The Best Film Made On this Moment in History... Almost!

Rating: 9/10 (15 January 2017)

If anyone hasn't seen "The Big Short" yet, it comes highly recommended. Not only just it uncover the absolutely fraudulent nature of Wall-Street, in the years prior to the Financial Crisis, but it breaks down the various financial technicalities into easily palatable and understandable metaphors.
Anyone else thinks this movie looks like it is set in the 80s and not 2005? I refuse to believe I dressed like that 10 years ago. The film stars a whole skew of Hollywood leading me to take on the shady men. most importantly, Ryan Gosling. Okay forget that part.
It really is quite a movie: entertaining and engaging, but also mortifying; As Roger Ebert's website puts it: A good alternate title might be "American Horror Story."
The movie is a fairly accurate portrayal of the events surrounding the initial financial shock which culminated in the 2008/09 Financial Crisis and excels in mixing humour and serious candour to communicate its message.
How accurate was the subject matter of the movie? Pretty accurate really, and it is much better than reading the scathing 663 page report from the US Government on the subsequent crisis.
Surprisingly, the screenplay is almost as well-structured, informative, and entertaining an adaptation of a complex work of non-fiction as Nicholas Pileggi's and Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas. McKay and Randolph focus on just the right number of characters and find inventive ways to keep the movie light, funny, and easy to understand; yet their approach almost never devolves into shtick or patronizingly juvenile spoon-feeding of information. Unlike most documentaries about the causes of the global 2008 recession, The Big Short doesn't work backwards, investigating abstract causes and effects. Instead, it gives us compelling, quirky protagonists we can identify with and intertwines the minutia of the financial system into the goals, obstacles, and story arcs of these men. Though McKay and Randolph utilize several narrative devices I don't love—multiple narrators directly addressing the camera, breaking story continuity to explain complex concepts in whimsical ways, video clip montages meant to set time and place or contextualise ideas—these are few and far between and, for the most part, they work.
Unfortunately, the same can't be said for McKay's directing style. I wish McKay, the head writer for Saturday Night Live during one of its stronger eras, had more faith in the written word, but his bloated, semi-improvised comedy features rush through as many jokes as possible, never fully allowing a whole to form from the sum of its parts. The hurried approach is even more injurious to this primarily dramatic feature. The Big Short is not a patient movie and therefore it's far less potent than J. C. Chandor's tense and secretive Margin Call (2011)—still the best film made on this moment in history. And should've won an Oscar for "best picture" rather than just getting a nomination. You are free to disagree. But this is a movie that uses both cinema art and irrefutable facts to make its case. It's strong stuff.
Especially, the cast was spectacular!
I began off feeling wary about this motion picture: the haircuts and garments of the primary characters were more '90s music-video than mid 2000s, and the occasionally shading de-saturated flashbacks to a few characters' back stories were a little on the inauspiciously typical side. Be that as it may, the story force, joined with the base mind of a significant part of the exchange, and the submitted acting going ahead underneath the hairpieces, all did their employment. What's more, they got over the irate, skeptical conviction behind the motion picture, which is that the real banks all occupied with fake, criminal action, and that the U.S. government safeguarded them out to the detriment of the little person, and that there's no sign that the banks wouldn't accomplish something like precisely the same once more. You are allowed to oppose this idea. Be that as it may, this is a motion picture that utilizes both silver screen craftsmanship and evident realities to put forth its defence. It's solid stuff.
The Big Short is a blended pack that I in any case prescribe seeing. Superior to anything any account or narrative film, TV show, or radio program I've yet observed or listened, it clarifies credit default swaps, subprime home loans, collateral's obligation commitments, and other money related builds in clear, intelligible terms. It abstains from damning things down to the point of haughtiness, yet by one means or another remaining parts a somewhat unblinking standard stimulation.