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Thursday, April 2, 2020

Thursday Movie Picks #299: Seven Deadly Sins Edition - Greed



Hello there and welcome to Thursday Movie Picks a weekly series where you share your movie picks each Thursday. The rules are simple: based on the theme of the week pick three to five movies and tell us why you picked them. For further details and the schedule visit the series main page here.

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This week's Thursday Movie Picks is Seven Deadly Sins Edition - Greed

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Welcome back to the Seven Deadly Sins edition and today's theme is Greed. There's two options, money or power, I'm going for money and my picks today are two new watches and an old good one.

The Laundromat (2019)
This one is about the Panama Papers and tries to be like the Big Short where characters in the movie explain the financial world to us viewers but is less successful. Even though it attempts to be quirky it still ends up being so very dry. 95 minutes felt soo long.

American Made (2017)
This was quite entertaining. Drama with a little bit of comedy about an ambitious pilot who while on flying missions for the CIA in Central America meets the Medellin Cartel and ends up being a drug trafficker, gun smuggler and money launderer.

A Simple Plan (1998)
I haven't seen this in a long time and I remember it being very good and liking it. It's a dark tale about how a three people found money, decided to keep it and consumed by greed began to do everything they could to keep the money.

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12 comments:

  1. The only one of your picks I saw was The Laundromat and I hated it. Such a flop.

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    1. It was and what a waste with all the names attached to it.

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  2. With that cast I'm surprised The Laundromat blew right by me but it did. From the way you describe it doesn't sound like I missed much. I've heard of American Made but my tolerance for Cruise is small so I probably won't seek it out.

    A Simple Plan however is an excellent film and a perfect fit for the theme. Tremendously acted and well directed.

    My three are a bit of a theme within the theme since the first in some way served as the inspiration for the other two.

    Greed (1924)-Small town dentist John McTeague (Gibson Gowland) makes an enemy for life when he falls for his best friend Marcus’s (Jean Hersholt) girl Trina (ZaSu Pitts) and marries her. Unexpectedly Trina wins a $5000 lottery (equivalent to almost 80 thousand in current dollars) which turns the once docile and retiring woman into an obsessed miser leading to enormous tragedy for all three. Director Erich von Stroheim’s controversial epic was originally over nine hours long and for the few who saw it said to be a masterwork. MGM demanded cuts with various editors hacking it down to just over two hours and destroying the rest. It has been restored to 239 minutes through the use of existing elements but the original is lost.

    The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)-In Mexico wanderers Fred C. Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart) and Bob Curtin (Tim Holt) befriend old prospector Howard (director John Huston’s father Walter who won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar) and together they head to the Sierra Madre mountains to look for gold. They find treasure but it comes at a high price, first in the form of bandits roaming the wilderness but ultimately more so by the greed that consumes them. Though based on the B. Traven novel director Huston sited the ’24 Greed as a major influence.

    Greedy (1994)-Elderly tycoon Joe McTeague (Kirk Douglas) is surrounded by his family, a pack of greedy vultures that include Phil Hartman, Ed Begley, Jr. and Bob Balaban, all circling him looking to get their hands on his cash. Joe seeing through their machinations lets it be known he might leave his money to his nurse Robin (Nancy Travis). In an attempt to convince him they are sincere they find estranged grandson Daniel (Michael J. Fox) but that leads to more trouble than they counted on. The ’24 film is given a comic twist here.

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Haven't seen any of your picks.

      And yes, just skip The Laundromat.

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  3. I haven’t seen the first 2 but would like to see American Made. I saw A Simple Plan when it first came out and recall hating it but I should give it a second chance

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    1. A Simple Plan - Wow really...I think I've mostly seen only positive reviews of it, so yep probably give it a second try.

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  4. I haven't seen any of these but your first two picks are on my watchlist. I'm not sure I'll ever watch them though

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    1. Actually I would say, A simple Plan is the one to watch...the first two are completely skippable.

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  5. I haven't seen any of these.. man... I don't know if I would watch them either. :D

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    1. Aww that's too bad. I thought A Simple Plan was really good.

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  6. For some reason I haven't seen AMERICAN MADE yet. I should watch it one of these days, I mean what else is there to do nowadays than catching up on movies/tv?

    Hope you're staying safe and well!

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  7. Laundromat, i am sure its name is deduced from "Money Laundering" and I am surely gonna watch it. Just pray it is available on Netflix.

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