The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Lee Gates hosts a successful TV show about investment tips. Posing as a deliveryman, Kyle Budwell invades the show, hangs a bomb vest round Gates' neck, and threatens to blow him up live on air unless he gets an explanation as to why an investment tipped by Gates left him penniless. As time slips away, the police try to figure out how to shoot Budwell without activating the deadman switch he holds.Money Monster - the name of Gates' TV show - is a simple, straightforward thriller. The linear story has no great plot twists, there are no huge surprises other than a general uncertainty as to exactly how it will end and, in many ways, this is a completely routine example of this type of movie.But it has three great performances at its centre. Up and coming English 25-year old Jack O'Connell as Kyle, gives a portrait of a man who is juggling a number of different problems, any one of which could push him over the edge and possibly already has. He is seriously scary and hugely sympathetic at the same time, a monster hiding a mouse. Julia Roberts, a serious contender for My Least Favourite Actress, is very good indeed as studio producer Patty. Just about to quit and take another job, she remains in place and uses incredible resourcefulness to keep both Lee and Kyle alive while simultaneously trying to track down the true story of what happened to Kyle's investment.And George Clooney as Lee shows us a man who is vain, thoughtless, shallow and cowardly, yet who hasn't entirely lost touch with decent values as he endures a situation which turns out to be something of an epiphany for him.What happened to Kyle's investment isn't vastly surprising, although the details of it and the piecemeal discovery are quite good fun towards the end of the movie. If I had a criticism, it is that there are wider issues (the morality of high finance generally) which are not addressed, but that doesn't matter too much: the film is mostly screamingly suspenseful. I'm not offering any spoilers about the ending, though - you'll just have to go and see it.Jodie Foster's direction, the performances, and a decent script elevate this straightforward thriller to well above average.

This movie features airtight editing and will keep you at the end of your seat for for the whole movie!

This was an easy 8 until the last 5 minutes of the film where all the good work of the last 90 minutes was just utterly fumbled.Shame with such a great cast that the script just kind of fell apart at the pivotal point where a really good point about where our world is at with capitalism just crumbled to mush.

Ugh - what a letdown!Jodie Foster, whom I love, needs to get back in front of the camera if she is going to continue to direct predictable, poorly written, movies-for-the-masses filled with over-used, unbelievable scenarios, cardboard cut-out characters and clichés fit for television. Money Monster was just that. It seems that most of the budget was spent on Clooney and Roberts, while skimping on the writing and the other bland, boring, bad actors. This is not "A Movie for Our Times." Rather, it was a waste of time.To quote Bob Dylan: "I see people who are supposed to know better standing 'round like furniture."