The Big Short is basically a story about a bunch of hedge fund traders and some other banking guys that nobody ever notices who see that the economic market is going to crash very very hard in 2007-08. It is a biographical movie based on a book and it's shot in a varied meta-documentary and comedy-drama style with frequent fourth-wall breaks and comedy. Yes it's about the finance industry and some bank shit but it's also really really good and If I understood (or guessed) what it's about then you can probably do that too so go watch it
Surprising, hilarious and utterly brilliant. The Big Short feels more cinematic than an MCU film, more thrilling than any crime drama and more earnest than any other film I have ever seen. It's the movie's subject that makes it so, the trading and finance part of the world that makes so little sense to all of us and the way this film actually takes time to inform you about what's going on, using these humorous celebrity cameos that allows it to feel so real while never being boring. It's like a biblical tale, a peak fictional novel about how some misunderstood lowkey guys got wind of a coming economic collapse and it's all real
The editing, the music and there's just this fervent energy and vibe to the film that keeps it moving, like an Edgar Wright film, it never stops on a scene to long and cuts back and forth really fast and it's just all so good
I have never seen an Adam McKay film before but now I'm a fan. And what a dream cast too, seeing Steve Carrel walking around with a camera jerking as it follows him felt like I was watching a dark episode of The Office or something
10/10 Weirdly, I saw The Wolf on Wall Street twice and never understood the stocks stuff in it. That was a few years ago tho so maybe it's time to visit it again but yeah, if there's a genre of movies like The Big Short then please let me know
He did The Other Guys which is a silly buddy cop comedy, I liked, and you can see the DNA for The Big Short right at the end during the credit sequence.
If you mean you wanna see more left-ish movie stuff, John Carpenter was also in that lane of director who is allowed to critique a lil bit of capitalism. They Live is great, but it's way more heightened than The Big Short.
You might like Thank You for Smoking and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. If you havent seen it, Network is also a fun biting satire. Sorry We Missed You is quite intense and heart breaking. Maybe Dirty Wars?
Thank You for Smoking was great. I don't know how well it did in theaters or on DVD, though, due to the title. I think a lot of people thought the movie was pro-tobacco.
Another good one is The Insider (1999) with Russell Crowe. It's about real-life Jeffery Wigand who blew the whistle on tobacco companies. In 1996, he appeared on 60 Minutes and told everyone how companies added substances to make nicotine more addictive, how they knew about all the carcinogens, and how they marketed towards children to get people hooked for life.
Sorry For Smoking was produced by Elon Musk, weirdly
I have had an eye on Network for a long time, would you consider Spotlight or The Post to be similar films? They're both about journalists tackling horrible stuff and the layer of information we are not used to or notice opening up more and more until it's all horrible, right?
Network is more comedic and heightened and satirical (e.g. "tell the maoist party that they wont see a dime until this show reaches syndication"). The Post and Spotlight are both way more grounded.
The Big Short was such a unique film because it treated those big fucking idiots at the commanding heights of the bourgeois economy as the morons and hucksters they were, it allowed itself to be grounded but also biting and comedic - whereas usually we collectively pretend the big guys controlling finance or whatever are at the very least smart even if amoral. And The Big Short was the perfect subject matter for "no, these guys are morons and idiots, and they stole all your money even though they fucked everything up"
Yeah, the ending of The Big Short had this horrible washed-up feeling even in it's colors just so you could absorb what has happened. During the first two acts I was pumping for these guys to rip everyone and get rich but by the third-act everything is damn near desolation and you realize that it's all fucked for the normal everyday people