would never do

this. Danny, what did you think? Funny, back in 2008 when the

entirely global financial system was melting down around us, I can't

claim that I sat there and thought - I know who I need to explain it is

the director of Anchorman. He was the perfectman for job. The Big

Short is unusual. It's wildly entertaining and does a good job

than the media do in how we got in the mess and how many of us have

been eating cold beans out of a tin. It's smart about a stupid moment in

human history. It will also, as well as being very, very funny, it will

make you furious. Hollywood, it is's interesting, Hollywood has been

taking a bit of a beating, rightly so, I think because of what we could

call a traditional approach to the Oscars, this is what Hollywood

should be doing. This is where they earn its stripes. The movie is great

and Audley important. I thought it would be impossible to do. Lots of

us read the book. We were like - ah, they said they were turning it into

a movie with the guy who made all of these - go what, how? Cleverley

done. It's not just the big names that make it an Oscar contender,

it's the format. It has fun breaking moments, the dialogue is punchy.

There are these archive clips about pop culture. It works on lots of

different levels. When you are watching that clip, all three of us

weres like - we want everybody to see this film whether you are

watching at home, everybody in here, you go - you need to see this and

pass it on. It's one of those, isn't it? It's really smart, smart way of

approaching it. The more crazy and slap stick it gets, the more it

feels like it's getting to the heart of the matter what was going on in

Wall Street and the City at that point. A giant children's party with

a mountain of Haribo and the other side sub-prime mortgages. It's the

Messi, manic genius of the film is identifying that. We have seen a

smart films about the financial crisis, inside job, 99 Homes, came

out last year. Great films, the only film about big money I have seen the

audience whoop for was Wolf of Wall Street. He has gone in with that

approach, a wild roller coast of a film. Because the subject matter is

so serious, I'm ancient, I didn't find it a comedy. They say it's a

comedy, funny? There are laughs in it because the performances are so

good. They bring out the laughs in it. They are jarring laughs.

Ultimately, this is a story about a situation where some people were

laughing all the way to the bank and other people were having their lives

destroyed. How comfortable do you feel laughings about that? That is a

question the movie asks you about it. It is lovely it has so many

Oscar nominations. We should talk about individual performances and

Christian Bale. He has the hardest job of all, he has a drumstick and

in a room by himself? Exact bely. Everyone is bouncing off each other

and it's this comedy. Christian Bale is acting opposite a white board and

a computer screen most of the time. I'm glad he is getting the

recognition and I'm gladded aam McKay is getting the recognition.

It's very difficult to make a period piece about a really recent time

inries, 2006. We look the same. How do you do that? There is a Nokia

phone here - Spot on. That kind of stuff that is the craft of it.

Because this movie is completely deranged it would be easy to miss

the craft that is going on there. Yet, it's interesting because you

have to root for these characters who, yeah, as you say, will be, the

rest of the world burns, they will get rich. That is fascinating about

the film. It's not like a movie like Trading Places, you get these toxic

old guys, everything goes back to normal. It's not rotten apples, this

whole farm is screwed. I have one mini gripe. The most exciting female

role is of the woman in the bath. It's not like there was no women

involved in the book. There is a real person profile called Meredith.

They could have done that. That was the casting. .

Sandra Bullock stars as a burnt-out spin doctor persuaded to come back

She is the brightest and most innovative... The best campaign

strategist in the game. Responsible for the greatest political upset in

history. When we fist meet Jane boat Bodine she has had to remove herself

from the world she spent most of her life in. She's fragile. She has some

instability issues. What are you doing here, I thought you retired or

gave up or something? No. Not retired, working. They have a

history. They know each other. She... It's like, here he he comes.

I'm like, oh, good there she is. Action. Are you sure you are OK, you

look like you're about to have a panic attack. Billy Bob is the right

person because he can say the thanksest things and you still love

him. That hes a a specific thing that comes with a great actor that

has specific type of charisma. All is forgiven when he had gives you

that Billy Bob smile. What happened to your hair? You've still got a

great sense of humour. It's a great relationship. I love these sort of

relationships that have just a hint of affection. I don't believe this.

I don't believe it. That's Candy's bus. You see that bus, overtake that

bus. How do you say overtake? How do you say overtake? Jane, what are you

going to do when you catch up? You cannot let him get ahead. Go, go!

Hey. She doesn't care how she gets the win as long as she wins. You're

going down. She will use any tactic that she needs to in order to do it.

