Cinemavenger

   The funniest, nastiest movie reviews anywhere.

Molly's Game

What is it about Molly's Game that has everyone lined up around the block to suck its dick?  Friends, family, crossing guards, the chick who cuts my hair, and total fucking strangers on the street - some still wiping Molly's jizz off their chins - can't stop screaming at me in paroxysms of praise.

There's a name for people like that:  fucktards.  I mean, I get it.  It's harder to find a good movie than a pregnant nun these days, so audiences go crazy for any flick that's not a completely shit-encrusted bag of assholes.  But that's like thanking the bully who steals your lunch money every day for tossing you the crust from a vending machine egg salad sandwich every once in a while.  It just ain't right.

Molly's Game acts like it's an underdog story.  It paints Molly Bloom (Jessica "Ass Stain" Chastain) as a scrappy heartlander beset on all sides by the iniquities of Hollywood hot shots and the federal government.  In reality, Molly is a highly intelligent, well-educated, White, upper-middle class, good-looking, almost Olympian overachiever from a family of psychologists, professors and actual Olympians.  She's as much of an underdog as the Asshole in Chief was when his daddy handed him a million bucks to buy his first building.

After falling ass backwards into running a $10,000 buy-in, back room poker game of the rich and famous, Molly swipes the game from her boss and grows it to $100K per player just to sit down at the table.  When that game gets swiped from her - irony anyone? - by a pissed off A-Lister (rumored to have been Tobey "Spider Pig" Maguire), Molly moves to NYC and sets up a high rollers-only poker biz with games every night of the week.

Not content with the millions she's already making off of tips, Molly starts taking a rake, a percentage of each game's action, which turns her legally grey area enterprise into an unequivocally illegal endeavor.  And she becomes a drug addict.  Then she gets caught and - surprise, surprise - the hot, rich, smart, White girl gets off with a slap on the wrist.

Worse than all that, Aaron (Mork From) Sorkin's big screen directing debut categorically refuses to shut the fuck up.  There are more words spoken in Molly's Game than in the entirety of human history leading up to it.  And it's two hours and twenty soul-punishing minutes long.  Fuck that!  Cinemavenger (cashing) out!

January 19, 2018