99 Homes

source: 99 Homes

So this was literally the most cringeworthy movie I have seen in a long time (rated 7.1 at the time). I have no idea how this rating is so high. The movie is about this scruffy fuccboi that's like 20 years old and somehow he has a 13 year old son and lives with this son and his 40 year old milf mom. It's 2008 and everyone is getting foreclosed on in this Florida neighborhood and one day this big bad man comes and forecloses on this ugly family. Ure supposed to feel bad apparently. I'm not gonna roast the rest of the plot its ratchet enough as it is. Literally there was not a single realistic part in the movie. From the ridiculous evictions to the family abandoning him for no reason (like how tf is the mom and son gonna be poor as sh*t one minute and then get all arrogant and reject living in a mansion) and then that standoff wtf!!!! The whole time the scruffy guy is having these heartwrenching internal conflicts, I swear to god half the movie his face is like a little crying baby. The director and screenwriter need to both kill themselves smfh

I'm a huge fan of filmmaker Ramin Bahrani, and I found his latest offering a searing and powerful film. Set in Florida, in 2010, at the height of the foreclosure crisis and the Great Recession, this can be a most difficult movie to watch at times, not only due to the heart- rending subject matter, but also due to Bahrani's incredible way of presenting the stark reality of the human condition and human behavior. The superb actor Michael Shannon is perfectly cast as Rick Carver, the corrupt and cold-hearted real estate broker, who for the past three years has been getting rich by specializing in the foreclosure field. Unfortunately, many of his tactics including documentation fraud, and the short shrift given to homeowners in the courts, are not fiction but have been freely documented in the past. Another fine actor Andrew Garfield co-stars as Dennis Nash, a financially struggling construction worker who's being evicted by Carver from his childhood home, along with his mother Lynn (Laura Dern) and his young son Connor (Noah Lomax). In his desperation to save his home, he ends up taking a job from Carver, which will propel him into Carver's sleazy and corrupt world. It will all spiral down into a most dramatic finale. In summary, director Bahrani and co-writer Amir Naderi, and led by the performances of Shannon and Garfield, have given us another very strong drama, difficult to watch at times, but, in my opinion, definitely worth staying with.

The movie starts out well, and the first eviction scene will leave you shaking in your boots imagining your family and belongings getting foreclosed and tossed into the street. I can't think of another film that focuses on the eviction process so intensely. You're better skipping the end of the movie (after the scene with the old man). The last forty minutes of the film are not satisfying at all, and just gets dumb with characters acting more and more ridiculously. In the beginning of the movie, many of the characters act over the top for the sake of dramatic tension, but it it gets to be too much towards the end.

This film tells the story of a hard working builder who gets unemployed, and hence cannot keep up with the mortgage payments and is subsequently evicted. Stars align themselves and his fortune is reversed when he is offered a job by the man who evicted him from his home. "99 Homes" has an intense beginning that absorbs me into the story. The circumstances it portrays is very real and relevant to people in lower income brackets, and their pain of losing their homes is piercingly recreated. I feel so sorry for Dennis because he appears to be such a hard-working, honest and amicable guy. As the story progresses, he is faced with various moral dilemmas. The story is captivating, and it's helped by the intensity of the marvellous performances of Michael Shannon and Andrew Garfield. It is a very good and thought provoking film, that leaves me wondering about the rights and wrongs of Rick and Dennis.

99 Homes (2014) *** (out of 4) An unemployed father (Andrew Garfield) loses his home through a foreclosure but soon he starts working for real estate agent Rick Carver (Michael Shannon) who just happens to be the man who evicted him from his home. Pretty soon the man is learning how to make major cash but soon he begins having mixed emotions on his job of evicting people. Ramin Bahrani co-wrote and directed this rather powerful and thought-provoking film that deals with the market crash of 2008. While everything here is very much fictional the director certainly gets his message across with some very realistic drama. It also doesn't hurt that you get two very good performances including one that ranks among the best of the year. I will say that there are some flaws in the movie including the fact that the film pretty much is heroes and villains. I say this meaning that the entire foreclosure plot isn't really dealt with in a fair way but the point of the movie was to show how corrupt people can corrupt an already corrupt system. Some of the best moments in the movie deal with people being told they can no longer stay in their homes and these are the moments that work the best in the movie. Bahrani does a very good job at keeping you caught up in the story being told, although the entire greed angle is something we've seen several times before. The cinematography, music score and all the technical stuff is quite good. Of course, it's the performances that make the film so memorable with Garfield turning in his best work to date. He has a lot of emotions to play here and perfectly nails them. Both Laura Dern and Clancy Brown are good in their small roles as well. With that said, the real star is once again Shannon who is remarkably cold as the snake Realtor who determines that his money is worth more than anyone's feelings. Again, there are some very powerful moments in the film but the simple greed plot line kinda wore out towards the end of the picture. Still, it's technically very well-made and features a terrific performance by Shannon, which makes it worth watching.

