My movie rating system from Best to Worst: 1).
It’s a story that needed to be told and seems almost impossible to be real. It’s a film that entertains while informing you all the while marveling at the incredible performances. “The Big Short” is a film similar in tone to something like 2013s “The Wolf of Wall Street.” It’s a movie that will make you laugh at some over-the-top situations and make you mad about the injustice of a very corrupt system that no one seems to want to fix, and no one will be prosecuted for the wrongs they committed. Carell steals the film near the end as his character agonizes over whether to cash his hand in, therefore, making millions and millions of dollars on other people’s loss and pain. Carell plays his character like he is working at 100 mph, and the rest of us are watching at a normal rate as he speeds from one deal to another. The only person that seems to be able to reach him is his wife, played by the always fascinating and brilliant Marisa Tomei. Carell lets his character hide his pain inside while he remains angry with the world. However, this is Steve Carell’s film, playing his part with an almost hound dog-like determination. Gosling, as the brash broker that no one likes, gives a hysterical performance as the guy who has nothing to lose and lets you know it. It’s a restrained performance that Pitt plays to perfection. Brad Pitt is fun as a retired, eccentric broker that decides to take the two young brokers under his wing and help them hit the big time. His close-ups as he struggles to understand a conversation or why someone wouldn’t want to invest with him are brilliant and moving. Bale is outstanding in portraying a man that I am convinced has Asperger’s syndrome. This is an ensemble film, and it’s filled with some superb performances. The two revel in talking couples into taking mortgages that the two money grabbers know they will never be able to afford. And McKay uses the film to make you indignant or irate, like a scene where Baum is interviewing two real estate brokers that delight in making money off the naive or the uninformed. The film also can be very sobering, with images of people living in cars or whole neighborhoods abandoned by the families who couldn’t afford the houses they had moved into. He made this film with the hope that the American people will get mad when they find out just what happened and why it did. McKay wants you to have fun watching this film, but he also wants to inform you and make you pissed. The film also uses montages with bits of cultural references to put the audience in the mood for the timeline. The film uses very funny cameos (I won’t say who or what settings they are placed in) to explain some of the extremely complex financial terms and ideas that are crucial to the film. That use of the breaking the “fourth wall” is used very often to tweak the nose of the filmmaker himself, as characters often tell us that the filmmaker has changed something from what really happened to make it more dramatic for the film. Often the actors break the “fourth-wall” to talk directly to the audience, sometimes commenting on what has just gone down. Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures READ MORE: Julia Roberts Crashed George Clooney's Appearance On 'Jimmy Kimmel Live!'ĭirector / co-writer Adam McKay has brought us a film that is dark, funny and unconventional in its storytelling. It’s a bet that few think is a good idea, and most think will never come into play. Burry figures out a way to bet on the fact that the housing market and the banks that invest in it are about to be in a lot of trouble.
He discovers that the housing market, considered the backbone of the American economy, is about to collapse upon itself, a market that has very few sure things and way too many mortgages which are certain to fail. He is a former doctor who quit his practice when he discovered he could make money crunching numbers, crushing the completion with his astute picks.
He is a man who is socially awkward, having lost an eye in a childhood illness, making him feel self-conscious. He is a brilliant but strange man, someone who rarely has shoes on, wears T-shirts to the office and listens to heavy metal as he searches for the next great investment. Burry is a man who is rarely wrong, making millions for his boss and his clients. We meet hedge fund manager Michael Burry (Christopher Nolan) at the start of the film.