"Molly's Game" movie about poker superhost Molly Bloom being cast, to be produced by Amy Pascal

[Dan Druff]

Okay, so I actually watched this a few days before the Houston Curtis interview. Had meant to watch it for a long time, but his obviously pushed me to do so. Plus it's on Netflix.

Anyway, meant to post a review, but forgot until now.

I agree with Chinamaniac. The movie was about 35 minutes too long. It had a runtime of 2:20, and that was unnecessary. There were a lot of pointless scenes, especially at the beginning, which could have been cut. The whole skiing thing early in the film dragged on forever and wasn't particularly interesting. It would have sufficed to show a brief scene of the race, her injury, and some commentary as to why that was so impactful.

The family scenes in general weren't very well done until the one near the end with her father.

I know Sorkin was patting himself on the back for what he thought was brilliant dialogue between Molly and her lawyer (and later, the speech the lawyer gave to the feds), but I found a lot of this dragged, as well. In fact, while the movie thought it was establishing great chemistry between the characters of Molly and her lawyer, I felt the opposite. I didn't think the two actors had any chemistry, and the Molly/lawyer scenes ultimately didn't amount to much. At the end, she went against his advice, and it was a sympathetic judge who saved her. I think they were going for an Erin Brockovich vibe here with the lawyer stuff, but it just didn't land.

The poker games themselves and the characters in them were the most interesting part to me.

The Molly character herself was kind of off-putting to me. She was cold, asexual, self-righteous, and of course somehow loyal to a fault. I didn't see much humanity in the character until near the end with her dad. Even Jessica Chastain's delivery seemed stilted, which I'm not sure was intentional.

The scene where she berated Tobey for staking Houston and having him in the same game was laughable. People have had pieces of each other in high stakes cash games for decades. Molly was acting like that was a cardinal sin that she just couldn't get past. Ugh.

Anyway, the movie wasn't bad, but it wasn't as good as I expected. It should have been about 105 minutes instead of 140. Had they edited out the skiing crap, tightened up the family scenes, and mostly written out the lawyer stuff, the movie would have been considerably better.

Why didn't the viewer find out what happened to that mafioso who beat her up in her apartment? Was he arrested in that sweep? What was his name? Did he get sentenced? We never got an answer.

[Dan Druff]

Mostly agree with this review: https://thereader.com/film/mollysgamereview

Could do without some of the woke male feminist complaints therein, but aside from that, the author is pretty spot on.

[MumblesBadly]

While this movie totally lies about Molly Bloom’s supposed “good guy” role in this underlying story behind this movie, it’s back on Netflix and can’t resist rewatching the amazingly hot Jessica Chastain portray Bloom. Va, va, va, Voom!

[Sidewinder]

The Bloom book and the Curtis book are very good. Highly recommend both if anyone on here knows how to read.

[MumblesBadly]

While this movie totally lies about Molly Bloom’s supposed “good guy” role in this underlying story behind this movie, it’s back on Netflix and can’t resist rewatching the amazingly hot Jessica Chastain portray Bloom. Va, va, va, Voom!

By god, Jessica Chastain is a HELLAVA actress!

[garrett]

Okay, so I actually watched this a few days before the Houston Curtis interview. Had meant to watch it for a long time, but his obviously pushed me to do so. Plus it's on Netflix.

Anyway, meant to post a review, but forgot until now.

I agree with Chinamaniac. The movie was about 35 minutes too long. It had a runtime of 2:20, and that was unnecessary. There were a lot of pointless scenes, especially at the beginning, which could have been cut. The whole skiing thing early in the film dragged on forever and wasn't particularly interesting. It would have sufficed to show a brief scene of the race, her injury, and some commentary as to why that was so impactful.

The family scenes in general weren't very well done until the one near the end with her father.

I know Sorkin was patting himself on the back for what he thought was brilliant dialogue between Molly and her lawyer (and later, the speech the lawyer gave to the feds), but I found a lot of this dragged, as well. In fact, while the movie thought it was establishing great chemistry between the characters of Molly and her lawyer, I felt the opposite. I didn't think the two actors had any chemistry, and the Molly/lawyer scenes ultimately didn't amount to much. At the end, she went against his advice, and it was a sympathetic judge who saved her. I think they were going for an Erin Brockovich vibe here with the lawyer stuff, but it just didn't land.

