it's like, two plus two equals... fish
Sometimes, I just can't mince words. The Big Short made me angry. Not because it was a bad film. Far from it, in fact. The ensemble is great, Steve Carell giving the best performance probably, Christian Bale a close second (though Brad Pitt has the best moment in the film). The film makes use of clever voiceover--take note, Danny Rubin --and deliberately bazaar (and out of context) celebrity cameos to explain confusing investment terminology. And, it does a great job of mixing some documentary-style montages to offer up context as to the timeline of events. It tells the story of Inside Job in a simpler fashion, and expands Margin Call 's story into a larger setting. If you don't know either of those films, the former is a documentary, the latter a scripted film, and both are about the financial crisis of 2008. The Big Short begins a few years earlier, when Michael Burry (Bale) basically creates the "credit default swap" and banks let him buy a whole lot of them...