Grade: C+
I have a confession to make. I know absolutely nothing about stocks, bonds, housing bubbles, or – to an extent – mortgages, much less a mortgage crisis. I have tried to understand, but it still makes little sense. However, it is possible to make a movie about any of the above that I would end up enjoying. Oliver Stone’s original Wall Street is solid, and I loved Boiler Room – it made my top 10 list back in 2000. The Big Short is not one of them. Its first half hour is the strongest, but it didn’t take too long after that for things to go south and just become a bunch of incomprehensible mumbo jumbo. Along the way, there are well-fleshed-out characters and excellent performances (particularly from Steve Carell, Marisa Tomei, Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling, and Brad Pitt). The screenplay is sharp, and the whole thing is skillfully made, with a nice amount of offbeat quirkiness, but ultimately and unfortunately, none of this is enough to sustain the film, or elevate it to a level where it can move past its boring subject matter and become something special. Whenever I’m about to watch a movie, I imagine an empty room in my brain that’s about to be filled. With The Big Short, the decorations on the walls are hip, impressive, and fun to look at, but there’s no furniture.
Grade: C+
Film Reviews by Mark 
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