The Big Short [Includes Digital Copy] [Blu-ray/DVD] [2 Discs] [2015]

The film shines with a terrific script and subject on hand-- The big dive of the housing market back in 2008, and the people who were smart enough to capitalize on it! The film is audience friendly and really tries to explain most of the banking terms and info we need in order to get what they are talking about. The film also lends great talents such as, Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Brad Pitt, and more, in portraying these real life characters who saw this coming when no one else would. A film I've watched 10 times already! Amazing pace. Great writing. Great acting. Also, winner of the oscar for best adapted screenplay, by the way.

DVD HD feature good quality not excellent and the price was rather high at $19.99.

Comedy is tragedy + time, right? We're now over 7 years out from the apex of the American financial crisis, which spiraled outward across the world, and yet what has really changed? People are still making millions/billions off the suffering of others, corporate control reigns supreme, fraud is common and remains largely unknown, wealth continues to be ever more concentrated in the grasp of a few, and the remainder of the populace are treated as proverbial rats and made to feel uncouth should they question the system and question not wanting to live their lives playing this sadistic game. Taking 2 pennies and selling them to someone for a hundred dollars remains a legal activity, just call those pennies by a different name and suddenly it's okay to pass them off as fair market. It doesn't sound funny at all, but The Big Short succeeds in turning this demented and corrupt circus into something improbably hilarious and probing. The power of comedy is its ability to let us see something from a different viewpoint, allow us to process it in ways we wouldn't have been able to otherwise. As we might laugh at children for the hilariously unaware things they say and do, so too will humankind in the future hopefully laugh at how completely pathetic and ignorant our present society has been. Martin Scorsese opened the flap up into the circus entrance with "The Wolf of Wall Street" and, while making good points, was perhaps a bit too concerned with his own technique and had a bit too much indulgence reveling in the frivolity of it all. The Big Short completely blows the top of the circus and dissects it in every way, starting with the widespread fraud and greed in business, and then examining how it has seeped into our entire existences. Even the good guys here are ultimately out there to make money, lots of it. Isn't that what society tells us we must to do, in order to be valuable? It's sick. McKay's approach here is "throw everything in, including the kitchen sink" and that creates an energetic, brilliantly matched representation of the subject matter. This does not mean he is lacking control, however. The story being told includes so many facets and characters that it easily could have fallen into disarray, but McKay makes every single character memorable and illuminates every piece of jargon that could be confusing from the outset. It's a huge accomplishment and a far more important one than might seem apparent. The things that were allowed to happen in the realms of business, finance, and banking are absolutely INSANE and unbelievable. It has to be largely comedic because there's no other way of delivering this vast amount of information and complete failure of our entire society and make it all snap into place so continuously, without being ripped apart by the overwhelming darkness of it all. This isn't simply circumstantial and theoretical and mysterious to a degree, as in Oliver Stone's "JFK", but the cold hard truth. It's not enough to even ask for the truth anymore and ask for answers, we need to question the entire system, a whole web of poisonous bonds that have tightly wound themselves so entirely around us. The work of the film itself is allowing us to project our thoughts, our fears, our anger, and our confusions into this convoluted conundrum. All while being told the truth, so that we at least have a place to even start down the correct path of understanding. It's acting as our own investigative journey in a time when actual news and journalism has become a tiny spec of its former self. We now have more information than ever available to us, yet it's often so shrouded and twisted as to become unrecognizable. There are still those who fear education for what it would do to their own position in life, how it would challenge their own reality. We are still held under the thumb of "greed is good", "thinking you're inherently better is good", "vanity is good". The shiny mainstream hallmarks of a typical Hollywoood commercial product - the agreeable lighting and manicured actors and tidy locations - are so perfectly representative in this film of the emptiness within the characters and indeed in our entire society. After all the progress we think we've made towards world peace and human rights and medical advances and the stability of the human race, have we lost sight of what a fulfilling life and a world of justice should really be? Aren't we still captive to the same pointless rituals and superficialities, doesn't a veritable monarch and royal court still control most everything? We are now living our lives working for something that can be wiped out with the stroke of a keyboard. We are told something of monetary worth that is non-existent, for all intents and purposes, is something we should strive for. Making a bet on the outcome of another bet is a whole industry. The non-existent and ridiculous and pointless directly hurts the lives of many. The Big Short is one of the most important films of this era and one of the best. I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. It is an illumination, a magical pairing of a director's sensibility to exactly the correct form that most fully allows it to blossom and hold water. It is water which the film warns us will be the next basic human necessity to be denied by those few who hold powe

If you like this type of movie genre this movie is great. Really gets you thinking how how the big banks screwed people then and still now.

