The Wolf Of Wall Street

[Larry Kart]

Best movie I know on the general subject was "Margin Call":

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1615147/?ref_=ttfc_fc_tt

[Brad]

I missed that one but a good book on the financial crisis (although there are a lot if them and I've been told there are better books) is The Sellout by Charles Gasparino. The fall of Bear Stearns and their appetite for risk figures prominently in the book.

Edited June 10, 2014 by Brad

[xybert]

Reminded me of Boiler Room in certain respects but thought it faithfully reproduced the attitude.

I quite liked Boiler Room back in the day, apparently it is loosely based on Jordan Belfort as well.

[T.D.]

Reminded me of Boiler Room in certain respects but thought it faithfully reproduced the attitude.

I quite liked Boiler Room back in the day, apparently it is loosely based on Jordan Belfort as well.

I found Boiler Room surprisingly good - one of those films that seems consistently under-rated.

I wanted to like Margin Call, but it was rather contrived and didn't really work for me. [Disclosure: I worked on Wall St., institutional fixed income, for a long time and probably know too much about the subject matter to be convinced by a film. The world of penny stocks is much easier to portray.]

[Dan Gould]

I watched this on IFC (well, DVR'd IFC) last night. I figured that's the only way to watch something like this, with "no blurs" as IFC promotes themselves.

As comedy it had some great moments - more than a few. But the character is so contemptible all I am doing is rooting for the FBI/SEC, and that they all die when the boat sinks. I want him to suffer, and in the end that hardly happens. At least when there's a pause in the laughs Scorcese was smart enough to have another starlet go full frontal in short order.

(Funny that there was major fraud going on in the financing/production side of the film. See the CNBC series American Greed ...)

[Brad]

I mentioned this earlier but Boiler Room is very good and I actually liked it better than Wolf of Wall Street. However, the best one of all these types of movies is The Big Short. I’ve seen it several times. The late Anthony Bourdain’s explanation of a CDO (collateralized debt obligation) is classic. I saw Margin Call last year and that is excellent.

If I had to rank these movies it would be 

Big Short

Margin Call

Boiler Room

Wolf of Wall Street 

Wall Street

Edited September 11, 2020 by Brad

[Larry Kart]

"Margin Call" 

Then "The Big Short"

They're complimentary