The Big Short

I have to admit that I don't understand all the intricacies of the bond markets that were being manipulated here. Whether one is a Wall Street maven or not isn't the issue. The fact is that people sold mortgages to others who had no business getting into them. I recall a 60 Minutes report on the bubble before the crash took place. The expert had them drive through a desert area, filled with enormous houses, all of which were in default. If one looked in the windows of these, you could see that some of the tenants had stripped all kinds of fixtures and walked away. There were two types of buyers, it seemed. Those that were trying for the fast buck and those that really had no clue what they were getting into. The balloon mortgages took them from affordable to bankruptcy. This was unsustainable and it wasn't long before the banks found themselves with armloads of houses and buyers with hopeless debt. The guys in the movie are aware, but, for the most part, aren't all that sympathetic to these foibles. They go in to make money and they manage to do it. The whole thing that overrides this entire film is that all the evidence was right there, but the greed of most of the parties supersedes all of that. I thought this was a fine movie with a superb lesson. To the new generation. You may not be entitled to have whatever you want without paying your dues.

Don't know how Adam McKay made deplorable humans, blinding fear, gut-boiling outrage and gleeful shaming so much fun to watch. He brought along his bag o' laffs but planted them in such rich soil so we had to hack our way through the thick underbrush of tainted greenbacks and marked decks.

Everyone's in top form. Didn't recognize Brad Pitt for awhile. Ryan Gosling funniest. Christian Bale let us feel his pain and lonely genius. Steve Carell dug deep and came up with a real mensch.

Nice to see Marisa Tomei, Hamish Linklater, John Magaro, Rafe Spall, Finn Wittrock, Max Greenfield and talented others working at a solid level.

I walked out of the Westwood Bruin Theater in awe and mad as hell.

I appreciate that The Big Short tries to dumb down the housing crisis of 2008, but, apparently, I'm still not smart enough to fully understand it. A lot of this movie went over my head, but I grasped the generalities and it kept me entertained, so I applaud it for that. This film also featured some great performances by the cast, who lose themselves in their respective roles. This movie is a downer, but it's an educational downer.

First for newbies, the events here took place prior to the Kevin Spacey film Margin Call (2011). So the Spacey film would have depicted events near the end of this film. Both are superb movies.

Back to the review. This film is very unusual in that the producers have shown fierce determination in taking a serious topic and making it as user friendly as one possibly can. Multiple techniques are used to this end and they all work well. In fact in places the film has a Monty Python quality. Why was this done? One can only assume that the producers understood the multiple studies showing that the modern city-dweller becomes uncomfortable when confronted with any facts which suggest that he or she was not paying attention when bad things were happening. After all we live in a democracy so the voters should have been more alert? Isn't that their job? The techniques mentioned attempt to appeal to our SESAME STREET side and make the whole thing as pleasant an educational experience as possible. But make no mistake, this is an educational movie.

One that should be mandatory for adults. Like getting a driving test before a license. How about learning about Wall Street and the banks before you invest with them...? Carell steals the film and may finally get the attention he deserves. Great actor.

Finally the message. The film suggests not only that Wall Street is corrupt but that the corruption extends to the agencies mandated to supervise Wall Street and (possibly) to Washington itself. The implicit message, conveyed in the end credits, that unless we deal with the problem at the source the symptoms will keep happening over and over and over.

Duh!

((Designated "IMDb Top Reviewer." Please check out my list "167+ Nearly-Perfect Movies (with the occasional Anime or TV miniseries) you can/should see again and again (1932 to the present))

Great drama moves you. It excites you. Scares you. Makes you sing. Makes you cry.

The Big Short makes you shake your fist. The Big Short is driven as much by its Iago as it is its Othello, and deservedly so.

The events in the story did happen. Many people still don't care. The Big Short gives you reason to care. That is what separates this film from being merely a documentary and turns it into high drama.

No matter your politics - mark this, like Citizen Kane, as a movie that should be seen at least once. It is not always comfortable to watch. And that is a good thing - The Big Short is a documentary of a real life horror that unfolds in slow motion, and reminds us that even after the fact - no one is listening. Because truth is like poetry.