Becoming Warren Buffett

Directed by Peter Kunhardt, this HBO documentary traces Buffett from his Omaha childhood to his value investing principles, made with access to never before released home movies and family photographs. What makes it interesting, though, is not the finance but Buffett's admission about himself. He says he was a lopsided person early in life, and of his wife Susie he says she just stood there with a little watering can and nourished him along and changed him. His three children, Susie herself and Buffett all acknowledge he was emotionally distant for most of his life. Susie was deeply involved in the civil rights movement and was the reason he became a Democrat, and though she eventually moved to San Francisco the marriage never ended, and she was even the one who introduced him to the woman he later married. The details that stick are the small ones: he still lives in the house he bought in 1958 for thirty one thousand five hundred dollars, and he picks his McDonald's breakfast by the market, choosing the cheap option on days he does not feel prosperous. Critics pointed to the paradox at its center: the qualities that make Buffett such a brilliant investor are the same ones that make people difficult for him. Who it's for: Anyone curious about the investing world and the human cost of an unusual mind. Who it's not for: Not for viewers wanting a critical portrait, since the film treats its subject with considerable sympathy.