Dustin: 4.5 of 5 stars Nick: 4.5 of 5 stars Average: 4.5 of 5 stars (Tweety canary)
Dustin: The Big Short is the true story about how several groups of savvy investors, including two of the greatest businessmen of all time (Michael Scott and Bruce Wayne), managed to predict the housing market crash and reap massive profits from it.
Nick: I’m not sure if I have ever said this, but this movie deserves to win the Oscar for Best Sound Editing! Or Sound Mixing? There are many scenes where levels of sound drop or add while making way for a new sound that adds another layer for that only to be dropped and add another layer of sound on top of that one. Since the first thing I’m praising is sound editing you might think this movie is a dud, but far from it, and I’m only getting started with the praising.
Dustin: Yeah, when a movie buff praises a technical aspect of a film before the story, normal people can probably guess the movie is awful. But we’ll let that slide. The movie is great in every respect. It takes a dry and confusing topic (finance), and creates a compelling narrative with interesting, relatable characters and an exciting story arch.
Dustin: Yeah, when a movie buff praises a technical aspect of a film before the story, normal people can probably guess the movie is awful. But we’ll let that slide. The movie is great in every respect. It takes a dry and confusing topic (finance), and creates a compelling narrative with interesting, relatable characters and an exciting story arch.
Nick: Is anyone better at becoming their character than Christian Bale?
Dustin: I assume that’s a rhetorical question. But the answer is no.
Nick: In every movie he is in this question pops into my head because I stop seeing Bale and start believing he truly is a different person. I love actors like George Clooney, but I never see beyond Clooney. Bale is so phenomenal in this film in such a short and sporadic amount of time it’s somewhat frightening how much depth he is able to give his character.
Dustin: Christian Bale is one of the few actors who can draw me to a movie just by his presence. He immerses himself so completely in his characters, whether he’s shedding pounds (The Machinist), putting on weight (American Hustle), getting ripped (Batman Begins), getting younger (Empire of the Sun), his dedication comes through and you believe him as the character. Like his performance in The Fighter, I totally forgot I was watching the same actor who played Batman.
Nick: Did you like the breaking of the fourth wall (talking to the camera)? How often they used it and how they used it?
Dustin: I think in a movie dealing with a topic average audience members wouldn’t really understand, it was unavoidable to break the fourth wall. Most of the time is was helpful and not very distracting. Ryan Gosling’s character narrates almost the entire time, and this is established early. But other instances were distracting and took me out of the movie. For example, when Selena Gomez explains a sort of stock option by directly addressing the audience as herself seemed a bit gratuitous. This is still better than trying to explain it to the audience through the characters’ dialogue, which would be awkward as they told each other things they already understood for the benefit of some unseen observer (us).
Nick: While I thought it was a funny idea to cut to Margot Robbie in a bathtub to explain the technical jargon of Wall Street, I don’t think it added anything to the film besides being a funny idea. Which, for these cut away scenes, Gosling breaks the fourth wall to get to the next scene for that to break the fourth wall. While it worked, I just think it would have been better if there was an animated clip with Gosling’s character talking over it, using something from everyday life as an example to describe what is going on. The movie goes at such a fast pace and these actors (Robbie, Gomez, etc) talk at such a fast pace to keep that pace alive it was hard for me to follow. Though it might be that I saw this on Christmas day and the mimosas were catching up to me.
Dustin: The movie did a good job indicting the real villains of the financial crisis. I remember early on pundits were pointing to people like Christian Bale’s character, the people who saw the crash coming and set themselves up to profit from it, as the bad guys. But the movie showed these people went out of their ways to tell the banks, government and accrediting agencies what was going to happen, and they were dismissed, ignored or laughed out of the room. The real villains were the banks who set up the house of cards that came crashing down, and not caring because they knew the government/taxpayers would bail them out, so there would be no real consequences to their actions.