Who expects a comedy about the housing bubble disaster? Who expects "real people" to butt into a fictional story? Who expects the fourth wall to be broken again and again? Hey, the critics liked it, so you may too.

In the context of the film it makes perfect sense, but squeezed in among last seasons holiday releases The Big Short unfortunately seemed to be one of the more forgettable titles. It helped marginally that the faces on the poster are four of Hollywood's heaviest hitters with Brad Pitt bringing in the biggest pull (and ironically putting in the least amount of screen time), but even this didn't feel like enough to distract moviegoers from what is always a saturated market only made worse here by a complicated story that has been relayed in sardonic terms by the director of Anchorman. Of course, if you've payed attention to any of Adam McKay's work you'd know the director of Anchorman and other such Will Ferrell comedies including Talladega Nights and The Other Guys is actually the perfect choice for a film that desires to tell of the housing market crash that occurred in America in 2008. It is a story in need of sharp social commentary, of a mind that might give the boring numbers game an insightful twist and McKay is able to deliver on all fronts by crafting a final product that is as funny and stinging as it is heartbreaking and tragic-a detriment, almost, to the American spirit. And yet, throughout the over two hour runtime the film never ceases to be breathlessly entertaining. There is so much going on, so many words being spoken, so many deals being made, and so many new characters being introduced at such rapid rates that we never have time to settle in, but rather stay perched on the edge of our seats. With its hands in so many different pots it would be easy for the The Big Short to go off the rails, but somewhat unexpectedly the film finds a certain groove in its latter half that, while not matching the frenetic speed of the first two acts, brings in the necessary levity that strikes the perfect balance between both the ridiculousness of the situation and the dire real world consequences. McKay, working from his and Charles Randolph's screenplay that is based on the book by Michael Lewis (The Blind Side, Moneyball), is able to remain so laser focused on what makes these characters so interesting in their own right that the fact they exist in this compelling real world situation is only icing on the cake.

Director Adam McKay is best known for his comedies with Will Ferrell ("Anchorman," "Talladega Nights"), so by his own reckoning he probably was the last person expected to tackle adapting Michael Lewis's bestselling book about a handful of misfit investors who noticed the housing bubble in the mid-2000s and "shorted" the market in the years before 2008's crash. However, he proves to be the perfect choice-boiling down complex financial jargon in a way that is easy for a layperson to understand, often through the use of celebrity cameos like Anthony Bourdain or Selena Gomez. The actors playing the investors (led by Christian Bale, Steve Carrell, and Ryan Gosling) are all excellent, and although McKay keeps the pace breezy and injects a lot of humor into the proceedings, this is an angry film, angry at the greed and stupidity of the banks responsible for the collapse, at the weakness of the government regulators to stop it, and the absence of meaningful journalistic scrutiny to let the public know what was happening. And the widespread pain caused by the crash is on full display (the irony that the "heroes" of the film are getting rich at the expense of most Americans is not lost on anyone). The Big Short was nominated for multiple Oscars and is rightly regarded as one of 2015's best films. The Blu-ray delivers excellent picture and sound, and a handful of solid extras (although a commentary would have been nice). Well worth a purchase.

After the Wall Street/Big banks meltdown of 2008 that precipitated a worldwide recession, this movie is must see viewing. Steve Karel stars, plus cameo spots by many big stars in the entertainment world. But that's not what makes it a great movie. It is the content that explains derivatives and some other complex Wall Street tricks that makes this an important film. And, with government oversight being cut short at every opportunity, it is possible that this, or something worse, could happen again. And with greed at the core of it all, sadly, it probably will happen again. The only caution--- being a realistic depiction of events at that time--- there is some profanity in the movie. But when viewed overall, the whole meltdown and its causes were profane--- so it fits!