That's Money, Honey

Is the finance bill real change or just reform porn?

In the hairy wilds of last summer's health care hysteria, it seemed even to fervent supporters like Obama was crazy to put health care in front of financial reform. But maybe he was just crazy like a fox.

Though there's been plenty of anger to go around since the Lehman Brothers implosion brought the economy crashing down. But there's been oddly little blame. Maybe it's because, after a decade marked by terrorist attacks and natural disasters, we assumed this was another blow that it was impossible to see coming, an image the financial industry was more than happy to promulgate.

So maybe it was wise to wait for the glaring red flags to sink in — Matt Taibbi coining the term "vampire squid" in his takedown of Goldman Sachs; revelations of Lehman Brothers' use of the Enron school of financial bookkeeping, and of course bonuses, bonuses, bonuses.

The civil suit filed against the S.E.C against Goldman and the subsequent leaked email of making stacks of cash while Rome burned seems pretty serendipitous as well. When Ben Stein wants financial regulation, you know you're onto something.

So now we have an election year in which the President is enacting major legislation and — unlike the health care debacle — the country overwhelmingly supports it. According to an ABC News poll just released, 65 percent of Americans back financial reform. The only demographic where this does not seem to be the case is among Senate Republicans, who may attempt to filibuster an attempt Monday to open the floor to debate on the financial services bill.

Hmmm... good luck with that, guys.

But before the merits of the bill take front page this week, may I humbly offer one addition? In addition to regulating the financial frat boys, let's oversee the overseers as well.

With new reports of how senior S.E.C. staffers were watching porn instead of watching the economy veer towards collapse, its not only obvious now that regulators were blind, but also how they got that way. The Associated Press lists one senior attorney at the SEC's Washington headquarters who watched eight hours of porn a day, downloading so much he not only filled up his hard drive but burned DVDs and kept them in boxes around his office.

Can one get any work done while consuming that much smut? A person only has so many hands.

So if potentially toothless regulation isn't the answer, what is? If only the financial industry could be forced to hire employees who are more averse to taking wild speculative risks with other people's money, and who aren't in the habit of watching hours of porn every day. Wouldn't that be effective reform.

Oh wait, such employees exist — they're called women.

Movie Review

Action-packed Kraven the Hunter showcases gritty Marvel antihero

Aaron Taylor-Johnson in Kraven the Hunter

Photo by Jay Maidment

Aaron Taylor-Johnson in Kraven the Hunter.

One of the oddest things about the blockbuster era we live in is that while Disney owns the rights to the majority of Marvel comic book characters, Sony Pictures owns the rights to Spider-Man and any affiliated characters. Since they’re sharing Spider-Man himself with Disney, Sony has been trying to capitalize on those rights by making stand-alone films using niche characters that only comic book fanatics would know.

Having exhausted Venom and whiffed on attempts with Morbius and Madame Web, they’re trying again with Kraven the Hunter. Also known as Sergei Kravinoff, Kraven (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is a self-styled vigilante who, as the film tells it, travels the world exacting vengeance on the truly bad people of the world. He’s the son of Nikolai (Russell Crowe), a hard-edged Russian oligarch, and brother to Dmitri (Fred Hechinger), who is relatively weak compared to the rest of his family.

The origin story has Kraven gaining his animal-like powers - including super-strength, speed, and jumping abilities - as a teenager from a mysterious serum given to him by a girl named Calypso (played as an adult by Ariana DeBose) after he was mauled by a lion. The two maintain a tenuous partnership as adults, with Calypso helping him hunt down other villains like Aleksei Sytsevich (Alessandro Nivola) and The Foreigner (Christopher Abbott).

Directed by J.C. Chandor and written by Richard Wenk, Art Marcum, and Matt Holloway, the film looks and feels enormously lazy, something made merely to hold on to potentially valuable intellectual property. Other than the tense family dynamic between the Kravinovs, little makes sense in the story. Kraven has an indecipherable moral code that has him going after poachers - because he’s part lion? - in addition to other high-powered criminals, with no clear goal except to … get back at his father?

The laziness extends to the action scenes, which feature Kraven being mostly impervious to any damage, whether it’s hand-to-hand combat, knives, or guns. The CGI-heavy scenes don’t even allow moviegoers to enjoy an R-rated bloody free-for-all, as all of the blood splatter is computer-generated, too. Since apparently one Spider-Man villain is not enough, three others make appearances with abilities that are under-explained and CGI that is poorly done.

That’s not even counting Calypso, another Spider-Man villain whose purpose in this film is nebulous at best. Her early connection with Kraven is so coincidental as to be laughable, and her continued reasons for helping him as an adult strain credulity as well. The only saving grace of her presence is that the filmmakers don’t try to shoehorn romance into the plot; perhaps they’re saving that for the (inevitable?) sequel.

Taylor-Johnson has had one of the most prolific-yet-anonymous careers in modern Hollywood, with appearances in big films like The Fall Guy, Bullet Train, and Tenet that have made very little impact. Even as the star here, he fails to hold your attention, with the story and visuals doing him no favors. DeBose has followed up her Oscar win for West Side Story with schlock like I.S.S., Argylle, and this, which doesn’t bode well for her career. At least Crowe gets to chew the scenery.

With a contractual inability to mention the name “Spider-Man,” movies like Kraven the Hunter exist in a weird area that forces filmmakers to make up stories for characters to which most people have no attachment. And just like Sony’s previous efforts, it is a very poor way to spend two hours in a movie theater; avoid at all costs.

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Kraven the Hunter opens in theaters on December 13.

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