Most if not all of us who lived through the 2008 financial crisis would rather forget about what happened, instead of reliving how bad it all was and our fear that the end of the financial world had arrived. This movie not only reminds you how bad it was, but educates you to the fact that it was far worse than we all knew at the time. Everything about this movie; the acting, the story telling and the teaching of all the complex concepts in this financial crisis by using the actor talking to the audience or several cameo appearances that included Selena Gomez and Margo Robbie are all extremely well done throughout. In my opinion, this movie will definitely be nominated for a best picture Oscar. This movie is based on the book “The Big Short” , by Michael Lewis.

The concept of Deregulation of financial institutions which allows companies on Wall Street to do whatever they want to make profits with no government regulation is essentially what caused a financial disaster in the housing market and the associated “Las Vegas” like gambling that went on where bets were placed on CDOs (Collateralized Debt Obligations) which are essentially baskets of both good and very bad mortgage loans but also on what are called “synthetic CDO’s” which are peripheral bets on the original loans, which created outlandish and extremely high levels of risk. This combination of insanity is what resulted in a financial crisis that almost brought down the economy of the entire world. It was all allowed to go on because the government officials who were suppose to monitor what was going on and rank mortgage securities accurately just looked the other way.

Many things about the 2008 housing bubble, which really started in 2007 are infuriating, but what is most outrageous about all the debt, panic and misery this causes is that it was even allowed to happen in the first place. From the beginning of this tenure as the Fed Chairman, Alan Greenspan was calling for financial deregulation and when he finally got what he wanted, based on the decision of a very weak president in 2002; the ability of financial institutions to run free and do whatever they wanted became possible. The people involved did not care that their obscene greed would cause a generation of pain for millions of Americans in their 20’s and early 30’s and so many people who lost jobs and homes. All these criminals cared about was getting even more rich as easily as possible and worse than this was when all the smoke had finally cleared, nobody went to jail except for one wall street employee; although his sentence was not disclosed at the end of the movie. What was disclosed when this movie ended was that 8 million people lost their jobs, 6 million people lost their homes and 5 trillion in wealth was wiped out in a about 2 years. For me the fact that was mentioned in this movie that stood out the most was that for every 1 percent of unemployment in the Unites States, as many as 40,000 can die due to the stress, homelessness and misery of not being able to make a living in this country .

March 2009 is now known as the “generational low” in the stock market and after that incredible low of 6400 on the Dow and about 1100 on the Nasdaq, things slowly started to normalize and now the market seems to be back to where it should have been anyway, even if the financial crisis never happened. But in the back of everybody’s mind is the fact that something like this could happen again or perhaps the bail out that occurred at the end of 2008 is just a temporary band aid that really did not fix the real underlying problem that was caused by the sick greed of a few already rich individuals who right now should be in jail. Then we all remember that because of this crisis and some bad decisions and a very bad war in IRAQ, this country is now close to 21 trillion dollars in debt. After Bill Clinton left office, we were only 5 trillion in debt. Yes, most of the bailouts were necessary, especially Obama’s decision to bail out the car companies, but its very tragic that because of some very stupid decisions by some very greedy people, this country may never be financially healthy again.

This movie is about the 2007-2008 Housing bubble and financial crises as told through the experiences of 3 groups of individuals who had the foresight and courage to realize that the mortgage bond securities that were being sold as high quality investments to institutions around the world were not only mostly garbage, but also fraudulent. Their plan was to short these mortgage bonds known as CDOs or (Collateralized Debt Obligations) but the ability to even short these bonds that were considered so safe and high quality was not even possible at the time, so the method to short them called CDS (Credit Default Swaps) had to be invented by the financial institutions to make shorting possible. These individuals were actually laughed at by the employees of the companies where they attempted to buy these CDO’s because they were so sure of the safety and integrity of the housing market. All of these investors were so sure that they were right about the impending housing disaster that they bet billions of dollars that the entire housing and mortgage industry in the United States would collapse. What they didn’t realize was that they would be so right about these bets that they would have a great deal of trouble collecting their money because so many of the institutions who sold these CDO’s would become bankrupt. The acting in this movie by the 4 main actors, Steve Carrel, Brad Pitt, Ryan Gossling and Christian Bale is outstanding throughout and I would guess that several of these actors might receive Academy Award nominations. This movie is a 100% must see and I give it my highest recommendation.

