Contrarian Rules

Dr Michael Burry PhD (Christian Bale) holds his own in his conviction about the fragility of the US economy at a time when the US housing market was seeing only go-go days. An uncertain partnership between Deutsche trader Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling) and the incendiary Morgan Stanley-affiliated trader Mark Baum (Steve Carrell) also look to short the housing market in a deeply contrarian bet. Perhaps the coolest bet of all - Bloomfield Capital, a $ 30 mln fund from Boulder, Colorado, looks to working with retired banker and survivalist Ben Rickert (Brad Pitt) to go as deep as shorting AAs, in line with their strategy of picking up deep out of the money options. With inserts from an unlikely ensemble of characters that includes pop stars and celebrity chefs, The Big Short is one of the best movies that I have seen in a long time

16/20

He Wolf

For me, The Wolf of Wall Street operated at several different levels. At one level is the unavoidable allusions – the Mayflower (twice!), the crazy partying,choices related to marquee employers/small employers/entrepreneurship, the kid that’s oh so close in spite of all that is going on in life, the back pain pills – what can one say save what an outcome in spite of it all?! At another level is the debauchery, the over-the-top movie, the living-on-the-edge recklessness combined with high performance, the coke high to get over the lemmon high, perception versus reality across it all. Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Martin Scorcese come together to produce a one-of-a-kind movie that is profane, intense, irretrievably materialistic and out-and-out a one of a kind movie. Absolutely unmissable, whether you belong to the 99% or the 1%

16/20