The Big Short Movie Critique The movie that I chose was “The Big Short”. This movie depicts the financial crisis in 2008 and how it came about. Michael Burry, played by Christian Bale, noticed that the housing market was very unstable and had a feeling the market would collapse in 2007 due to high-risk subprime loans. These loans were made to many people that should not have been loaned money at such high interest rates. Burry figured that there was a way he could profit from this. He was to create a credit default in order to short the housing market. Many banks were ready to jump on board with him and that these banks were working with bond rating companies to keep their ratings. This allows the banks to sell any bad loans before they lose on them. Burry’s …show more content…
The investors wanted their money back but Burry placed a suspension on any withdrawals. Jared Vennett and Mark Baum, played by Ryan Gosling and Steve Carrell, noticed Burry’s goal to establish the credit default swap and joined him. The housing market finally collapsed and Burry’s value increased by 489% and a profit of more than 2.5 billion dollars. One of the big reasons he was so successful was due to collateralized debt obligations receiving triple A ratings. These CDOs created a huge risk to the market and financial sectors were crushed by it. The first ethical issue that I noticed when watching this film was greed. In class, we talked about egoism versus utilitarianism. Egoism is doing what is in the greatest good for oneself. Burry clearly allows his greed to bring this out in him as he takes advantage of uneducated people when it comes to investing. This would not have happened if he were utilitarianism. He would’ve done what was best for his investors and would not have taken advantage of these people. Another concept that relates
Paper Towns is about a boy named Quentin Jacobsen and his childhood friend Margo Roth Spiegelman. When they were kids, they spent a lot of time together, but as they grew up, they also grew apart. Then, one day, Margo shows up at Quentin’s window, asking him to help her. They then spend the night seeking revenge on Margo’s high school friends who she says have wronged her. The next day, Margo disappears, which isn’t uncommon for Margo. But this time, Quentin gets involved in the mystery until, eventually, he’s the only one still looking. Quentin believes Margo wants to be found and has left a trail of clues for him. After searching for a while, Quentin finds the clue that leads him to Agloe, New York, where Margo is. Quentin and his friends take a road trip there, to find out that Margo isn’t what Quentin expected at all.
The Singularity. It sounds like a cheesy eighties sci-fi flick starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Carrie Fisher, complete with one-liners and a cult following that survives till this day. However unfortunate it may be, that’s not what the Singularity refers to. It refers to the greatest paradigm shift in humanity’s history, and it would alter our understanding of the Earth in an unimaginable way. It refers to the point in time where Artificial Intelligence (AI) will become so intelligent that they will out perform humanity and gain new knowledge at an exponential rate.
Have you ever wondered what it feels like to live in a country or city that is completely discriminative about your ethnicity? How would you feel to be walking down the road and be afraid to cross the street because there is a different race in the direction you are wanting to head? Well these are prime examples that happen in everyday life all the time. The movie Crash that I will be referencing a lot of my information off of, is a movie where there is a lot of different ethnical backgrounds. In the beginning of the movie Crash, a detective is investigating a homicide, a black male was found dead on the side of the road. The movie starts off with a lot of vehicles driving down the road with a lot of tire marking engraved into the grass.
The pursuit of happiness is a film where Will Smith shines is a tale of rags-to-riches filled with love, family, and pursuance the American dream. Will takes the role of Christopher Gardner who was a salesman struggling to satisfy the needs of his wife Thandie Newton and their son Jaden Christopher Syre Smith. With the persistent financial problems, his wife gives up the struggle abandoning him and their son. Things get worse as Gardner and his son are evicted from their residence leaving them with no option but try surviving on the streets of San Francisco. They are compelled to move from one place to another in the bid to get a shelter wherever they are lucky to get one. On one night, they spend their night in a subway
Recently, there is a spike of historical films being released lately. One of the films is an Academy Award nominee for “Best Picture,” Selma. The film, Selma, is based on the 1965 Selma to Montgomery voting rights marches. The film shows the struggles of the black community face with the blockage of their voting rights and the racial inequality during the civil rights movement. Selma is about civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. heading to the rural Alabama City, Selma, to secure the voting rights for the African American community by having a march to Montgomery. It shows the struggles from what the African American community had to endured during the 1960s. Selma shows a social significance to today’s current events, specifically
Michael Lewis’s The Big Short tells the tale of the 2008 financial crisis from the perspective of a few idiosyncratic characters that saw it coming. Unlike big financial institutions that underestimated the risk of increasingly extending subprime mortgage loans to uncreditworthy customers, Lewis’ characters gauged such risk accurately and anticipated the eventual burst of the housing bubble. Not only did they foresee the inevitable, but they also made a fortune by betting on its happening. Had they conformed to the public sentiment of extreme optimism and confidence in the stability of the real estate market, they would not have reaped immense monetary rewards. Between the lines of The Big Short, there lurks, albeit not too covertly, a message about the benefits of nonconformity. While conformity is often times socially encouraged and applauded, it is important to wonder at times whether going against the flow would be of greater benefit to us or our community. In Michael Lewis’s narrative, defiance of the status quo as a result of skepticism toward financial markets has yielded big payoff, whereas conformity to the widespread denial of the housing market’s unpredictability has incurred massive losses.
The Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King is both a wonderful film and a brilliantly written short story. There are many themes represented in each form of The Shawshank Redemption. The one major theme that interests me in both the film and the story is freedom. Freedom serves a large purpose for both the story's writer and the filmmaker. Both use similar examples to signify freedom, not only in the jail, but also in a larger context about life. There are many events and examples in both the film and the short story that signifies the theme of freedom. The one main difference is when the film uses the director’s technique to portray a feel of freedom for the inmates. The overall three issues used in this essay are all linked to the feeling of the inmates feeling the sense of freedom with the prison walls.
Originating from a 1905 novel written by Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess was first released in the United States in 1995 (Barnes & Noble). Richard LaGravenese and Elizabeth Chandler created this classic screenplay. Alfonso Cuarón, winner of The New Generation award at the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards, directed this film (IMDb). Family drama and fantasy is the genre. The main character is Sarah Crewe, followed by sub-characters Captain Crewe, Miss Minchin, Ermengarde, Lavinia and Becky (IMDb). Sarah is an intelligent, polished, motherless, wealthy child living in India with her father, Captain Crewe. Captain Crewe toke Sarah to a Victorian style boarding school in New York while he was away at war. Miss Minchin, the headmistress, takes a disliking to Sarah immediately, as does the school bully, Lavinia. Sarah immediately bonds with her classmate Ermengarde, an awkward, fat, rather dull gal and Becky, an obedient, colored and articulate servant girl. Most importantly the primary theme of A Little Princess is perseverance through social class changes. A Little Princess effectively represents the theme because Sarah’s spirit is not broken when she experiences jealousy, isolation, death of a loved one and poverty (Shmoop Editorial Team).
Film Analysis - The Notebook Introduction The film is portrayed in the past and present scenario setting. It is based on a young couple’s love and passion for one another, but are unexpectedly separated due to the disapproval of the teen girl parents and the social differences in their life. At the start of the movie, it displays a nursing home style setting with an elderly man named Duke (James Garner), reading to an elderly woman named Mrs. Hamilton (Gena Rowlands), whose memory is inevitably deteriorating. The story he reads to her is a love story about two teenagers named Allie (Rachel McAdams) and Noah (Ryan Gosling), that met in the 1940’s at a carnival in Seabrook Island, South Carolina.
Individuals like the two young and rambunctious mortgage consultants portrayed in the film gave loans to anyone and everyone that could sign the paper, regardless of the recipient’s ability to pay the loan in full. It is doubtful that all consultants fully understood the ramifications of their actions, but undoubtedly the overall disregard for consequence was the start of the collapse. Mortgage consultants mislead and tricked people into loans they could never afford by playing on their desire to live the American dream. Distributing adjustable rate loans to individuals without jobs, without collateral is unconscionable. Unfortunately, from their perspective they were helping these individuals. In a twisted way, these consultants were acting ethically from a utilitarian point of view. The consultants won because they received utility in the form of a bonus for distributing the loans, and the loanee won because they could now afford the home of their dreams. What the consultants didn’t consider in their calculations were the long term results and utility of their actions, unethically building the flawed foundation of the housing
The movie 'How To Train Your Dragon' contains many static characters, and only few dynamic characters. Young Vikings in training, as well as their teacher : Fishlegs, Snoutlout, Gobber, Tuffnut and Ruffnut, are all consistent in their behavior and morals throughout the movie. This is what makes them static characters. Also, the mother dragon that Hiccup, Astrid and Toothless find in a cave is a static character because it is the antagonist in the film and she never changes until she dies.
As college professors, do you ever consider exploring the world? Christopher McCandless once stated, “The core of man's spirit comes from new experiences.” This quote resonates throughout the movie adaptation, Into the Wild. Based on a true story in the 1990’s, the film explores a man’s existence and the meaning of life. Although released in 2007, I discovered the movie three years ago through the internet. Instantly, it became my favorite movie. Into the Wild describes an eye-opening adventure, an influential message, and a story that I, and possibly others, can relate to.
Hazel Lancaster Grace: She is diagnosed with Stage 4 Thyroid cancer with metastasis forming in her lungs, but has managed to live with her disease owing to doses of an experimental drug called Phalanxifor
Many different movies have characters with different types of disabilities, in my essay I would like to focus on one particular movies. The movie I chose is “The Fault in Our Stars” from 2014, directed by Josh Boone.
This movie starts off as Jordan Belfort, the main character in the movie, losing his job as a stockbroker in Wall Street. After losing his job, he goes and gets a job in a Long Island brokerage room. In the brokerage room, he sells penny stocks. Thanks to him being aggressive in his selling skills, he was able to make a profit. With the new income, he gives his wife a bracelet and she asked him why doesn’t he go after the people that can afford to lose money, not the middle-class people or lower income people. That is when he gets the idea to get a lot of young people and train them to become the best stock brokers.