Dumb Money (2023)

Direction: Craig Gillespie
Country: USA

This biographical comedy-drama depicting the stock short squeeze of video game retailer GameStop in January 2021 leans more towards being laughably tame than audaciously bold. Directed by Craig Gillespie (Lars and the Real Girl, 2007; I, Tonya, 2017) and written by Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo, the film represents a feeble adaptation of Ben Mezrich's book, The Antisocial Network.

Although it’s an ensemble cast that populates the screen, Paul Dano (There Will Be Blood, 2007; Love & Mercy, 2014) takes central stage as Keith Gill, a modest financial analyst and YouTuber operating under the moniker Roaring Kitty. Those who followed Gill's strategies had the potential to amass an unimaginable amount of money in the unpredictable game dictated by the stock market's ebbs and flows. Personal decisions played a pivotal role.

Had the filmmaker dared to dip below the surface, and maybe we would have a better film. Dumb Money fails to adequately develop its characters, making them feel unrelatable and causing the narrative to drag. What are audiences supposed to do with this, anyway? In the midst of the constant buzz surrounding the stock market, Gillespie's film struggles to find its footing. 

His work fails to get under your skin because it's content with poking you in the eye. The material offered the potential to create something thought-provoking and didactic, but he squandered the chance by allowing an invertebrate scenario. Hence, there’s no need to go to the movie theater to measure the extent of the damage because what the film tells you in 104 minutes could be absorbed from reading a brief paragraph.

Cruella (2021)

Direction: Craig Gillespie
Country: UK

Ok, this Walt Disney’s punk-ish Cruella, masterfully handled by the I Tonya’s director Craig Gillespie, proved to be more satisfying than I had anticipated, filling the screen with the fashion wrangle and powerful synergy between Emma Stone, who fits perfectly in the role of the title character (born from the pen of Dodie Smith), and Emma Thompson, already a staple in Disney’s films, as the wicked Baroness who doesn’t want to let go of her empire.

In this revenge tale, which serves as a prequel of 101 Dalmatians, the sumptuous mise-en-scène can’t divorce the luxurious costume design for a visually exuberant experience, and the film rocks with an unfaltering rhythm that is perhaps over enriched in terms of soundtrack, which is great in any case (Supertramp, The Doors, The Clash, Blondie, and many more).

The screenplay by Dana Fox (Isn’t It Romantic?) and Tony McNamara (The Favourite) brings out some nice twists carried out with a fearlessly inventive spirit and artistic personality. It was made clear that while Cruella has things done, Estella, an orphan swindler who dreams to become a fashion designer, doesn’t.

Although with the computer-generated images falling into occasional excesses, Gillespie succeeded in turning this film into a wonderful entertainment-escape, the most fun installment in the franchise.

I, Tonya (2017)

Directed by Craig Gillespie
Country: USA

Margot Robbie does a fantastic job as the former figure skater Tonya Harding in a facetious biopic directed by Craig Gillespie who, despite spirited in tone, didn’t surpass his 2007 comedy “Lars and the Real Girl”.
If the cited Australian actress got our eye through a fine performance, Ohio-born Allison Janney, who plays her mother, LaVona, is absolutely insuperable. Curiously, Janney aspired to become a champion skater at a younger age, but an accident prevented her to fulfill that dream.

Following a script by Steven Rogers (“Kate & Leopold”, “P.S. I Love You”), who also produces, the director pins the camera in front of Tonya, in her mid-forties, and gives her free rein to express herself in regard to a controversial past that got her banned from figure skating for life. According to her fictional testimony, every complicated situation that happened in her agitated life was never her fault.

Tonya, who won her first competition at the age of four, achieved brilliant moments in her career. She became an Olympian champion and a Skate America champion twice, and also made history in the sport for being the first woman to successfully execute two triple axels in a single competition, among other records. While she was never satisfied with the scores, often lowered due to a poor presentation, her abhorrent and super controlling mother was never satisfied with her performances, making a constant psychological pressure that intended to pique her toward excellence.
Unstable, mean, and utterly rude in her language, LaVona only smiles to scorn or humiliate. She's so dangerous that she even threw a knife at her daughter once in the heat of an argument.

If this weren’t enough, Tonya was being a victim of domestic violence by her prickly husband Jeff Gillooly (Sebastian Stan). The latter joined Tonya’s unrefined bodyguard, Shawn Eckhardt (Paul Walter Hauser), in a dirty scheme to attack Nancy Kerrigan, his wife’s main competitor, in order to prevent her from competing in the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway.

Tonya hardships were depicted with straightforwardness; however, the film’s narrative was not so effective, perennially wobbling between the cheaply dramatic and the absurdly comic. It works as an absolution for Tonya, who went to professional boxing after realizing that her figure skating career was over. But it's also a definitive condemnation of the cruel, companionless LaVona, whose unbending personality persists, even when declining and wearing a nasal oxygen cannula.

Like the story of its title character, “I, Tonya” embraces contradiction from start to finish. While the soundtrack is awesome, with Heart’s 1977 hit ‘Barracuda’ attempting to have the same boosting effect that Survivor’s ‘Burning Heart’ had in "Rocky", all the moody characters are unenchanting and some of them even useless, like Martin Maddox (Bobby Cannavale), the producer of Hard Copy, an unreliable tabloid news television show popular in the 90s. The feeling is even stronger after we hear LaVona saying to her daughter: “I gave you a gift”, and getting “You’re a monster” as an answer.

Robbie and Janney’s performances avoided further damages.