Nancy's Reads & Reels: 'Margin Call,' 'Puncture' and 'Iron Lady'

Talk about an overlooked movie -- Margin Call got very little notice from the general public.

We’ve been trying to understand the Wall Street part of the mortgage crisis for years and this movie tries to frame it in a fictional way.

Margin Call stars Kevin Spacey as Sam Rogers, the man who oversees the sales force selling bad securities, and when the bad news is uncovered he has to help figure out what to do about it.

Demi Moore plays Sarah Robertson who has been in on the scheme and ignored warnings about its outcome. Jeremy Irons as John Tuld the boss arrives in the dead of night, by helicopter, to deal with the crisis. Stanley Tucci as Eric Dale has just been downsized and his cell phone disconnected so he can’t be reached to advise his colleagues on what must be done to save them.

Puncture, based on a Texas lawsuit in the 1990s involving the introduction of retractable safety needles into hospitals, stars Mike Weiss as Chris Evans, a hungry personal-injury lawyer and drug user, and Mark Kassen as Paul Danziger, his responsible friend and partner.

The movie is supposed to be about a nurse who becomes infected with a needle while working in the hospital emergency room and a manufacturer of retractable needles that would stop such punctures, but the movie is more about a talented lawyer with a drug habit.

Puncture kept me interested but made me wonder about the true facts of the case as some rather startling allegations are made — plastic needles a cause of AIDS in Africa, and the corrupt medical equipment purchasing cartels that kept hospitals from using safety needles. Instead we are left to wonder how a drug-addicted lawyer found time to attend to his legal work. Might have worked better as a documentary.

The Iron Lady starring Meryl Streep is a “star vehicle,” as they say. The story of Margaret Thatcher told with her as an old lady hallucinating makes you wonder why the screenwriter decided to tell her story in this way. Jim Broadbent as her dead husband appears off and on in a disconcerting way. It took us a while to figure out that he was a product of her hallucinations.

Margaret Thatcher’s story and place in history is so interesting I wish it could have been told in a more coherent way. Iron Lady reminds us that at that time England had problems similar to those of today. I only remember her photo ops with Ronald Reagan.