I blame Bernie Madoff for this.
Or more precisely, it was a midnight collision of Madoff madness, insomnia and cable's endless loop of films. Though if not for the saturation of news about the high-flying broker/con artist who trapezed across the financial markets to such devastating effect, I might have bypassed "Wall Street" in favor of something more mind-numbing.
But this 22-year-old cut at the risky business of stocks and bonds turned out to be unexpectedly mesmerizing. Instead of looking its age, "Wall Street" was crackling with the same electrical current that is shocking us today, which is no doubt why a sequel has been bandied about.
It was almost as if all those years ago, writer-director Oliver Stone and co-writer Stanley Weiser closed their eyes and envisioned the arrogance and audacity of a trader who could Ponzi away $65 billion in other people's money and still sleep like a baby. Their canary in the coal mine was Gordon Gekko, played with a seductive soullessness by Michael Douglas. For Gekko, beating the street was a drug, greed was an addiction, ethics nothing more than a nuisance. It all felt so Madoff.
Which led me to wonder, what other cautionary tales would wear as well now? Films that circumstance has turned vintage chic; visions of the past echoing and illuminating the present.
Watching CNN and MSNBC, images from "Broadcast News," "All the President's Men" and "Network" began swirling. Footage of President Obama triggered less linear notions -- "The American President," "Do the Right Thing," "Dave," "Only Angels Have Wings," "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," "The Natural" and on and on.
Yet there were a handful of events churning through the news that immediately conjured up what felt like direct cinematic antecedents, films so closely bound to situations in their sense and sensibility to be worthy of a second look.
And so, for your consideration, my "retro to relevance" list. It's certainly not scientific, offered merely as a summer distraction for the movie-minded among you bored now that we've slipped into the season when theaters, like landfills, overflow with discards.
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Hot stocks, cold hearts
Would things have turned out different if we'd paid closer attention to Stone's portrayal of the financial market as a blood sport in "Wall Street"? Probably not, but filmmakers have been issuing warnings for years.
