How Reddit May Have Saved AMC
Plus: 'The Little Things' and 'Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer' Reviewed
(The above meme is a joke, I do not think Christopher Nolan orchestrated a Bane-style stock heist to save AMC. Unless he did, of course. Who can say?)
I do not understand stocks or money or the market and I will not pretend to do so here. Like many of you, Iāve watched with a weird mix of horror and fascination and trollish glee as redditors turned GameStopāa genuinely useless establishment in an age of digital downloads for video games that is, by and large, hated by its customers for ripping people off on sales of used gamesāinto a Fortune 500 company, burning hedge funds to the ground in their wake.
But it was genuinely pleasing to see one of the side effects of this whole kerfuffle: the unexpected salvation of movie theater company AMC.
You see, AMC was one of the stocks pumped up by the Reddit crowd looking for heavily shorted businesses to save. AMC saw its stock skyrocket, from about $3 to as high as $25 or so in after-hours trading. And someone at AMC used this to . . . possibly save the company? Hereās how Bloombergās Matt Levine put it in his newsletter:
On Monday [AMC] announced that it had raised $506 million of equity (and another $411 million of debt) in various transactions that āshould allow the company to make it through this dark coronavirus-impacted winter.ā Good work. Even better, that same day AMC launched an at-the-market offering to sell up to 50 million shares into the market at prevailing prices, allowing it to sell opportunistically to any redditors who wanted to buy. Yesterday it announced that it had finished the offering and raised another $304.8 million. Thatās an average price of about $6.10 a share; AMCās stock hadnāt gotten that high since September. Of course yesterday the stock closed at $19.90, so AMC would have done better to wait a day, but nobodyās perfect. When redditors are clamoring to buy your stock you should sell it to them before itās too late; thereās no reason for the company to try to time the endgame perfectly.
Also yesterday holders of $600 million of AMC convertible bonds converted them into stock at a conversion price of $13.51 per share. Six hundred million dollars of debt, vaporized by Reddit enthusiasm. āIn the absence of significant increases in attendance from current levels, there is substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern for a reasonable period of time,ā AMC warned investors on Monday; four days and a billion dollars later, there is somewhat less doubt. A week ago it was not crazy to think this company was doomed; now it is entirely possible that it will survive and thrive and show movies in movie theaters for decades to come because everyone went nuts and bought meme stocks this week. Capital formation!
Again, I donāt really know what any of that means. But if you told me that Christopher Nolan had manipulated Reddit into saving the theatrical exhibition business? I might believe you. Crazier things have happened.
Speaking of capital formation: signing up for Bulwark+ from this newsletter helps ensure that it keeps showing up in your inbox every Friday. But donāt do it just because you enjoy reading this free newsletter and feel guilty about not chipping in to keep it sustainable. Do it because you also unlock access to special members-only episodes of Across the Movie Aisle, the āLeft, Right, and Centerā-meets-āSiskel and Ebertā show I do with Peter Suderman and Alyssa Rosenberg. This weekās episode on Joe Bidenās fancy watch and the aesthetics of politics is pretty great! Even better was last weekās on the defining films of the Trump era. Itās only $10 a month, and you get so much great stuff.
Reviews: The Little Things (HBO Max/Theaters)and Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer (Netflix)
The Little Things is a thriller that doesnāt bother with much in the way of thrills and a murder mystery thatās not too terribly interested in solving the mystery. Despite an absolute gangbusters castāthree Oscar winners in the three primary roles!āThe Little Things is weirdly dramatically inert, and its intentionally obfuscatory ending will likely frustrate audiences. Still, I think this is a movie thatās going to grow on people over the years as they grapple with its meaning.
The filmās best, most propulsive sequence is the opening one, in which a terrified woman is chased down a highway, and then on foot, by an unseen man in a blue car. As she runs for her life, the man slowly, methodically pulls his tools out of the trunk of his car: black gloves so as to mask his fingerprints; a black duffel bag with duct tape inside. Director John Lee Hancock shoots this sequence in a way that both obscures the attackerās identityāwe never see his faceāand, by keeping the camera low and focusing on the way the madman walks, gives us everything we need to know.
Itās a tricky scene. I donāt mean technically; itās a pretty straightforward set piece, one youāve seen before in a hundred thrillers. Tricky in the sense of storytelling. In a typical genre piece, Hancockās work here would seem to be setting the stage for the forthcoming mystery: we have a mysterious, unseen killer; a woman in perilās tears amp up the tension; as more bodies appear, we know their terror in their final moments. In The Little Things, however, this sequence actually unlocks the last half hour or so of the feature.
From the harrowing opening we move to something a bit slower: boots. Specifically, a pair of boots that small-town cop Joe Deacon (Denzel Washington) is sent to retrieve in order to make sure a bad guy doesnāt get out of prison ahead of his court date. When heās in Los Angeles recovering the footwear he gets wrapped up in a homicide case led by young hotshot Detective Jim Baxter (Rami Malek), one involving murders that bear a marked similarity to a case that ended Deaconās career in Los Angeles some years before.
