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Reviews 2.3.

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Excellent customer service (and journalism)

Excellent customer service. Every problem I've had has been solved and I've gotten money back whenever I asked for some (with a valid reason). Needless to say, the reporting is also excellent. I don't agree with their editorial stances, but this counts in their favour: it is one of the few newspapers who can still reach far and wide beyond those in immediate agreement with their stances.

Date of experience : April 09, 2024

Delivery failures - again

I really can’t comment on the content of the paper, seeing as it’s not been delivered. I got the print subscription over Easter as it was on offer, due to start Tuesday (2nd April) but no delivery. I called to complain and got an email the following day in response, apologising for the missed delivery for that day (Wednesday!) saying that the “driver couldn’t find the address” and the customer service agent very helpfully provided them with a Google Maps link and Street view so that they could find it. I verified this was correct. For clarity, I live in a semi detached house on a long road. It’s really not difficult to find and no other delivery company has had trouble finding the property, just the FT delivery team, and this isn’t the first time either. I tried getting the print subscription a year or two ago and had the same problem, haphazard deliveries that only sometimes showed up. I suspect the team are feigning incompetence to hide their laziness in not wanting to deliver. I understand it’s an early start guys, but if you don’t want the job, quit so FT can hire someone who is willing! The customer service reps were nice and sympathetic which is why I added an extra star. They tried everything they could to give me an alternative solution but when I declined they quickly facilitated cancelling my subscription as requested for a full refund. FT’s delivery team is costing them a lot of customers, as the reviews on here establish.

Date of experience : April 02, 2024

Reply from Financial Times

Thank you for your feedback and sharing your user details with us. We will be in contact shortly. Best regards FT Customer Care

FT should call out incompetent anylists

Financial Times article below Share price forecast in GBX The 14 analysts offering 12 month price targets for St James's Place PLC have a median target of 835.00, with a high estimate of 1,400.00 and a low estimate of 599.00. The median estimate represents a 34.46% increase from the last price of 621.00 Share price has plummeted and the 14 ... yes FOURTEEN analysts should be sacked! How can so many get it so wrong and the FT should not just feature their positive forecast but call them out for their incompetence!!

Date of experience : February 28, 2024

Non Delivery

I took out a subscription to the FT Saturday edition as a present for my partner. The first two weeks they did not deliver and had no explanation. It seems to be a common problem so I have now cancelled the subscription.

Date of experience : March 09, 2024

Thank you for your feedback and we're sorry to learn that there have been unresolved issues with our newspaper delivery service. We have contacted you directly through Trust Pilot for more information. FT Customer Care

No delivery for 2 weeks

For two weeks in a row, no delivery and no resolution. Just empty promises they will look into this. I wonder just what exactly am I paying for? Apparently for the priviledge of talking to FT agents every weekend to complain about non-delivery.

Date of experience : February 10, 2024

Thank you for your feedback and we're sorry to learn that you have had issues with our newspaper delivery service. We have contacted you directly through Trustpilot for more information to help us resolve the problem and hope to hear from you soon. FT Customer Care

Clickbait and Bias

I've been a digital subscriber and a weekend reader for a couple of years. I recently had reason to complain when a headline veered into clickbait. Despite 2 promises, it took 2 complaints to the commissioner and over 2 weeks to get any response, which agreed the headline was wrong. Damage had been done but no mitigation was offered. Very disappointing

Date of experience : November 13, 2023

Totally soaked paper

I am satisfied with the content of FT. I am just really tired of the delivery company of not bagging the newspaper when it is raining and drizzling. I lost count of how many times I received totally soaked paper. There is such a thing as weather forecast.

Date of experience : December 29, 2023

Extra mile for customers

FT Customer Care has been phenomenal recently, especially via email correspondence for UK customers. Thank you Sarah for posting a HTSI back issue from 14-October which my household member had thrown away. It really made my day when it arrived in the post. In todays world, I somewhat doubt any other media outlet would have gone the extra mile for a customer, so I genuinely appreciate your efforts here. In terms of the FT Weekend subscription, rather than delivery we have always opted for the voucher booklets which the FT have posted in time with email updates when dispatched. Because of the top customer service, I shall renew my annual subscription.

