Hancock

For an immortal being, Hancock is one sorry bastard. If I'd been around for the last 3,000 years, I would've spent at least some of that time building and maintaining a good portfolio, so I could sit on my ass and drink Mojitos in the Bahamas when I didn't want to fight "crime."

And speaking of crime, let's give a hand to the slew of recent superhero movies and their inability to address any ethical issue beyond bloodthirsty violent crime. You guys leave a lot of legroom for freewheeling white-collar "investors" like myself. Let me be the first to thank you, Hollywood, for turning a blind eye to other so-called modern "moral issues," like the environmental and human rights violations in my business's factories in Myanmar. No kidding I'm thankful--I'm getting rich hand over fucking fist because of it.

Okay, back to the film. Our eponymous hero is your typical poverty-stricken, Obama-supporting, Black Panther welfare king, spending his money on bottles of Old Jim Whiskey (OLW: 1.20) and basically boozing around the clock. On the bright side, though, he doesn't get hurt and doesn't age, much like Ann Coulter. Opposite Hancock is the do-gooding, whiny-ass liberal Ray Embrey (Jason Bateman), a PR guy who has stupidly devoted his life to encouraging corporations to donate to charity. Memo to Ray: Capitalism doesn't need your goddamn help. We already commit regularly to the greatest charity of all: The Free Fucking Market.

I thought there was going to be some toothy moral about a poor black man rising out of poverty or some shit, but thankfully the directors had some sense in them and avoided this route. The movie gets confusing after the middle, and turns into typical fantasy shlock, but redeems itself in the end when Hancock stops his alcoholic ways and repents to the Gods of the Free Market by turning the moon into a huge corporate logo. I am not even fucking kidding you. My group has been trying to get adspace up there for years. We could really use a superhero who fights in the name of marketing, like Hancock.

RATING: $$$ (3 USD / 5 USD)
BUY: Dasani (KO: 53.14), Old Jim Whiskey (OLW: 1.20)
SELL: your inhibitions about plot cohesion

Wall-E

What kind of Al Gore-loving Hollywood pinko ever approved this fucking piece of Marxist trash? To start with, why, just look at the titular robot. See those sad, sagging camera-eyes and rusted metal frame? He's filthier than the emo-loving guitarist scumbag that my daughter took to Exeter's prom. In fact, Wall-E himself is a trash bot! That's right, that little robo-scumbag probably turned to a career in trash collection when he, too, couldn't get into Robot Harvard, and neither Wall-E nor my daughter's emo fag can ever expect anything good in life now.

Let's get started on the plot, which Al Gore and John Kerry probably collaborated on with Disney and Whole Foods Market. (By the way, DIS 31.64--sell this piece of trash now if you have any sense in you.) A rogue hippie robot is left on a deserted planet to clean up the trash by himself (he gets his energy from solar--how California is that?). We slowly unravel the story through the subtext: Earth got too polluted, man moved to resort spaceships far away until it got nice again, yadda yadda yadda. What a delusional warmist fantasy. Everyone on Wall Street knows global warming is another leftist lie to get humans to stop exercising our fundamental right to consume, consume, consume. Consume.

Even if global warming is as bad as some say, I'm sure we'll be able to rely on private R&D to come up with some solution before we ever have to move off the planet. Unfortunately, Wall-E tramples on this notion, as in their future, no human ever works a job, and instead sleeps, eats, and rides around all day on their hovercrafts drinking sodas and watching TV. This all thanks to the mega-corp Buy & Large, which, in the film, seems to be the only visible logo throughout, and evidently owned half the planet before divesting and sending mankind into space. (Memo to investors: These guys got the best product placement I've seen in ages. Buy BNL stock [BUNL: 45.87] now. Sell before 2100.) Large advertisements for the company are visible everywhere in the film, along with flashing billboards that say "ECONOMY!" in the ship's bay. It reminds customers what they're contributing to, I guess? Seems like a good idea. Perhaps this might convince Americans to open their wallets more. Imagine large "ECONOMY!" billboards splattered every few yards in Time Square, between the other ads. It makes me feel patriotic just thinking about it. (Note to self: look into buying adspace in Times Square.)


Yet if you take a closer look, this fantastical vision isn't even the capitalist utopia. Nope--it's the communist utopia. But what else would you expect from Walt "Marx" Disney and Steve "Hussein" Jobs? (owner of AAPL: 159.88. Sell IMMEDIATELY). Think about it--no one in Wall-E's delusional sci-fi future ever WORKS. Unless they're living off inheritances, this is not cool. I certainly didn't see any poorhouses on this space resort, which serve a healthy function in any society, that being to punish those lazy fucks that refuse to contribute to said society.

Yeah, so this movie is somehow suggesting that humans would move off the planet someday if it gets too trashed? No shit! That's the whole fucking point of economics--you gotta do what's cost effective, follow the market! If we leave this shithole for the hippies and immigrants to clean up, good riddance--I already got prime property on the moon with a great fucking view of Terra Firma. Hell, maybe with less gravity, it'll be easier for the riot police to drop-kick the fucking worker's rights protesters--like the ones that keep popping up like zits at my company's factory in Burma.

