The Big Short

There aren't many films about the 2008 crash and what caused it, apart from the odd documentary (notably Inside Job, a 2010 film by Charles Ferguson), but there have been many books and one, written by Michael Lewis, who wrote Moneyball and Liars Poker, has been turned into a movie starring Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt.

Analysing the existing mortgage bond market, eccentric hedge fund manager Michael Burry (Bale) decides to "short" i.e. bet against the market,  which he thinks will shortly collapse. He is followed by other hedge fund managers Mark Baum (Carell), Charlie Geller (John Magaro) and Jamie Shipley (Finn Wittrock).

It must have been very difficult to portray the intricacies of what happened to an audience munching on their popcorn, but the use of celebrity asides, although corny, does work quite well and the moral outrage is expressed by Baum on the one hand and Ben Rickert (Pitt) on the other rings true. That it was allowed to happen at all and that others didn't spot the problems sooner is the truly amazing part.

Killing Them Softly

Via my LoveFilm subscription, this is an adaption of another novel by the author who wrote The Friends of Eddie Coyle. After two small-time crooks rob a poker game, hitman Jackie Cogan (Brad Pitt) is tasked to sort out the problem.

If Samuel Beckett decided to write the screeplay for a crime film and got Andrei Tarkovsky or Ingmar Bergman to direct it, you'd end up with something like this. I suppose it's meant to be a black comedy, and it is funny in places, but the bulk of it is deadly dull, weary even. In fact, I'd say that it's better to watch the trailer: those are the best bits. Not recommended.