Date of experience : November 10, 2023

Articles are just failed economic…

Articles are just failed economic propaganda... Rich deserve to be rich.. Workers must work harder... Tax is immoral... It's a beacon of how the 20th century failed humanity . And a paywall prevents regular folk reading a few casual article each month despite dropping in newsfeed all the time

Date of experience : July 25, 2023

It’s hard to believe that only a few…

It’s hard to believe that only a few years back this was the best paper in the UK and it’s now turned into absolute trash you wouldn’t even want to use it to startup a BBQ in case you’re seen with it by the guests. I can have it for free and I don’t even take the offer! This is NOT journalism, it’s propaganda written by a flock of parrots and muppets.

Date of experience : November 22, 2023

Good service with consistent unnecessary issues.

FT subscriber of 2/3 years. I enjoy most of the articles and feature pieces and for the most part it’s well written. Progressively I am seeing more and more hit pieces and articles that seem to be propaganda pieces on certain topics. Love the factual based articles and reporting for the most part. But it does seem to be becoming more partisan. The worst thing the FT does, which I find inexcusable for a premium paid service is the amount of articles on key world events and topics that have the comments disabled. For the high cost to access the FT, and the comment section being one of the biggest pros or the service, disabling this on important events and topics is just excessive and stupid. If you can’t trust your high fee readers to debate, then drop the price and reposition yourself as a mid tier media company. Unfortunately you can’t do both. The comment disabling is the key reason that makes me consider cancelling my subscription and going to Bloomberg, the Economist.

Date of experience : November 05, 2023

Biased information

Sensationalism at all levels, they biased their wording and information in order to align with their investors ideology, PLEASE ALL WE WANT IS UNBIASED MEDIA AND REAL INFORMATION.

Date of experience : March 19, 2024

Best Customer Support from the Best Journal Around

I needed to contact FT Customer Support in UK. I am very grateful to SVEN who helped me with few information I was looking for about my digital subscription. I am happy to say that the quality of the customer support and help received upholds the quality of the journal. I am very sorry to hear that other people do not agree, but for me FT and its services and support remains one of the best around.

Date of experience : August 08, 2022

Weekend Delivery

Ordered the weekend print. Didn't arrive in week one. Told it would arrive in week two and it hasn't. Cancelling subscription. I have now heard from many the FT delivery service is dreadful. If you can't deliver paper to people's doors you shouldn't offer the service. Edit - dreadful customer service, they simply suggested I wait another week to see if it had resolved. I told them to add the daily paper until we know that they have sorted the issue and they refused. I tried printed press but will stick to digital news aggregators. In the age of frictionless processes print media needs to do better to survive.

Date of experience : May 06, 2023

Dear Michael We're sorry that there were issues with the delivery. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to remedy this for you, as agreed with a senior member of our customer care team. FT Customer Care

Three days into a print subscription

Three days into a print subscription, not a paper to be seen. I am absolutely despise digesting my news digitally but looks like i have no choice. I wish i had of read the reviews before signing up. I committed based on reputation. Maybe the supply chain directors need to spend some time with amazon to learn how to setup an effective delivery service. I can't be bothered with the headache, i think i will cancel in my cooling off period and buy the economist.

Date of experience : March 18, 2023

Dear Micha We're sorry to read that you've experienced a problem with our newspaper delivery service. Of course, we're very keen to remedy this for you and we've reached out to you using Trustpilot's contact channel but not received a reply. Please contact us at help.ft.com and our team can investigate this for you immediately. FT Customer Care

Read the FT with a bowlful of salt

Read the FT with a bowlful of salt. There are increasing propaganda pieces that paint quite a biased view of many issues. The FT was once famed for the ability to provide impartial and critical analysis but is increasingly partisan and misleading. And arbitrary and repeated comments deletion and banning seems widespread and so only FT's echo-chamber views are allowed. Quite pathetic and draconian treatment of paid subscribers After having subscribed for many years I have just cancelled my subscription

Date of experience : September 12, 2023

Changed address in central London

Changed address in central London. The FT has only managed to find my address once in the past two weeks. They do not reply to emails and have been completely unhelpful in resolving the situation. I do not advise getting this newspaper delivered and will be cancelling my subscriptions.

