The Big Short by Adam McKay, 2015 (R)

with Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Brad Pitt, Melissa Leo, Marisa Tomei, Tracy Letts, Hamish Linklater, John Magaro, Byron Mann, Rafe Spall, Jeremy Strong, Finn Wittrock

In 2005, Wall Street guru Michael Burry realizes that a number of subprime home loans are in danger of defaulting. Burry bets against the housing market by throwing more than $1 billion of his investors' money into credit default swaps. His actions attract the attention of banker Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling), hedge-fund specialist Mark Baum (Steve Carell) and other greedy opportunists. Together, these men make a fortune by taking full advantage of the impending economic collapse in America.

This movie is another depressing look at how financial institutions across the board didn't do anything to prevent the economic crisis that winded up making 8 million people unemployed, and 6 million homeless. And yet it didn't change anything about their regulation to prevent the next bubble. Scary.
Somehow the movie makes us feel sympathy for these guys that looked for a way to make even more money out of the crisis (yes, some of them tried to go to the press and denounce the system, but still), which afterward gives you a bitter sense of justice. If those are the good guys?... The movie is strangely set with a mix of YouTube feeds, people addressing to the camera for education/fact purposes, teaching the financial jargon with a bimbo or a famous person so we would theoretically pay more attention (this is second degree sense of humor I guess, but it is sometimes borderline offensive). Steve Carell is amazing in , the rest of the cast is fine, and the story needed to be told. I guess this could be a winner for the Oscars.