These people are not educated. I'm sorry. "These people" why can can

can you not say what you're supposed to say. Because I'm not just a

puppet? Of course you are. Of course you're a puppet. We're just pawns. I

wanted to make sure that the movie that deals with politics, that deals

with poverty, that deals with some difficult subject matter is

approached with a respectful wit. If you fight with monsters for too

long, you become a monster. You should feel something during the

interview, tears. Look at him. This is it. Yes. Oh... You know there are

so many films that fit so cleanly into a genre, but this one here,

it's like - you have a story that is at its heart dramatic and yet it's

very funny. Everyone... I'm guess if you had to you would say it's a

comedy drama about the world of political consultants. Oh. No, no,

Marco! It's like he killed himself rather than be in one of our

commercials. I start off by saying that basically I'm looking for

Sandra Bullock in most films. It could be a documentary. There is

somebody who looks like Sandy? So were the producers of this film her

character is Inamoto vented for the film much. You can tell that. She

has quirks that only exist in movie characters. Stuffs crisps in her

mouth and obsession with ceramics. Somebody in the immediate meeting

said - maybe I should just eat - no, don't that.

It is just a random collection of character traits that don't really

belong to a real person. And there is some slapstick, almost like Miss

Congeniality. They are just waving around for 20 minutes at one point,

and you don't see what the point of that is in the context of the film.

She is a blessing and a curse, Sandra Bullock. She is so intensely

likeable, you forget George Clooney who produced this film. You can't

help rooting for her. So that puts this really intriguing spin on that

by having her as this amoral black-hearted spin doctor, and then

the film loses its nerve, and I don't know if that is down to her or

the film, but she has to have redemption, so punches get pulled,

and it all ends up feeling touchy-feely. There is a time for

that, but this wasn't it. Christmas! Exactly. Her comic timing is

fantastic, whether she is coaxing a suicidal llama onto screen or being

sick in a bin, but you wish the film had messed with our expectations a

bit more. She should either have been funnier or darker. And

everything we know about spin doctors getting terrible people into

power, it makes you want to watch Wag the Dog. But it doesn't delve

into that enough. They decided to make it a story of personal rivalry

between Sandra Bullock and Billy Bob Thornton. The script isn't funny

enough to make that work on that level, and it means we are omitting

deeper global political things that they touched on just enough to make

us curious, but doesn't follow through. Yes, it doesn't feel like

it deals with anything. Billy Bob Thornton is good fun as well, his

tongue could flick out and catch a fly on the wall at any moment, but

they are not interested in that really, so this film has space to

fill, see you have scenes where they think, we have ten minutes, what

will we do? Bus chase! And it ends with Sandra Bullock mooning out of

the bus window, and some people will like that. Wag the Dog is an

interesting comparison, but it doesn't have that edge, or even the

edge of something like the Big Short. People this week in what

Donald Trump ongoing campaign, and that is a lot darker and more

frightening than anything you will see in this film. You are totally

right, they should have pushed it more.

A hit at the Cannes Film Festival last year, Taiwanese historical epic

The Assassin follows a female killer hired to kill

She is amazing, the main actress, I could just watch her. I sort of fell

in love with this. Did you? I am a real admirer of The Assassin, but I

think people and do need to be aware that it is a film that very much

moves at its own pace. It is gorgeous and hypnotic and very slow.

It is cinematic and ravishing and very slow. Jackie Chan would have

been in, cleaned out the bad guys, gone home, had his tea, died, been

reincarnated, all while we watch one scene. It sounds lazy for critics to

talk about things being beautiful, but it is not the kind of beauty you

see everyday. Action scenes are few and far between, and when they come,

they are fleeting but exquisite. It is not even certain who has lost

until the moment a body hits the floor, and everything is so quiet,

you just hear word song and drums. It is a powerful piece of

film-making. After the two films we have just talked about, it is a

world of, quite long, world of silence. I have to disagree with

both of you. The polite word I know is contemplative, but I think it is

just very boring. The landscapes are beautiful, but I could have done

with a few more close-ups of people's faces, and I know that is a

decision the director has made, but the option it is -- the upshot is

you can't work out what is going on. It has interesting characters like

the vengeful kung fu none, because it sounds like something Quentin

Tarantino would come up with, but she doesn't get involved in many

scenes. -- nun. The problem is people will come to this wanting the

Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon experience, and don't go expecting

that. And that was action, that is all I remember about it, and speed.