Date of experience : July 12, 2023

Thank you for your feedback and we are sorry for any issues with the newspaper delivery service. We have contacted you for more information so we can investigate. We have used the Trustpilot contact tool - please check your spam folder if you’ve not received TP’s notification. Best regards FT Customer Care

Excellent apart from …..

An excellent newspaper. The research and depth of its articles are second to none. However, it has one flaw, its editorial opinions, under the the label The FT View. Every day I open the FT and cringe. The section should be relabelled Stating the Bleeding Obvious in an exquisitely sanctimonious style.

Date of experience : January 30, 2023

Unethical Subscription Management

The articles are fine, however I find companies that let you sign up digitally and then force you to call to cancel unethical. The sales pitch when calling confirmed the real reason for this process. They are also priced well above market average for monthly costs.

Date of experience : April 16, 2020

From the perspective of a culture…

From the perspective of a culture vulture and lover of architecture, jazz and classical music, art, poetry. books and eccentric influencers - the FT Weekend has it all. I simply adore the Religious Opinion Section - as an Eschatologist (I write about end time prophecies contained in the Bible - Matthew 24.3-22, 2 Timothy 3.1-16), and Poetess. Always inspiring! Thank you. No Facebook/No Instagram/No Twitter

Date of experience : December 16, 2022

Best Finance Movies of All Time, Ranked

Greed is not good, but there's something great about taking a complicated topic like stock markets and finance and breaking everything down into a movie the general public can consume and understand.

The films that do this best are endlessly rewatchable. With the uncertain state of the economy and financial markets, now is a good time to invest your time in some movies about money and finance. 

These are the best finance movies of all time. 

30. Cosmopolis

Director: David Cronenberg

Starring: Robert Pattinson, Paul Giamatti, Samantha Morton, Sarah Gadon, Mathieu Amalric, Juliette Binoche, Jay Baruchel

Budget: $20.5 million

Worldwide box office: $6.1 million

Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 31%

Bottom line: There are two really weird, cool Hollywood players in the mix here with director David Cronenberg and leading man Robert Pattinson teaming up to bring a Don DeLillo novel to life. 

The movie was a huge box-office bomb, but it's worth watching for Pattinson, who has been steady if not spectacular in leading roles for a decade now, and the audacity of Cronenberg as a director. Don't forget this is the same guy who made "The Fly," "Dead Ringers" and "A History of Violence." 

The two of them somehow make watching Pattinson's character's descent from billionaire to dead broke and into murderous madness pretty entertaining.

29. 1929: The Great Crash

Director: Joanna Bartholomew

Starring: N/A

Budget: N/A (BBC Two documentary)

Worldwide box office: N/A

Rotten Tomatoes audience score: N/A

Bottom line: One of the great warnings from history is that if we don't understand our past, we're condemned to repeat it. That is in sharp focus with many of the movies on the list, including this British-produced documentary about the stock market crash on Oct. 16, 1929 — Black Tuesday — that led to The Great Depression. 

This one should be required viewing for anyone who wants to understand the modern economy because it shows how without regulation of banks, as much as those regulatory agencies are criticized, the alternative is much, much worse.

28. Rogue Trader

Director: James Reardon

Starring: Ewan McGregor, Anna Friel, Pip Torrens, Tim McInnerny 

Budget: $12.8 million

Worldwide box office: $1.3 million

Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 52%

Bottom line: This movie took a bath at the box office, but the true story of corrupt derivatives trader Nick Leeson gets a huge boost from the presence of a young Ewan McGregor in one of his last roles before the "Star Wars" prequels turned him into an A-List star for the next decade. 

Never heard of Leeson? He single-handedly brought down Barings Bank, which had operated in England since 1762, with a series of fraudulent and unauthorized trades in 1995 that led to $1.4 billion in losses — double what Barings had available.

He fled to Singapore, where he was caught and sentenced to six-and-a-half years in prison. And Singapore prisons are pretty rough.

27. Strictly Business

Director: Kevin Hooks

Starring: Tommy Davidson, Joseph C. Phillips, Halle Berry, Kim Coles, Sam Rockwell, Anne-Marie Johnson, David Marshall Grant, Samuel L. Jackson

Budget: $2.5 million

Worldwide box office: $7.6 million

Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 57%

Bottom line: This movie is largely forgotten aside from being one of Oscar-winning actress Halle Berry's first roles, but it's a pretty lighthearted romp that capitalized on having up-and-coming comedian Tommy Davidson with top billing. 

