Year: 2016

“The Big Short” (2015). Cast: Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Brat Pitt, Melissa Leo, Marisa Tomei, Finn Wittrock, John Magaro, Rafe Spall, Hamish Linklater, Jeremy Strong, Adepero Oduye, Tracy Letts, Byron Mann, Rajeev Jacob, Jeffry Griffin, Karen Gillan, Billy Magnussen, Max Greenfield, Margot Robbie, Selena Gomez, Anthony Bourdain, Richard Thaler. Director: Adam McKay. Screenplay: Charles Randolph and Adam McKay. Book: Michael Lewis, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine. Web site. Trailer. The Great Recession of 2008 is all too well known to a great many people. Much of the blame was placed on the collapse of the home mortgage market, and, at least superficially, that might be true. But what was behind that debacle, the underlying cause of an event that nearly brought the entire world’s economy to its knees? That’s what “The Big Short” seeks to explain. In 2005, virtually everyone in the financial services industry was living high on the hog. Despite the losses that occurred in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the economy rebounded strongly in the time since that fateful day in 2001. Money rolled in as if it were on a perpetual upward spiral, a nonstop gravy train that most insiders thought ...

“Hitchcock/Truffaut” (2015). Cast: Interviews: Martin Scorsese, David Fincher, Arnaud Desplechin, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Wes Anderson, James Gray, Olivier Assayas, Richard Linklater, Peter Bogdanovich, Paul Schrader, Mathieu Amalric (narrator). Archive Footage: Alfred Hitchcock, François Truffaut, James Stewart, Henry Fonda, Cary Grant, Anthony Perkins, Martin Balsam, Kim Novak, Tippi Hendren, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, Doris Day, Veronica Cartwright, Rod Taylor, Jessica Tandy, Montgomery Clift, Alma Reville. Director: Kent Jones. Screenplay: Kent Jones and Serge Toubiana. Book: François Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truffaut (originally released as Le Cinéma selon Alfred Hitchcock (The Cinema According to Alfred Hitchcock)). Web site. Trailer. The creative mind is something to behold. How it functions in realizing its goals is mesmerizing and, for many of us, mysterious. But understanding its workings need not be quite so inscrutable if we look at what drives it, the beliefs that emerge from our consciousness and that mobilize themselves for the materialization of the visions held within them. An examination of how this plays out as illustrated through the works of two legendary artists provides the focus of the compelling new documentary, “Hitchcock/Truffaut.” In 1962, filmmaker François Truffaut (1932-1984) was a rising star in the world of cinema, having directed a small but significant number of ...

Check out three new Conscious Cinema Reviews on the New Consciousness Review web site — “Fully Charged,” “The Physics of the Soul” and Time Is Art,” all available by clicking here ...

“Concussion” (2015). Cast: Will Smith, Alec Baldwin, Albert Brooks, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, David Morse, Arliss Howard, Mike O’Malley, Eddie Marsan, Paul Reiser, Hill Harper, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Richard T. Jones, Luke Wilson, Matthew Willig, Dan Ziskie, Sara Lindsey. Director: Peter Landesman. Screenplay: Peter Landesman. Magazine Article Story Source: Jeanne Marie Laskas, “Game Brain,” GQ magazine. Web site. Trailer. Even if it’s not always apparent, we all have a purpose in life. In some cases it will be patently obvious, while in others it’s about as seemingly unlikely as one can imagine. And it’s that latter scenario that provides the basis for the story line in the new fact-based sports drama, “Concussion.” When forensic neuropathologist Dr. Bennet Omalu (Will Smith) performs autopsies in the morgue of the Allegheny County Coroner’s Office, he treats his subjects with a sense of respect and dignity one might not expect in such a cold, clinical setting. The highly educated Nigerian-born immigrant even speaks to his “patients,” asking them to help him discover why they died, a sensitive, humane approach that goes beyond simply cutting open the victims’ bodies and performing calculated scientific analyses to find the answers behind their demise. Some of his colleagues, like co-worker Daniel ...