The poker games themselves and the characters in them were the most interesting part to me.

The Molly character herself was kind of off-putting to me. She was cold, asexual, self-righteous, and of course somehow loyal to a fault. I didn't see much humanity in the character until near the end with her dad. Even Jessica Chastain's delivery seemed stilted, which I'm not sure was intentional.

The scene where she berated Tobey for staking Houston and having him in the same game was laughable. People have had pieces of each other in high stakes cash games for decades. Molly was acting like that was a cardinal sin that she just couldn't get past. Ugh.

Anyway, the movie wasn't bad, but it wasn't as good as I expected. It should have been about 105 minutes instead of 140. Had they edited out the skiing crap, tightened up the family scenes, and mostly written out the lawyer stuff, the movie would have been considerably better.

Why didn't the viewer find out what happened to that mafioso who beat her up in her apartment? Was he arrested in that sweep? What was his name? Did he get sentenced? We never got an answer.

This is called, drumroll please....

Next Episode




in all seriousness they have more storyline with this Bloom family. Her brother made the NFL and was Drafted by the Eagles iirc. WR for the Univ. of Colorado and he was pretty good. She isnt the only Bloom of fame her brother was also a Division 1 Colorado Buffalo WR not bad, got drafted by the Eagles i think in the NFL but never really had a great or known NFL Career. So actually based off their Father and some more actual Bloom Family things there could be some more written and that people may be interested in that people would know. Her brother is well known Jeremy Bloom, so i wouldn't know if anything future is planned to be written or filmed who knows but, its not out of the realm of possibility here maybe..

[zealanddonk]

Molly Bloom was interviewd by Chris Jericho on his "Talk is Jericho" show dated 25/11/2022.

Goes roughly 55 minutes, I'm 30 minutes in and Chris is buying everything Molly is saying to this point.

[Sidewinder]

Molly Bloom was interviewd by Chris Jericho on his "Talk is Jericho" show dated 25/11/2022.

Goes roughly 55 minutes, I'm 30 minutes in and Chris is buying everything Molly is saying to this point.

[FRANKRIZZO]

How have they not done a Rounders sequel ?

[Sanlmar]

How have they not done a Rounders sequel ?

50 yo Mike McDermott paying $80 for the Wynn buffet?

[FRANKRIZZO]

Yeah Mike Mcdermott has a son who caught the poker bug. Worms son comes out of jail , Mike there to pick him up. They go for steam to meet kenish. Worm who has not been part of sons life comes to join them and meet his son after many years of no contact. They cross paths with kgb who has become a big kingpin. Mike Mcdermott won a seniors bracelet . Kgb gets his hooks into worms son who owes 100k (inflation) Mike gets worms son reprieve and goes on the poker Circut to pay off debt, its on him now too.

Mike had gone to Borgatta and saw chan was playing 2 5 nl. Mike bought in for 60 and gets pocket queens and shoves for the win. Tells everyone he sat with the best and wanted to win one hand. Next day Chan wins a 1k buyinn and a line that will make Chino Rheem proud rolls out for the money they had lost on Houston poker club.

[sonatine]

jamie gold was begging for a screenplay for rounders 2.


i actually wrote a treatment and pinged him and never heard back.


make of that what you will.

[DJ_Chaps]

jamie gold was begging for a screenplay for rounders 2.


i actually wrote a treatment and pinged him and never heard back.


make of that what you will.

DID YOU MENTION THAT YOU HAD NOVA SCOTIA'S #1 BACKGROUND PERFORMER LINED UP TO PLAY POKER DEALER #3? GUESSING NOT.

[ftpjesus]

How have they not done a Rounders sequel ?

Teddy KGB has yet to recover from his beat down. Nyet Nyet No Rounders 2 till he can figure out his tell.

