Absolutely fantastic and one of the year's best. Andrew Garfield is absolutely sensational here and deserves to be in the awards conversation. Michael Shannon is also great and the interplay between the two is easily the movie's high point. It's also incredibly intense and moves at a rapid-fire pace. Highly recommended. A

Frequently unemployed tradesman Dennis Nash (Andrew Garfield) has endured a lean period and now faces eviction from the suburban house he shares with his mother (Laura Dern) and son (Noah Lomax). When he runs out of options and the fateful day comes, he finds two policemen at his door. They are led by Richard Carver (Michael Shannon), a cynical and mercenary real-estate agent who has turned the subprime mortgage crisis to his advantage. Dennis and his family move to a seedy hotel crowded with people indefinitely ejected from their homes. In a strange twist of fate, he finds a potential road to financial salvation in the form of Carver, who invites him to join his strong-arm moving team and later embraces him as an acolyte, teaching him to supervise evictions and capitalize on lapsed regulation. This education in ice-cold rapacity forces Dennis to weigh his desire to win (in society's eyes, as well as his family's) against his ailing conscience.

Directed by Ramin Bahrani (a festival-favored neorealist who has slowly polished his craft and moved toward the mainstream), 99 Homes is a highly entertaining film blending a time-tested dramatic motif—the magnetic, volcanic mentor and his hesitant protégé, à la Wall Street and The Devil's Advocate—with a genuine and relevant anger regarding the housing debacle which befell the United States a few years ago and the preceding and ensuing financial gamesmanship. It is a neat fusion, granting the film space and time to indulge a certain didactic urge without sacrificing suspense and personality. It is an economic parable with bite and propulsion, even if a few plot developments and character decisions modestly strain credulity: why, for instance, does Dennis not instantly move his family from their absolute pit of a hotel after he begins earning thousands of dollars? The cast is phenomenal, with the sympathetic Garfield (recently liberated from the downward-trending Spider-Man franchise) emanating authentic desperation while Shannon steals scenes as an antagonist who seduces by pursuing unprincipled aims with swift and vigorous pragmatism. And the existence-upending idea of losing one's home as the system stares on with either ambivalence or a voracious eye proves to be fertile and frightening ground upon which to build a film.

B+

99 Homes

Extremely interesting and emotionally engaging. Garfield should have won awards for his performance, and Shannon is equally as strong. However, the ending was frustrating. I wanted him to shut the fuck up and make millions, but a sentimental flaw in his character was multiplied due to his mum and son taking off. Anyway, terrific film, shining a light on an area rarely lit but important.

A-

Ha, yes. I also wondered this. Was that motel the only motel in town?

Good film, it instantly grips from the start and paints an interesting picture of the struggle of the working man and dealing with debt and mortgage. But the second half of the film is not nearly as strong, I felt it kept going in circles a bit with its message and in the end I felt it didn't get that far and ended up not as effective as it could've been. However Garfield and Shannon both provide strong turns to offer a satisfying viewing.

B