Racing against a deadly fire

After the release of United 93 in 2006, there was little doubt that director Paul Greengrass knew how to create vivid, suspenseful movies based on real events. With The Lost Bus, Greengrass tells another reality-based  story, this one about a daring rescue that took place during the 2018 California Camp Fire which resulted in 85 deaths and caused massive destruction in the town of Paradise. Matthew McConaughey stars as Kevin McKay, a beleaguered school bus driver who's going through a bad patch. His 15-year-old son (McConaughey's real-life son Levi) maintains a sullen distance from his divorced father. Kevin’s mom (McConaughey's real-life other Kay McCabe McConaughey) is ill. Kevin struggles to get by financially and  often finds himself an odds with his boss (Ashlie Atkinson). But let's cut to the chase: Personal issues aside, the movie quickly pits Kevin against the raging fire. When panicky evacuation begins, Kevin agrees to transport a classroom full of elementary school children and their teacher (America Ferrera) to a safe place. Ferrera and McConaughey deal with upset children, gridlocked traffic, encroaching flames, and the prospect of failure — which will be lethal. The real stars of the movie are the special and digital effects team that create the terrifying fire. The Lost Bus isn't the deepest of dramas, and Greengrass doesn't spend much time on the electrical company that was held responsible for the blaze. But Greengrass and his team know how to hold attention. At its best, The Lost Bus tells a harrowing story of behavior under extreme stress.

Little guys want to get rich, too

   

      Some subjects don’t lend themselves to movies. The GameStop stock craze might be one of them. 

      Dumb Money — a movie about the short squeeze that hit GameStop stock in 2021— doesn't always clarify its complexities. The result: A lot of conversations about financial matters that aren’t likely to find a place in anyone's encyclopedia of great movie dialogue.

     Paul Dano plays Keith Gill, an obscure financial analyst who turned buying GameStop stock into a cause. With help from his YouTube channel, Gill created a legion of acolytes who followed his lead.

      The movie's supporting characters divide into small investors and big-time market movers. 

       The small fry struggle to outwit the big money and are represented by America Ferrara, as a single mom and hard-working nurse; Myha’la Harold and Talia Ryder, as college students who took a gamble; and Anthony Ramos, as a worker at a GameStop store.

      Director Craig Gillespie (I, Tonya and Cruella) sketches in several big-ticket investors: Vincent D’Onofrio plays hedge fund manager Steve Cohen; Nick Offerman appears as hedge fund manager Ken Griffin; and Seth Rogen portrays Gabe Plotkin, the financier who ran an investment company called Melvin Capital. 

     Sebastian Stan signs on as Vlad Tenev, a co-founder of  Robinhood, the trading app that became an important part of the saga.

     Gill comes closest to giving a scattered movie its center. We meet his wife (Shailene Woodley), his parents (Kate Burton and Clancy Brown) and his brother (Pete Davidson). Davidson provides comic flavor, adding a dose of cynicism and snark to the proceedings.

      Gillespie bolsters the movie’s authenticity with news clips, and uses graphics to show the net worth of each of the main characters perhaps to highlight major disparities between the rich and the wannabes.

        Dumb Money remains watchable, perhaps because it sweeps past us without worrying too much about dotting every "i'' and crossing every "t.'' You may want to do some googling about short squeezes or you simply can get the story's gist:  Based on their assessment that online purchases during a pandemic would push GameStop to the edge of bankruptcy, the Big Boys started short selling the stock. 

    The little guys kept buying, driving the stock price upward. Until trouble struck, the dumb money — Wall Street’s derogatory name for individual investors — seemed to be winning.

       Basing his movie on The Antisocial Network, a book by Ben Mezrich,  Gillespie gives the characters more quirks than depth.

         Gill calls himself Roaring Kitty and wraps a bandana around his forehead before positioning himself at his computer. He's also a compulsive runner.

       Cohen, who now owns the New York Mets, tosses food at the pet pig who shares his house, and Plotkin nervously juggles two homes while watching his investment company slide down the drain.

      But here’s the thing: These aren’t the most intriguing characters ever to reach the screen. The rich guys are pompous, callous and often avaricious. The little guys hope to better their lives. Everyone wants to emerge a winner.

        Sans an overriding  point of view, Dumb Money plays like a footnote to a larger story that's left untold. The movie asks us to root for the average folks without wondering why a nurse must struggle to pay her mortgage or why two college students at the University of Texas spend all their time thinking about money.

      Credit Dumb Money with generating a few laughs but the movie  doesn't leave us with much reason to invest additional thought in a story that rehashes yesterday's news.

Cesar Chavez unionizes farm workers

Cesar Chavez, a truncated bio-pic about one of the country's most famous labor organizers, offers a step-by-step look at the hard work of winning decent working conditions and reasonable wages for migrant laborers in California.

Director Diego Luna, who starred in Y Tu Mama Tambien and who previously directed a small movie called Abel, does a solid job of refreshing memories about Chavez's landmark efforts during the 1960s.

Working from a script credited to Keir Pearson and Timothy J. Sexton, Luna concentrates on the five years in which Chavez (Michael Pena) helped organize the workers who picked grapes for California wine growers.

After deciding he needed to be closer to the workers he was trying to help, Chavez moved his family to the agricultural town of Delano, Ca., and began the arduous work that resulted in the formation of the Farmer Workers Union.

Chavez and coworker Delores Huerta (Rosario Dawson) ultimately found themselves leading a lengthy strike, which the workers ultimately won.

The rest of the supporting cast doesn't make much of an impression. A grower named Bogdanovitch (John Malkovich ) becomes the movie's main bad guy. Wes Bentley makes a brief appearance as a lawyer who helps Chavez. We also see Robert Kennedy (Jack Holmes), who turned up to support Chavez during a 25-day hunger strike that he staged.

Please, a moratorium on actors playing Kennedys. It almost always a distraction.

Chavez's wife Helen (America Ferrera) proves a woman of independent spirit, and, at times, Chavez's devotion to the farm workers causes him to spend less time with his oldest son than he'd like.

Pena portrays Chavez as a regular guy who believed in non-violence and who had no doubt that the farm workers were being exploited. His convictions seem almost inbred, an inseparable part of his being.

At times, Cesar Chavez can feel too routine, and the use of news footage doesn't do much to expand the movie's reach. We don't learn much about Chavez's eight children, and if Chavez had deep personal failings, the movie isn't interested in finding them.

Still, Cesar Chavez is represented as a tireless leader who wrought major changes and whose story deserves to be told. Viewed as an expansion of the voices represented in American movies, I'd call it a start. Let's hope it's not the finish.