More likely its just some thing where Damon cant figure out how to get Affleck a part in the movie. Although a Phil Hellmuth type would be good almost the same age in fact. At this rate itll be the same situation as Top Gun sequel ends up being 30yrs later.

[Dan Druff]

jamie gold was begging for a screenplay for rounders 2.


i actually wrote a treatment and pinged him and never heard back.


make of that what you will.

Can you post the treatment here at this point?

[FRANKRIZZO]

You Bugamat!!! What the hell is a bugamat

[Dan Druff]

Rounders was good because it was before the poker boom, and thus the writers were less likely to fall into terrible poker cliches and ridiculous characters.

It's one of those things where it's easy to write when the public is less aware of the topic. Ironically, awareness of the poker boom and everything resulting has caused otherwise good writers to turn into hacks when they attempt to produce scripts on the topic.

Koppelman and Levien had two shots at post-Rounders poker projects, and they screwed them both up. The first was 2005's "Tilt", airing on ESPN, of all places. It started out decently, and had potential, but they fucked it up within a few episodes, and the whole thing became an ridiculous farce. (At least David Williams got to fuck the chick who played the daughter of "The Matador", whom he met while doing a cameo on the show!)

The second attempt was 2013's "Runner, Runner". Not having learned a damn thing from the failure of Tilt, Koppelman and Levien wrote a disaster of a movie, which was loosely based on the UB/AP cheating saga. I wanted it to be good, because I was in the DVD Extra about real-life poker cheating. But it was terrible.

In 2019, Koppelman fired off a series of tweets, attempting to blame Runner Runner's suckage on the studio. He rambled with long stories about the whole thing, trying to make it seem like he wrote a good movie which the studio fucked up, but none of it made a lot of sense, and it was clear it was a bunch of excuse making.

The tweets are still up, but you can't see them unless you follow Koppelman, because he has oddly protected his Twitter account. If you do follow him, you can see the thread by clicking on the tweet in the spoiler below.

 

https://twitter.com/#!/x/status/1209936768365056000

Anyway, suffice to say that a Rounders 2 would be awful, unless written by someone completely different. Here's what I wrote 4 years ago about Koppelman, and I still stand by these thoughts today:

I think Koppelman's problem is that he isn't good at storytelling when he assumes the audience already knows a lot about the subject. In the late 90s, hardly anyone played poker, and even fewer people understood Texas Holdem. Koppelman had to teach us about poker and the sleazy underworld surrounding it in NYC. He did so by presenting a fairly realistic story of a regular guy with a talent for poker, who gets himself into all kinds of jams when trying to navigate through that world.

His other two poker projects -- Tilt and Runner Runner -- were over the top and ridiculous. He got away from the beautiful simplicity and realism that we saw in Rounders.

[DJ_Chaps]

GOD, HERE I GO LINING MYSELF UP FOR MORE BEATDOWNS, BUT I KINDA LIKE RUNNER RUNNER, IN A CHEESY WAY. THE LIL TRICK AT THE END TO GET THE BOSS BUSTED? GOLD, JERRY. GOLD!

[sonatine]

jamie gold was begging for a screenplay for rounders 2.


i actually wrote a treatment and pinged him and never heard back.


make of that what you will.

Can you post the treatment here at this point?

honestly ill think about it.

[Dan Druff]

GOD, HERE I GO LINING MYSELF UP FOR MORE BEATDOWNS, BUT I KINDA LIKE RUNNER RUNNER, IN A CHEESY WAY. THE LIL TRICK AT THE END TO GET THE BOSS BUSTED? GOLD, JERRY. GOLD!

I thought it had flashes of being decent, but for the most part sucked. All the stuff involving the FBI was especially cringe, and the writing for those parts was terrible.

The beginning, where the protagonist was cheated in online poker by a superuser, was incredibly poorly executed. We see his reactions from the back of his computer monitor, but none of the poker play itself! They couldn't spring for a few bucks to create a fake online poker site to show a POTRIPPER type hand occurring? Seriously? Perhaps that one particular fail was the studio's fault, perhaps it wasn't. However, the overall writing was so bad and so flawed, Koppelman can't put this disaster at the studio's feet.