The Big Short

The Big Short (2015) is about the financial crisis of 2008, and its real achievement is making the mechanics of it comprehensible. It is adapted from Michael Lewis's book. The subject: a handful of people worked out around 2005 that the American housing market would collapse and bet on it. Nobody believed them; the banks sold them the bet happily, because house prices falling was considered impossible. The problem the film had to solve is that if the subject is opaque, the film does not work. Adam McKay solves it by addressing the audience directly. When a term arrives the film stops and someone famous explains it: Margot Robbie explains collateralised debt obligations from a bath, Anthony Bourdain explains them by making stew out of unsold fish. It reads as a joke and it genuinely teaches. Michael Burry, played by Christian Bale, is a real person. He has Asperger's, a glass eye, and plays drums in his office. Bale met him and built the performance from that. The most honest thing about it is the ending. The winners cannot enjoy it; being right means millions of people losing their homes. It also states plainly that nobody went to prison. It won the Adapted Screenplay Oscar. It runs 131 minutes. Good for: true events, dark comedy, and economics. Less good for: the density of terminology and the fast cutting are tiring, the language is heavy, and it is an angry film.