Furthermore, when it comes to this idea of the earth getting too trashed, I just can't stand environmental themes. The so-called "environment" is just another leafy, boring idea that gets in the way of progress. Fuck, I try to avoid vegetables and fruits as much as possible--why the hell should I care about Nature? The environment is one of those disorderly, messy things we learned years ago to write off as another "externality." I slave away all day screaming into my Blackberry, playing golf and banging the maid. Why should I care about something that raises gas prices and tells me not to drive my Escalade? You show me an environmentalist and I'll show you an insecure bastard who turned to environmentalism when he found out he wasn't shit as a businessman. Fuck Wall-E the robo-Mexican and fuck this liberal trash. Don't show this to your kids if you don't want them to end up like Tipper Gore.

Rating: $ (1 USD/5 USD)
Divest from: Apple, Disney
Buy: Buy 'N Large (BUNL: 45.87) for long-term

Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull

It's hard for me not to like a movie about a guy named after a red state. Then again, it's hard for me to like a movie where the main character doesn't desire the spoils of his labors. Does the American Dream mean nothing to these fools? Granted, it's about on par for those pinkos Spielberg and Lucas.

To be honest, I'm not sure what drives Indiana Jones to do all these crazy stunts. Apparently, he's some sort of professor, so he's not motivated by cash or something. (I can't say I relate.)

At the very least he seems to love pussy and cars as much as I do. It don't get much more American than that!

I can't say I understood much more of this film in any context, other than that Indy spent most of the film running from shit and chasing after some piece of oversized jewelry. I am on the board at De Beers, so I can sort of relate with the mission statement. But when it turned out that this jewelry was actually cursed–well, actually, as a De Beers board member, I can relate to that too. Aw, goddamnit, now I'm gonna have our third-quarter loss prediction revision on my mind for the rest of the night. Fuck this film.

Rating: $$ 1/2 (2.5 USD / 5 USD)
Buy: De Beers (DBB), Indy® Whips Inc (IWI)

Iron Man

What warm-blooded stock broker wouldn't love a movie starring a high-powered capitalist? Billionaire Tony Stark is a real American hero. He's a war profiteer who loves cars, gadgets, pussy, and fast food cheeseburgers. Best of all, like the best of capitalists, he's quite literally heartless! Milton Friedman must be saluting the flag from his fucking grave.

This movie begins with Tony Stark, a freedom-loving MIT graduate (unlike most of the Marxist pinko bastards that come out of Cambridge) showing off his company Stark Industries' (STK 75.51) newest missiles to the American government in the terrorist hotbed of Afghanistan. There's a couple badass explosions involved, and a few free market-haters get their asses kicked, but not before the Arabs manage to kidnap Stark and force him to build his Jericho missile for them. But instead of building it, he builds a motherfucking suit and beats the shit out of those Osama motherfuckers. Free Market: 1. Terrorism: 0!

The message here is clear: Tony Stark/Iron Man/America is the motherfucking pinnacle of techno-capitalist invention. If you want your kids to grow up big and rich, like me, pack 'em in the Hummer and take 'em to see this shit. In one scene, we see Iron Man save a bunch of starving Afghanis from a group of jihadi motherfuckers. Them A-rabs cheers him as he flies away. The subtext is obvious here, folks: America is the fucking Freedom-Giving Bomb-diggity. Paging Ayn Rand: Your vision is complete--Tony Stark IS Motherfucking Howard Roark, and he's not raping Dominique Francon. He's raping Terrorism.

And then when Tony Stark uses his American brilliance to invent his way out of the cave, defeating the terrorists, and goes back to America and the first thing he wants is a Burger King (BKC 26.88) cheeseburger, I was so full of goddamn patriotic pride and shit that I had to leave the theater to call my broker and tell him to buy 10,000 shares immediately.

Message: American CFOs like Howard Stark are motherfucking badass, ergo America is motherfucking badass, ergo the goddamn jihadi motherfuckers in Afghanistan can't live without our damn help. Those whateverastanis should be thankful they've got America on our side, lest Iron Man fly over and lay a smack down on their sorry asses. Really, Iron Man is just glorified symbolism for the American Military-Industrial complex, and hence a big fuck-you to pussyfooted multilateralists and isolationists like Eisenhower and Chomsky.

Now that I think about it, this is the kind of film I think I'd really like to see with Michael Bloomberg, or Ronald Reagan, or even Dick Cheney. I can just see the old bastard Cheney sobbing in ecstasy at the sight of a modern Halliburton Hero like Tony Stark kicking the collective Ass of the Enemies of the Free Market.

Next, we see the Stark Industries company takeover actualized with a physical battle between Stark and company CEO Obadiah Stane, dressed in full ass-kicking (American-mined) iron/titanium regalia. This is where the movie got a little too "moral transformationy" for my Rich Ass. Here, the CEO (Stane) attempts to off Stark from the board by trying to kill him, while Stark plays Mr. Passive Nonviolent. Hold on, Stane, real capitalists don't do it like that. We just smear our enemies in the tabloids and tempt them with paid hookers. Murder's a bit too much of a liability, especially when it's carried out in person by the guy who wants to off you. At the very least hire a hit man to do the job. Didn't he see Michael Clayton?

Rating: $$$$ 1/2 (4.5 USD / 5 USD)
Product Placement: Burger King, Audi, 7-11
Invest in: Burger King (BKC 26.88), Stark Industries (STK 75.51), Halliburton (HAL 45.89)