VOD/DVDebut: Joey Kuhn's gay & heavily Madoff-themed love story, THOSE PEOPLE

A bunch of entitled white kids -- the center of which is the gay son of a Madoff-like do-badder -- flail around for 89 minutes, finding and losing love and other important things, in a movie that hits VOD and DVD this coming week and, despite its occasional fondness for melo-drama, manages to take us in and warm our crooked little hearts. Written and directed by Joey Kuhn, THOSE PEOPLE, thanks to its gifted cast and Mr. Kuhn's generally smart filmmaking, sucks us into Manhattan's sleazy, white-bread upper-crust (mostly gay variety) and allows us to observe and maybe even identify a bit.

Kuhn, pictured at left, tells the story of Sebastian (Jason Ralph, above and below, right), the son of a recently convicted and imprisoned Wall Street finagler, and his long-time best-friend, Charlie (Jonathan Gordon, above and below, left), who is also gay but not nearly as well-off. These two have long had a "thing" for each other but thanks to class difference, the closet, and a few other reasons, have managed to avoid hot sex.

One evening as they and their friends frequent a gay piano bar, Charlie connects haltingly with the piano player, a Middle-Eastern fellow (Haaz Sleiman, shown below and at bottom) who is clearly smitten with the kid.

Drama, sometime melo, ensues, as this threesome goes back and forth, back and forth, trying to come to terms with just who it is that Charlie really, truly loves.

Tagging along are the group's hangers-on, a nice bunch of kids (shown above and below, surrounding our heroes) just trying to keep up with the Joneses. The dialog is often smart and real, and the characterizations are well-drawn, by both the writer and the actors, even if a little too much exposition occasionally rears its head. Kuhn's generous use of Gilbert & Sullivan also adds a good deal of enjoyment to the proceedings.

Mostly, Kuhn avoid out-and-out melodrama, except toward the finale when the movie for one scene in particular, goes out of control. Happily, the filmmaker soon reins it in and the finale graces us with a quieter, gentler tone. "That was sweet," my spouse opined, as the end credits rolled, and I could not agree more.

Those People, after a very limited theatrical release from Wolfe Releasing, makes its VOD and DVD appearance via Wolfe Video this coming Tuesday, June 14 -- for rental or purchase.

"Mainstream" movie of the year: Adam McKay's important and marvelously entertaining THE BIG SHORT

Having seen only a handful of the usual mainstream contenders for Best Picture "Oscar," TrustMovies is in no position to weigh in officially. Of everything he's seen so far, however, THE BIG SHORT -- Adam McKay's adaptation of Michael Lewis' seminal non-fiction account of a few smart "money" guys who saw the financial collapse coming -- is by far the most important film of the year. It is also among the most entertaining.

Yes, Spotlight is equally riveting and is also about something very important. But I would suggest that the subject of McKay's movie (the filmmaker is pictured at left) -- the 2008 worldwide financial collapse -- is even more important than the Catholic Church's long-running parade of sexual-predator priests. Why? Because what caused that financial collapse affects many more of us and is still going on, to the horrific detriment of America's (and most of the world's) poor and middle class -- to everyone, in fact, except the wealthy. It is most responsible for the widening gap between the rich and the rest of us, and the movie points this up like nothing we've so far seen, and does so in a manner to make us laugh, sure, but then grow very, very angry. All over again.

Both films sport crackerjack casts, and each director draws terrific a performance from every actor. But because The Big Short features a number of characters who are not a little bizarre, this makes for some sublimely entertaining performances, especially from Christian Bale, (below), Steve Carell (above, with his hand up, in one of the film's pivotal scenes) and Ryan Gosling (shown two photos below, center right, facing Mr. Carell).

Each actor is superb, though never "showy," at literally every moment in which he appears on screen. And McKay makes the most of them, as well as of his very fine supporting cast.  This is, by the way, a very "male" movie -- as is, of course, the Wall Street/Banking sector of our society.

Women, with very few exceptions, are peripheral to this business, and how Mc Kay uses them here cannot be unintentional. Marisa Tomei is that stand-by-your-man wife; Melissa Leo the blinkered career woman, and, in his most talked-about touch, explanatory guides Margot Robbie (in a bubble bath) and Selena Gomez (at a casino table) are right out of your typical James Bond movie.

