Review of 99 Homes (2015) by Kyle B — 06 Oct 2015

One of the most remarkable movies of 2015 so far. Never has a movie about the economy struggles of recent times ever been so well done with powerful and heart wrenching scenes that are so convincing it makes you feel like you are watching a documentary.

Andrew Garfield is one of my favorite actors and this was a wonderful showcase of his talents. Though he was great in the Spiderman movies, this is a great reminder of what dynamic and emotional work he is capable of like we saw in The Social Network.

He gives this character so much compassion and really speaks for all of the viewers if they were in his shoes with the concept of morality that is an overall theme to this movie. Michael Shannon has been a huge force in the indie world this decade so far with many critics going as far to saying he is one of the best actors working today.

I liked Shannon but never felt that but with this performance, I can see why people say such a thing. He is so devious in this role reminding me a lot of Michael Douglas' performance as Gordon Gekko in another economy based movie, Wall Street.

Shannon gives one of the best supporting actor performances of the year. Laura Dern is also fantastic as always giving us some of her best work since 1996's highly underrated Citizen Ruth. If I had one complaint with this movie it would be that I would have liked to see her more as well as Garfield's son in the movie.

We haven't really gotten a great movie like this that tells the side of the victims of the economy but more often the villains of the economic struggles like it Wolf of Wall Street and Wall Street so it was very refreshing to see this story be told.

The screenplay is so bold, honest, and filled with riveting dialogue that matches The End of the Tour as one of the best screenplays of the year so far. Garfield and Shannon's chemistry is so wonderful in this movie that other actors in these roles wouldn't have been able to match.

A scene at a pier after a wild rave party at Shannon's house spoke to this movie's main message. Garfield asks Shannon something along the lines of "Is it all worth it" which strikes into the morality tale that Garfield faces at every corner of this movie.

Is it worth cheating out people that were in your shoes so that you can reclaim your house by taking others out of their's? Is it worth cheating the government when they've cheated you all this time? This movie does what rarely movies do to me and made me think deeply about it afterwords.

I was a bit worried throughout the movie asking myself if I was truly blown away with it but when the montage of Garfield evicting tons of families out of their homes arrives, it validated those feelings.

I listened to an interview with the director after the movie was over in a podcast talk about how Garfield did not meet any of the actors (who many weren't professionally) ahead of time and only had his eviction speech to work off of in those scenes dealing with reluctant families, families with new born babies, angry people with guns, and the most heartbreaking scene with an elderly gentleman that knew none of his neighbors and had no family to go to.

Those scenes were so powerful and raw. Having lived in the setting of this movie Orange County, Florida for 2 years now and walking past many homeless people often, this movie hit a special place in my heart.

The director of this movie is Ramin Bahrani who is featured in the amazing documentary Life Itself about Roger Ebert who championed Bahrani. Roger clearly knew what he was talking about because I want to catch up on his past work.

Bahrani dedicated this movie to Roger at the very end. Roger would be proud.