Going in Style

Methinks there was a time when companies rewarded 40 years of hard work with a decent pension so their loyal workers could retire with dignity.

I suppose many companies still do assist dedicated workers after they've paid decades worth of dues, Michael Moore's Where to Invade Next and its cheerful examination of European generosity coming to mind, although I'm sure the practice isn't limited to Europe.

It's about community, family, friendship, trust, virtues which scurrilous executives working for the bad companies rapaciously exploit to line their own pockets with ill-gotten gains.

Dignity doesn't make any sense to them because they have none.

To put it bluntly.

Relatedly, I was thinking about Vancouver's housing market one day and the following thoughts came to mind. If someone lives in the community where he or she grows up and owns multiple properties which she or he rents out to his or her fellow citizens, it would be more difficult for them to exploit said citizens due to the strong communal bonds forged during a life worth living. I can't statistically verify the following, but I'm convinced this is why so many Québecois cities remain relatively affordable.

However, if the housing market was opened up to encourage international sales, wealthy foreigners who have no communal attachment to a city's people, unlike landed immigrants, could easily buy up property and start charging exorbitant rates because they have no cultural bonds with their renters.

It seems like if you ever want to own a house in Vancouver, you either have to earn a ballpark $250,000 a year, or hand your mortgage down to your children who would then eventually hand it down to their children and so on.

In other words, if you make 60K a year in Vancouver and buy a home, it's your grandchildren or great-grandchildren who will eventually pay off the debt, theoretically speaking, and some jerk from who knows where may have picked up a new jet meanwhile.

I know it's still hard to buy a house in Montréal but remember they are more affordable than those in Toronto or Vancouver. I haven't read a book covering this subject but I'm convinced it's because Québecers, begrudgingly or not, care more about one another collectively.

In Zach Braff's Going in Style, three elderly friends lose their pension and can no longer afford the rent or make mortgage payments as a result.

So they person-up and take ridiculous risks to make amends.

It's a bit too pom-pom and ding-dong for my tastes, but it does take a light look at the ways in which globalization is crushing some local communities.

While emphasizing the hopelessness of workers caught in such situations through recourse to absurd comedy.

And it's fun too watch agile screwed-over seniors rob a bank Robin Hood style, the same bank who grossly screwed them over.

Suppose it's not only international financial interests that buy up property and jack up the price so disposable incomes disappear.

There's still a local aspect to the global even if international agendas obscure regional concerns.

Has Christy Clark ever done anything to address Vancouver's housing crisis?

All I really know is that the killing of hundreds of wolves was authorized by someone in B.C while she was premier.

They'll be back.

I wonder if she cares about anything at all that isn't plus $250,000?

More often than once every 5 years.

Tragic.

Tower Heist

Was incredibly disappointed by Brett Ratner's Tower Heist. Generic films don't have to be terrible. If their writers try to at least create four or five unexpected witty provocative scenes wherein something distracting takes place they can be salvaged. But they have to hold our attention before they can affectively destream it. Tower Heist presents one boring mundane predictable scene after another, as if they were trying to mimic the aesthetic built into a swiffer wet jet ad in order to peddle jokes that make television's Whitney seem hilarious by comparison. It was like the inspiration behind this script was vacuuming or cleaning behind the fridge. Unmitigated stubborn concrete tedium disseminated by performances who are only noteworthy because they managed to successfully convince me that they were taking their work seriously, regardless of the fact that they must of wretched upon first reading over the material. There's one moment where Matthew Broderick at least looks as if he's aware that he's starring in an cup into which you spit but it's subtle enough for him to still be able to convince the powers that be that he's a team player.

I like films wherein rich assholes who steal from struggling workers are punished and I like that this happens in Tower Heist, but the execution is uniformly lacking in skill, insight and perspicacity, and the plot, racist in structure.

Don't be sucked in by the cast or the ads. Tower Heist isn't worth it and reminds me why I haven't wanted to see an Eddie Murphy film since Bowfinger.