This is not that. It is not that, and meditative is the other word,

that is a very personal reaction to it, but it does have still, I'm

moving scenes sometimes, and this is where I might lapse into sounding

unhinged, but when you have the ancient Chinese landscape, these

incredibly grand interiors, after a while, you find yourself almost

getting sucked into them, and sitting there thinking I am part of

this now, in the fine silks and the robes and fake beards. And the

lacquered wood. But it is sumptuous. Hollywood calls that immersive, that

you are being drawn in. It did make me think that this is probably a lot

more like what life was like in 19th-century China than any of the

other films we have seen, but the problem is the answer is quite

boring. When they invent time machines, I won't go back there, I

will stick with ancient Rome. It is with the people who will see that on

the telly, because this is something you should really see on the big

screen, and that is a division treasured itself. The Big Short is

something that you could watch from three seats away on summary's phone

with a cracked screen, and you would still get the gist. I wouldn't have

been sucked in. If there had been that speed to it, I might have

wanted more action, but because pretty early on you go, this is

going to be quite a long piece about miss... -- mist.

Next, psychological thriller Dark Places.

While investigating the murder of her family, Charlize Theron

is forced to confront traumatic childhood memories.

Since I was seven, I had only seen flashes of Ben, like some evil

entity in the haunted house. But I had forgotten there was once just

Ben, my brother. You meet with this woman, damaged, and the reason she

is like that is because when she was eight years old, she was the only

witness to the mass murder of her family.

And as the only which, her testimony sent her brother to jail. Here comes

my little sister after all these years. He is a freak. Just go into

his room, he has all sorts of weird stuff. She testified in court that

she saw her brother commit the murders, which kind of throughout

this story you start to realise it may have been misleading her, they

might have coached to get the answers they wanted out of her. It

was Ben. He killed them, right? 25 years later, she is contacted by

this weird organisation of geeks and weirdos obsessed with famous

murderers. And despite a startling lack of physical evidence, he was

convicted based largely on rumours that he was involved in devil

worship. These people want to re-evaluate the crime, and she needs

money so badly, she is going to get paid to reinvestigate her own life.

Who do you think did it? There are lots of theories. It's devil

worship. I'm ready for this. It is like a lot of different things. It

has a lot of layers. There is a very strong plot, very strong characters.

It is pulpy bit elevated at the same time, so that is what attracted me.

It is time to tell the truth. I'm sad for you, little girl. You are

just as imprisoned as I am all stop so, brilliant actors, Nicholas

Hoult, who is always fantastic. You have a very interesting book

written by the same woman who wrote gone girl, so this should be raped.

Yes, I think everybody was hoping for another Gone Girl. But where

they went wrong was the adaptation of the book to the screen. There is

this splits timeline, and we go back and forth between when the crime was

originally committed and the present day, and that makes us lose

momentum. And there is a weird relationship between Charlize

Theron's character and the rest of the film. You are totally right,

just as you said that, she is slightly distant. It seems very

still. And Gobble had that kind of playfulness, and partly because of

what this film is about, it touches on this greenback history, it can't

be fun. -- Goggle had that playfulness. This is the sullen

teenage Goth's answer to Gone Girl. I wonder if they filmed this before

or after Mad Max, but it is almost like they shared a set going to the

next set. Chloe Rees Brett came out with a good performance on this

film, and it is a great bridge between being a child actress and an

adult actress. There are problems with it from the word go, but it is

a botched job. The director has butterfingers here. These different

timelines, you have to much plot altogether, and then timelines 30

years apart, and sometimes that involves... And sometimes characters

disappear. And different characters come on screen, and they little

physical resemblance, you can't tell who is who, in sometimes it is the

same actor with talcum powder in their beer to signify they are

older, and Charlize Theron chuntering on in the voice-over.

Nicholas Hoult does the best of a bad job, and Christina Hendricks

needs to fire her agent. She needs to have a female agent.

It has got to be The Big Short. I like the Assassin, but yes, it has

to be. And if Room is playing anywhere near

you, I say this all the time, go and see it!

Playing us out tonight is one of the late, great Alan Rickman's

last films, military thriller Eye in the Sky.

Released in April, Rickman and Helen Mirren star as military

top brass in a world of drone warfare.

We have information they will be in Nairobi today. We need an eye inside

that house. Well, this changes things. It is

happening. We can see a suicide vest. We need to put something

through that roof right now. We need a decision, Minister, right now. We

need clearance from the PM. What is that? A child.

Those men are about to disperse. Engage now. I will not release until

this girl gets out of the way. We have a situation that could result

in massive loss of life in minute s.