99 Homes (2015)

Strong and Moving!

Admirable film.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

I thought the movie was put together really well, and the one thing you want a movie to do is keep you interested, and it does that all the way through.The down side, the last shot of the film was weak. The whole last scene was a little bit of a let down actually. Honestly, I didn't hate Karver the entire movie until he tried to get the paperwork changed. And to think a deal that big would be a bust because of one home is not realistic. There's a lot of unrealistic stuff, but it's a movie so it doesn't really matter.Casting Andrew Garfield as a day laborer, is pretty silly. He didn't even have a tan and stood among the other actors who really fit the profile.Overall I think it's a great movie to watch once and I would recommend it.

99 Homes follows a man who, after being evicted from his family home, ends up working with the man who evicted him to gain enough money to buy back his house. Whenever I hear people talk about Andrew Garfield's or Michael Shannon's greatest performances they fail to mention this movie, and it makes me wonder if they never saw it. Both leading actors are absolutely fantastic. These are easily some of these guys' best work. The rest of the acting is good, even from the children, but their roles are thankfully minor. The story itself is an interesting one. It's not often that somewhat mainstream movies about eviction get made, especially not ones about the guys who evict people. That was something I loved about this movie: it focuses on and humanizes these guys. Normally we would perceive people in this line of work as horrible people without compassion, but the reality is that it's a job that somebody has to do, whether you like it or not. It's shown to be a hard job that pays very well, and it makes the audience look at people in emotionally trying jobs like this in a different light. On top of that, the movie itself is very emotionally effective. The characters are people who have lost something dear to them, but it shows how the breadwinner of the family takes steps that he normally wouldn't for things he wouldn't do under normal circumstances. It portrays temptation on his part, something that everyone experiences. It becomes a moral battle for the main character, and I found myself flip-flopping between my own moral standing on the subject. When a movie manages to make the audience think and relate to the characters, I think at that point it has succeeded. If I have but one problem with the movie, it's the ending. Not the ending as a whole, but more the last shot. It wasn't great, and I wish there had been a bit more. Still, it was a pretty good place to end it off, so I can't complain too muchOverall 99 Homes is a really solid movie. The characters and acting are great, the story is engaging, and the subject matter makes the audience think about their own beliefs. In the end I would definitely recommend this movie.

The first half of this soul shaking melodrama about the horrors of the housing market in the wake of the 2008 economic meltdown is a devastating half a film. The long sequence where amoral, greedy but smart and coldly logical Michael Shannon oversees the forced eviction of Andrew Garfield and family from their long-time home that he plans to take and then flip is as chilling, cruel and hard to watch as anything in a torture porn film this year. And the very talented Ramin Bahrani even manages to make a slightly long-shot end of first act twist in the main character's behavior make sense.But the second half, while still well acted and intelligent, can't keep up with the power of the foundation that's been laid. The film starts to rely on coincidences and forced structure, and Shannon's villain starts to feel a bit too calculated and Snidely Whiplash – both too all- knowing and all powerful, and yet too dumb at the same time. After creating a topsy turvey world where it seems like anything might happen, we start to get a little ahead of the story, and can guess where the twists, betrayals and moral conundrums will be.But all that said, this is still a strong and important film. Mainstream movies that attempt to confront political and moral issues head-on are rare and valuable commodities, and if this isn't the home-run it seems destined to b at first, it's still a strong double off the back wall. Well worth seeing.

The film was as much about corruption as it was about the ordinary and unfortunate. The problem with the movie is that it took people who knew what they were doing (Nash) and people who were tricked (old guy), and tried to pretend that they're all the same and that they're all victims... They weren't. Some people didn't deserve to lose their homes, but some absolutely did. I think it was trying to show 'all sides' - but if you're going to do that, then you don't turn your realtor into a ruthless villain... It's like it wanted to be realistic, but at the same time take things to an extreme to maximise drama. Pick a lane!Shannon and Garfield are both great to watch, so the theatrics still make for great cinema even as they are sometimes ridiculously unbelievable. It's a good enough film as it is, so it's something poignant when it only makes you wonder how much better a REALISTIC film on the same subject would be!