The Big Short on IMBD

The main question you ask yourself towards the end of watching this movie is, “is being raunchy funny?”. Is raunchy disgusting humor always funny in a movie, is this something that always works? It worked in Animal House in 1979 but is this something that is a 100% guaranteed home run? Of course the answer to this is no. This movie tries hard to be funny but unfortunately for every 5 attempts at verbal or visual humor, maybe 1 out of worked and that is stretching it. During the entire two hours this movie was on screen I heard maybe 5 laughs and I only laughed once. The cardinal sin for any comedy movie is that if its not funny then the movie failed and for the most part this movie failed at being a funny comedy movie.

Many Saturday Night Live alums were in this movie but the only one that got any real time on screen was Bobby Moynahan and overall he could be considered the funniest one in this mostly unfunny movie. Kate McKinnon was also in this movie and she got maybe 2 minutes of screen time which is not nearly enough considering her talent.

This very simple story is about 2 sisters who visit their parents home in Orlando only to find out that their childhood house is being sold, so they decide to have one last party at the house that very soon gets way out of control and eventually the house gets trashed. The majority of the movie is about what goes on at this party and this becomes rather repetitive pretty quickly. There are scenes of people falling through ceilings, paint being injected into an outdoor pool, many scenes of drugged out and drunk behavior and finally a scene of a giant sink hole that drops the pool into the ground. Many of the scenes during this party including the dialogue falls flat and the screenplay, written by a former SNL writer Paula Pell mostly fails at its number one goal, making the audience laugh.

Despite the occasional upsides of this movie and very few laughs, it fails on too many levels to recommend.

Sisters IMDB

Its impossible to believe that in 1977 the first Star Wars movie was released and when it came out many thought at first that this was some average B movie and not a movie that anyone would have considered would be a new form of art or even a new idea that would change the world of movie making. After this first block buster hit in 1977 there were two more Star Wars movies in 1980 and 1983 and then George Lucas the director and creator of this franchise decided to not make any more Star Wars movies for 16 years and then starting in 1999 he made 3 prequels. Most people thought that the 3 prequel Star Wars movies were great with special effects but overall the stories were not up to the quality of the first 3 movies. The first prequel in 1999 had a duck-like character called Jar Jar Binks that many thought was by far the worst idea of the whole series.

After the last Star Wars movie in 2005 “Revenge of the Sith”, George Lucas announced that there would “never be another Star Wars movie”. This was before he sold the franchise to Disney for 4 billion dollars in 2012. (see the other entry about this in this blog).

Now that Disney has Star Wars, many more movies will follow because the story and the money is just too compelling. Human beings all want to believe that there is a great future for humanity in space and ideas like Star Trek and Star Wars enhance this desire to travel to different parts of the universe at “light speed”.

This movie was both directed and written by JJ Abrams and is a very good movie but I thought given the importance of this movie and the return of the Star Wars franchise after 10 long years, this movie could have been better. The story was very good, but not great, the special effects were very good but not great or anything we have not seen before. I also did not agree at all with the decision about one of the characters in this movie which I considered to be short sighted and too tragic for many of the young people who will be seeing this movie. Considering the very young children who will see this latest Star Wars, there is probably too many scenes of violent death, many of which were not necessary. There is a new droid in this 7th movie in the Star Wars series that is essentially two globes that rub together and this robot is far cuter that R2D2, who does make a small cameo appearance towards the end of this movie. This new robot is already a toy available in almost all toy stores and is a major source of comedy relieve in this 2 1/2 hours of action and warring factions of good and evil.

All of the original Star Wars characters from the original series made appearances in this new story except for Yoda, who I am sure will be making an appearance in the next movie as the ending left the door way open for many new releases of Star Wars movies for many more years to come. You had to be in awe of the 2 young starts of this movie Daisy Ridley and John Boyega who won the lottery with this last Star Wars release and the 3 to 5 more films that will follow over the next 10 years. They are as fortunate as the young actors in the Harry Potter series, who will make millions from their salaries and back ended profits from these movies.

This 7th Star Wars movie is a must see for all big fans of Star Wars and all people who just want to see a well made action/adventure movie. Due to the Disney deal with George Lucas the future of the Star Wars story is in good hands and we all can look forward to many movies like this in the future. Hopefully, all the movies will be up to a very high standard which this movie for the most part attains.

Star Wars the Force Awakens IMDB