Dustin: I think in a movie dealing with a topic average audience members wouldn’t really understand, it was unavoidable to break the fourth wall. Most of the time is was helpful and not very distracting. Ryan Gosling’s character narrates almost the entire time, and this is established early. But other instances were distracting and took me out of the movie. For example, when Selena Gomez explains a sort of stock option by directly addressing the audience as herself seemed a bit gratuitous. This is still better than trying to explain it to the audience through the characters’ dialogue, which would be awkward as they told each other things they already understood for the benefit of some unseen observer (us).
Nick: While I thought it was a funny idea to cut to Margot Robbie in a bathtub to explain the technical jargon of Wall Street, I don’t think it added anything to the film besides being a funny idea. Which, for these cut away scenes, Gosling breaks the fourth wall to get to the next scene for that to break the fourth wall. While it worked, I just think it would have been better if there was an animated clip with Gosling’s character talking over it, using something from everyday life as an example to describe what is going on. The movie goes at such a fast pace and these actors (Robbie, Gomez, etc) talk at such a fast pace to keep that pace alive it was hard for me to follow. Though it might be that I saw this on Christmas day and the mimosas were catching up to me.
Dustin: The movie did a good job indicting the real villains of the financial crisis. I remember early on pundits were pointing to people like Christian Bale’s character, the people who saw the crash coming and set themselves up to profit from it, as the bad guys. But the movie showed these people went out of their ways to tell the banks, government and accrediting agencies what was going to happen, and they were dismissed, ignored or laughed out of the room. The real villains were the banks who set up the house of cards that came crashing down, and not caring because they knew the government/taxpayers would bail them out, so there would be no real consequences to their actions.
I remember in April 2005, I was sitting with my then-girlfriend on the floor in her apartment listening to talk radio. Some brain donor on the radio pointed out the rising number of first-time homeowners as proof of how great the economy was. I said something like, “Wait until they default on their loans in a few years to see what kind of mess we’re in.” This was just one month after the events depicted at the beginning of this film.
Of course at the time I had no idea how severe the crisis would be, and it didn’t occur to me to place options on the housing market. But I remember in late 2008 mentioning to a friend, How come I could see this coming, but the experts didn’t. Now we know the experts did see it coming, but did nothing about it.
Nick: There were many parts in the film where you didn’t know whether to laugh or feel an insight of terror. When Brad Pitt’s character yelled at the young uns about their gleeful celebrating on becoming rich because they didn’t understand what that meant for millions of Americans. Though that part also made me laugh because it made me think of Pitt’s character in 12 Years a Slave where he is the one insightful white man who wants nothing to do with the sad plot of the film he is in, and I wondered at this moment in The Big Short if Pitt was a producer of the movie (like 12 Years a Slave) and sure enough he is. Brad Pitt starring as The Voice of Reason.
Dustin: I thought the same thing, but then I thought it was kind of funny, because I saw Pitt’s character here as something of a parody of himself/other characters in his recent films. His character is an insightful do-gooder, but portrayed as a little too neurotic and a little too out there compared to his character in 12 Years a Slave. I wonder if it was unintentional, or he was doing a parody of himself.
Nick: There were many parts in the film where you didn’t know whether to laugh or feel an insight of terror. When Brad Pitt’s character yelled at the young uns about their gleeful celebrating on becoming rich because they didn’t understand what that meant for millions of Americans. Though that part also made me laugh because it made me think of Pitt’s character in 12 Years a Slave where he is the one insightful white man who wants nothing to do with the sad plot of the film he is in, and I wondered at this moment in The Big Short if Pitt was a producer of the movie (like 12 Years a Slave) and sure enough he is. Brad Pitt starring as The Voice of Reason.
Dustin: I thought the same thing, but then I thought it was kind of funny, because I saw Pitt’s character here as something of a parody of himself/other characters in his recent films. His character is an insightful do-gooder, but portrayed as a little too neurotic and a little too out there compared to his character in 12 Years a Slave. I wonder if it was unintentional, or he was doing a parody of himself.
The Big Short is a great movie--Adam McKay’s best film about shady financial affairs since Get Hard.
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