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.

True(ish) Stories: American Hustle and Dallas Buyers Club

On the upside of a disruptive and chaotic Christmas/New Year (welcome to 2015, everybody), I watched a few films from my Amazon subscription. First up, two con artists (Christian Bale and Amy Adams) are blackmailed into an FBI sting operation:

On paper, this looks like it could be a really great movie, with a top notch cast and a true(ish) story, but the direction is poor and the casting laughable. Bale couldn't sell a lifebelt to a drowning man and generates no sympathy or empathy as the lead. Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Adams, as his wife and girlfriend respectively, do better, but, like Bale, are too young for the roles. Jeremy Renner is also good, but Bradley Cooper is just embarrassing. It's just simply not their kind of film. However, you do get a glimpse of what might have been when Robert De Niro turns up for 5 minutes and steals not just the scene but the movie.

Next is the Dallas Buyers Club. Ron Woodruff (Matthew McConaughey), after contracting HIV and developing AIDS, decides to treat himself and others using non-FDA approved drugs after the approved treatment fails.

The acting in the film is top notch, as you'd expect, with McConaughey ably supported by Jennifer Garner as his doctor and Jared Leto as his business partner, and the story is handled well. However, as with the previous film, I've always felt that true stories don't fit particularly well into film because a life cannot be told in 90-120 minutes. I always have a feeling that the truth is more complex and you're just getting half the story. Still, it's not a bad film and worth the watch.

The Dark Knight Rises

I got this DVD at Christmas but have only just got around to watching it. Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale), and the Batman, face their greatest challenge when Bane (Tom Hardy) attempts to take over Gotham City.

The idea seems to be to conclude the trilogy by re-writing the plot of the first film. Gotham, again, gets cut off and isolated, this time for months rather than just a single night. Even Bane is, at least initially, said to be a student of Ra's al Ghul, the villain in the first film. The effects are good enough, as is the acting, but there's something vaguely tired and re-cycled about the whole thing, as if everyone couldn't wait to get shot of it and move on to something new.