Deacon and Baxter join forces, Baxter drawing from Deaconās well of knowledge while Deacon tries to exorcise the ghosts that have been haunting him these last few years. While investigating another grisly killing in the style of their serial, the pair settle on Albert Sparma (Jared Leto), a local repairman who seems to know too much about the killings, as their suspect. The policemenās pursuit of the truth curdles into something uglier than justice.
Washington is ideal as the haunted, obsessed cop, turning in a tight performance in a role that couldāve easily swung toward melodrama. Similarly, Leto does fantastic work as Sparma here, his wide-eyed stare demonstrating an unsettling intensity that could easily be confused for murderousness. But with a paunch and a limp, could he really be the killer? Malek has always been hit or miss for meāheās the best, most unsettling part of The Pacific; his winning an Oscar for his Freddie Mercury impression is a bit of a travestyāand his Baxter is a huge miss for me here. Heās just miscast. Heās too twitchy, his angled jaw jutting out in all the wrong directions while he tries to look tough in the early going. Mostly, though, Baxterās breakdown by filmās end isnāt particularly jarring or convincing as a natural evolution of the character because Malek always looks like heās on the verge of a breakdown.
What audiences will likely find most frustrating about The Little Thingsāor, at least, what I found most frustrating about The Little Things after first viewingāis the lack of interest it seems to have in solving the murders nominally at the heart of the picture. But after sitting on it for a day (always sit on a movie for a day if you have a chance!) and rewatching the opening five minutes (which youāll easily be able to do if youāre watching it on HBO Max), Iāve come around on it a bit. Yes, itās frustrating. But once you realize which crimes weāre actually watching being solved and the real criminals involved, you might come to appreciate The Little Things a little bit more. I know I did.
Whereas The Little Things is a rather dyspeptic look at the world of law enforcement, Netflixās Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer is a bit more credulous, a little more willing to take the cops at their word and revel in their world.
The docuseries mostly follows the efforts of Gil Carrillo and Frank Salerno to track down the killer who would come to be known as the Night Stalker. We get Carrillo and Salernoās backgrounds; we watch as Carrillo pulls himself off the streets, into the Army, and then into the homicide division; we gasp in horror as theyāre presented with a series of dead bodies, beaten women, and raped children. And we cheer as they put together the pieces that lead to the eventual capture of Richard Ramirez.
I thought of this show as I was watching The Little Things, in part because one of the police captains mentions that their current case is the hottest since the Night Stalker terrorized Los Angeles. But also because there are some intentional similarities between Letoās Sparma and the actual Night Stalker. For instance, as we learn in the docuseries, when he was finally caught, Ramirez said to Salerno āI know who you areā; he was a crime buff, had followed Salernoās efforts to catch the so-called Hillside Strangler. Sparma says something similar when confronted by media golden boy Baxter (Rami Malek).
Focusing on the police and the victims denies Ramirez a measure of fame and keeps the show from glorifying or humanizing his exploits, a move that could, potentially, spark copycat killings. It also makes clear the heroes of this story: the cops, the folks who stopped Ramirezās reign of terror. And this leads to certain elements that seem peculiar in our day and age of social media outrage, as when a San Francisco detective boasts about beating Ramirezās name out of one of Ramirezās friends.
When this scene occurred, I thought āhoo boy, Twitterās not going to like this.ā Sure enough, Vox had already published a denunciation of the program. āIn its determination to avoid glorifying Ramirez, it instead glorifies the police who caught him,ā Voxās Aja Romano tut-tutted. āIām not sure that version of the story is any less troubling.ā
Look, Iām going to go out on a really long limb here and say that it is much less troubling to glorify the cops who caught a guy who killed more than a dozen people and sexually assaulted numerous children than it is to glorify the guy who killed more than a dozen people and sexually assaulted numerous children. Call me a reactionary, but itās okay to say the guy who punched a friend of the Night Stalker to get the Night Stalkerās name is better than the Night Stalker himself.
Iām old-fashioned that way, I guess.
Assigned Viewing: Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice: Ultimate Edition (HBO Max)
GOOD NEWS FOLKS. Zack Snyder (pbuh) announced a streaming date for the Snyder Cut of Justice League: March 18! Letās get ready by watching the Ultimate Edition of Batman v Superman on HBO Max.
Take it from someone who trashed the theatrical cut of BvS: The Ultimate Edition is really good! The theatrical cut excised most of Lois Laneās subplot, which, in hindsight, was an enormous mistake, as that subplot was what made the main plot make sense. If youāve only seen Batman v Superman in theaters, you owe it to yourself, and your nation, to watch the Ultimate Edition on HBO Max.
