Money Monster

Money Monster (2016) takes place on a live financial television show. The host gives his viewers stock tips. A man who followed one of them and lost everything walks into the studio with a gun, straps a bomb vest onto the host and demands that the broadcast continue. The rest is a hostage crisis that is never taken off air. Jodie Foster directed. George Clooney plays the host, Julia Roberts the producer running him through his earpiece, Jack O'Connell the gunman. The story draws on a real event, the collapse of Cynk Technologies, a company with almost no assets whose stock reached a valuation in the billions before falling apart. It premiered at the 69th Cannes Film Festival on 12 May 2016 and opened in the United States the next day. It cost 27.4 million dollars and grossed 93.3 million worldwide. It runs 99 minutes. Good for: thrillers close to real time, media and finance satire, and films carried by three performers. Less good for: the critique of finance stays on the surface and lets the system off by blaming one bad man. The street scenes late on dissipate the enclosed tension the film spent an hour building.