The story that McKay and Lewis (along with co-adaptor Charles Randolph) offer up is not the easiest one to follow, unless you've already followed that financial collapse with some acuity. But these guys make it about as easy to access, as possible, considering. And they make it surprisingly fun and funny, as well -- even if the laughs are often at our own expense. The scene with one of the "enablers" (Byron Mann, above, left) toward the film's conclusion is a humdinger indeed.

At 130 minutes, this Short is not short, but there's not a boring moment in the whole shebang. In fact, things seems to grow ever more important, appalling and entertaining as the film builds to its suspenseful (even though of-course-we-know-what-happened) conclusion. (Above are, left and right, Finn Witrock and John Magaro as relative newbies on the big-time financial block.)

The movie is a call to action -- of some sort, at least. Republicans will do all they can to discredit it, but I'm afraid the cat is out of the bag. Wall Street and the Banks are not just corrupt; they are uber-corrupt. And so are our politicians for allowing this greed and stupidity to flourish. (Above: Billy Magnussen and Max Greenfield as two slimey and unrepentant sub-prime mortgage brokers.)

I have to admit that nothing in the past career of Mr. McKay would have given me an idea that he could bring us a movie this important -- and at this level of film smarts. Well, I know now. And I am duly impressed. The manner in which he occasionally breaks the "fourth wall" and how he handles those explanatory moments are sophisticated marvels of making the most of what needs to be done.

TrustMovies is also rather amazed that Paramount -- a Viacom company, hello -- released the film, but I am grateful that it has. Whatever The Big Short does or does not achieve come awards time, this wake-up call will have reached millions in the coming months and millions more when it finally arrives on video and digital.  If you can't wait till then, just know that it is worth the price of a theatrical admission -- and then some.
Click here to learn where you can view it now. 

Jeff Prosserman's new doc CHASING MADOFF will make you angry, very angry

Shockingly enough, CHASING MADOFF is a more important film, even, than Inside Job. Not a better film, mind you -- Charles Ferguson knows what's he doing very well -- but a movie that is more timely, clearly focused and so anger-provoking that I think the American public (should it bother to see the film, of course) might actually be able to get its mind far enough around what has happened to work itself into a frenzy and finally demand some action from our so-called leaders.

Writer/director/
producer Jeff Prosserman (at left) chooses some pretty intensive, melodramatic graphics to begin his film -- blood, money, an apocalyptic fire -- but it turns out these are all appropriate in their way. (One player here comes to a bloody, suicidal end, and I am not talking about Madoff's son.) But Prosserman also piles on some would-be suspense at question-able times: For all his sleazy, criminal activity Madoff was never known to be a violent man, out for blood.

Yet our hero, the documentary's leading man Harry Markopolos, evidently felt his and his family's lives were in danger. Perhaps from the extended members of the Madoff business family that made up this vast and particularly nasty conspiracy but certainly not from Bernie or his own extended family.  And make no mistake, the Madoff ponzi scheme was indeed a conspiracy, entered into by major American and international businesses and, it would seem, our own government, that protected it for far too long and, as usual, at the expense of investors, rather than those who took their investments.

If you followed the Madoff debacle (Bernie is shown above) at all, you will have heard of Mr. Markopolos and how he tried, for nearly a decade, to alert the proper authorties to the fraud going on. What you will learn from this riveting movie is how he did this, what happened, who helped (and hindered) him and why. His team is made up of some very interesting, even charismatic people, and his antagonists turn out to come from an unexpected venue. In fact, the SEC make probably the most hissable villains in any film this decade. By the end of these fast-moving 91 minutes, as angry as you may be at Mr. Madoff, you'll probably be ready to change the film's title to Chasing The SEC. Oh, wait: That'll be the sequel, once we thow out the current crop of sleazy politicians and vote in a new crowd. Oh, wait some more: That'll never happen until all the voters, rather than only the rich and coporate, can elect their representatives.

Chasing Madoff, from the Cohen Media Group, opens today in New York and elsewhere around the country. For a complete listing of theaters and playdates, click on the Cohen link above, then click on the film itself and then on THEATERS AND PLAYDATES.