'99 homes' could have been an interesting film, a dramatic take on the foreclosure crisis that struck Florida after the financial crisis of 2008. But it's a hard story to dramatise, and the movie fails to offer us clarity on what was actually going on. There's a film that could have been made, for example, about the harshness of capitalism, a system that produces winners and losers, but also a system that has been quite effective in raising living standards as a whole. There's a film about how unscrupulous people exploit gaps in the law to profit off other's misfortune. And there's also a story how the only way the poor may have earn a living is to perpetuate the very system that restricts the options of people like themselves. But trying to tie the three together into a single dramatic narrative gives us a story that is just too neat to be credible: a man loses his home, finds work evicting others, and is even offered the chance to become rich himself (for reasons that do not seem altogether persuasive) by the exploitative businessman who hires him. Yet overall the film is the poor attack on capitalism: what are we supposed to do, let people stay live in houses they can't pay for, just because someone once (wrongly) gave them an out-sized mortgage? Refuse to take the only jobs that will feed our families because we suspect our boss is a shark? The personalised moral conundrums presented by the film are in fact poor illustrations for the mundane dilemmas of life. Capitalism is a system, with its own resilience and (short of deciding to ferment violent revolution) the relationship between an individual's choices and the shape of society is indirect and obscure. I found it hard to understand what the take-home message of this movie was supposed to be, except that there are fundamentally good guys, and bad ones, in the world – which doesn't really provide much insight into how systems can go wrong, and destroy the lives of the individuals who participate in them in the process.

To really understand what US free economy is capable of! Like a punch in the stomach especially for Europeans! We mostly have a false (PINK) image of American society! I Think Europeans ( I as for one) are lucky to be born on this side of the Ocean! Unluckily (commercial) distribution was strict to show it in European Theatres. Thanks to TV, on demand or DVD people SHOULD watch it at any cost! Direction and actors were FANTASTIC!!! A "pleasant" punch in the belly to confront ourselves with Modern Society!

'99 HOMES': Four Stars (Out of Five) Intense drama flick, about an unemployed single father; who's forced to work for the ruthless businessman, who evicted his family from their home. The movie stars Andrew Garfield, Michael Shannon and Laura Dern. It was directed by Ramin Bahrani (who also helmed 2012's 'AT ANY PRICE') and it was written by Bahrani, Amir Naderi and Bahareh Azimi. The film was dedicated to the late film critic Roger Ebert. I found it to be politically insightful, and very involving. Garfield plays a single father, named Dennis Nash. Nash is also a recently unemployed construction worker (in Orlando, Florida), who's struggling to keep a roof over his family's heads; which is also the home he grew up in. When Nash, and his self employed hairdresser mother (Dern), can't make their house payments, they're evicted. An unsympathetic real estate agent, named Rick Carver (Shannon), kicks the two, and Nash's son (Noah Lomax), out on the street. Out of desperation, Nash goes to work for Carver; and reluctantly starts evicting other struggling families, from their homes. The movie is the perfect social analysis; of what people had to go through, during the 2007 housing market crash. It's also a great examination, of what's wrong with capitalism today (and why we desperately need Bernie Sanders, for our next President). Garfield and Shannon (who was nominated for a 'Best Supporting Actor' Golden Globe, for his performance) are both outstanding in the film; and Bahrani's script, and direction, are both decently effective. The movie is nerve racking, and heartbreaking. It's definitely one to see. Watch our movie review show 'MOVIE TALK' at: https://youtu.be/j9uf6E4pnlw

This film is infuriating and heartbreaking all at the same time, and it should be. Very naturalistic acting and a "ripped from the headlines" story coalesce to give one of the most scathing indictments of what the "American Dream" has become that I've seen a long while. Granted, a few liberties were taken with certain elements (possibly Michael Shannon's characterization), but on the whole, 99 HOMES feels like a fairly accurate representation of what went down when the housing bubble burst 8-10 years ago. And, to a certain extent, things haven't really changed all that much. The story revolves around Andrew Garfield's character, a single father who is evicted from his home. Through circumstance, he comes to work for the man who evicted him (Michael Shannon), and he gets an opportunity to see how the other half lives. But, will he able to live with himself now that he's doing to others what was so callously done to him? While there is an immediacy and current relevancy to the story being told here, at its heart is a rather strong moral argument against what the "American Dream" has become (or at least our perception of it). I was reminded of Oppenheimer's famous quote about the atomic bomb, except with a few words changed. "War" becomes "greed" and instead of destroying "worlds," it destroys lives, reputations, relationships, i.e., all of the intangible things that make the world go 'round. All that separates greed from ambition is motivation and insensitivity to the needs of all others but your own. Other people become a means to your own end. It was fascinating to watch Michael Shannon and Andrew Garfield (who I've never seen better) go to work with such a riveting story on a subject that may have more than a few people second-guessing themselves. The only things which worked against the film, in my opinion, were the initial coincidence that leads Andrew Garfield to work for Michael Shannon, and a final act twist which, although not bowing in deference to cynicism, still felt a little unrealistic given all that came before it. All things considered, 99 HOMES is a powerful film which should be seen by all, if only to raise one's awareness.