jeff ma - Weekend Box Office: Thrilling Blackjack & Diamond Capers, Dreadful Anti-Iraq Flick From MTV

March 28th, 2008 · No Comments

jeff ma -

This weekend’s new releases are a study in contrasts–this year’s two best movies–”21″ and “Flawless”–and one of its worst, “Stop-Loss.” Due to a movie-screening conflict, I was unable to review, “Run, Fat Boy, Run” (will try to see and review it later). “Superhero Movie” was not screened for critics, a sign that it’s probably a dud.

* “21“: Whether or not you like–or approve–of gambling, you will like this movie. It has a moral message. And, regardless, it’s a fun, entertaining, non-political adventure. It’s getting panned by most critics, but I loved it–one of the year’s two best, so far.

Based on the novel, “Bringing Down the House,” about Jeff Ma and some fellow M.I.T. students, it’s the story of how the students count cards at the blackjack tables at Vegas casinos. While Ma says that card-counting only increases your chances at winning in blackjack by 3%, that 3% makes a big difference. In the movie, we watch students organized by their cunning professor (Kevin Spacey) making hundreds of thousands of dollars a pop. But it comes with a price.

In the movie, there is no Jeff Ma. Instead, Jim Sturgess, a British actor, plays a working-class MIT student who can’t figure out a way to pay for Harvard Medical School. After he’s discovered to be a whiz at numbers Spacey and his students, including the beautiful Kate Bosworth, recruit Sturgess.

Soon, he blows off his nerdier MIT friends for trips to Vegas and big money, which will pay for med school. But he soon discovers that professor Kevin Spacey is a vindictive, violent creep. Far-leftist Spacey’s real-life love-fest with Venezuela’s nutty dictator, Hugo Chavez, definitely came in handy for the thug he plays.

It’s really more of a caper movie than a movie about gambling. I enjoyed it a lot.

* “Flawless“: This is another caper movie and also one of the year’s two best. It takes place in 1960’s London, where Demi Moore plays a bright American executive at “Lon Di,” the London Diamond Corporation–Europe’s largest diamond broker. The only woman executive in a world of males, she is passed over for promotion after promotion, even though she is more qualified. Soon, she learns from the building’s janitor, Michael Caine, that she will be fired. Moreover, the company has poisoned the well against her, as she tries to look for another job
Source: jeff ma - Weekend Box Office: Thrilling Blackjack & Diamond Capers, Dreadful Anti-Iraq Flick From MTV