Adam McKay's "The Big Short" is the best financial movie I have seen since watching Oliver Stone's "Wall Street" (1987), but the only difference between these two movies is that this movie was based on true events. The film takes place before and during the recession of 2008 in which some aspects of this movie are pretty funny if you ask me. The movie was adapted from the book by Michael Lewis and it basically starts off with Dr. Michael J. Burry (Christian Bale) who was the first person to predict the housing market crash by actually betting against the housing market before it actually happened despite everyone else thinking that he was a crazy person. Then 20 minutes into the film we see a banker named Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling) talk to a Morgan Stanley employee named Mark Baum (Steve Carell) and his coworkers and Vennett tells them that not long from now the economy is going to collapse and that nobody was even talking about it. also during the movie and in between all of the financial conversations Baum is going through a personal tragedy that I will not reveal in this review for those people that haven't seen the movie, and Baum is getting comforted between phone calls and at home by his wife (Marisa Tomei). The screenplay for this movie by McKay along with Charles Randolph took home the Oscar last year for best adapted screenplay and I had a few minor gripes with it here and there but then again it was directed by a man who normally does comedies. Then later in this movie we see 2 other men in the finance world (John Magaro and Finn Wittrock) end contacting a retired trader by the name of Ben Rickert (Brad Pitt) who is the fourth person to predict the collapse of the housing market. the only major problem I had with this movie was the shaky camera angles which could have been improved on, and also I think that Adam McKay could have been more impartial instead of openly mocking the corporations but then again that is just my opinion, but otherwise the performances from Bale (who got an Oscar nomination), Gosling, Carell, and Pitt are top notch, as well as Marisa Tomei's. This is one of last year's greatest achievements in film, and I stand by this review.
Review of The Big Short