It also featured some lower-level stars who catapulted to fame in later years. Alongside Berry, future Oscar nominees Sam Rockwell and Samuel L. Jackson had supporting roles.

Director Kevin Hooks went on to direct some big-budget action movies in "Passenger 57" and "Fled," and was one of the key directors on the hit TV show "Prison Break."

26. Other People's Money

Director: Norman Jewison

Starring: Danny DeVito, Gregory Peck, Penelope Ann Miller, Piper Laurie

Budget: N/A

Worldwide box office: $25.6 million 

Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 46%

Bottom line: You can't help but watch Danny DeVito's starring role in "Other People's Money" and feel like he came so close to hitting the mark with a "Wall Street"-style role. 

The problem with "Other People's Money" is that it pulls its punches with its ending. Things that get wrapped up in a tidy manner aren't always what we're looking for from movies.

Sometimes, it's totally OK if not everybody gets their wish. Or if the main character isn't always totally likable.

25. Boom Bust Boom

Director: Terry Jones, Ben Jones and Ben Timlett

Starring: Terry Jones (narrator), various puppets

Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 72%

Bottom line: If you've got the team behind Monty Python making a movie about how we continue to put ourselves in the same situations financially — as countries with the largest GDPs — then you know it's going to have a weird twist. 

In this case, that weird twist is making the documentary with a mix of puppets, animation, narration from Monty Python member Terry Jones and interviews with leading economists.

As far as documentaries about financial collapses and society falling apart go, this is probably the funniest.

24. Money for Nothing

Director: Ramon Menendez

Starring: John Cusack, Michael Madsen

Budget: $11 million

Worldwide box office: $1 million

Streaming: Amazon Prime ($)

Bottom line: John Cusack took a shot at a big-fisted drama in the prime of his career, but this movie became known more for its abject failure at the box office and the horrid reviews it received, save for Cusack's performance. 

To that end, Cusack is the best part of the movie, which is based on the life story of unemployed Philadelphia longshoreman Joey Coyle, who recovered $1.2 million after it fell out of an armored bank leaving the Federal Reserve.  

Eagle-eyed viewers can spot James Gandolfini and future Oscar winners Benicio del Toro and Phillip Seymour Hoffman in supporting roles.

23. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

Director: Oliver Stone

Starring: Michael Douglas, Shia LaBeouf, Josh Brolin, Carey Mulligan, Eli Wallach, Susan Sarandon, Frank Langella

Budget: $70 million

Worldwide box office: $134.7 million

Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 44%

Streaming: Amazon Prime

Bottom line: It's not that this is a bad movie — not by a long shot. It's just that it paled in comparison to its 1987 predecessor, which brought home the Academy Award for Best Actor for Michael Douglas, who reprises his role as Gordon Gekko. 

Still, this movie almost doubled its budget at the box office and includes an up-and-coming young star in Shia LaBeouf (essentially in the Charlie Sheen role), who saw his personal life come off the rails shortly after the film's release.  

22. The Laundromat

Director: Steven Soderbergh

Starring: Meryl Streep, Gary Oldman, Antonio Banderas, Jeffrey Wright, Robert Patrick, David Schwimmer, Rosalind Chao, Sharon Stone

Budget: N/A (Netflix)

Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 40%

Streaming: Netflix

Bottom line: Netflix takes several big Oscar swings every year and this was one of them in 2019. Even if it was a miss. 

Here's the thing though. It's got Meryl Streep. And if you've got Meryl Streep in a movie, there's a chance it's going to be pretty good. The problem here isn't so much with the acting.

It's with the convoluted plot about the Panama Papers — a massive online leak of 11.5 million documents that revealed offshore accounts and investors around the world (many of them involved in illegal deals) and shepherded by Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca.

21. Money Monster

Director: Jodie Foster

Starring: George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Jack O'Connell, Dominic West, Caitriona Balfe, Giancarlo Esposito

Budget: $27.4 million

Worldwide box office: $93.3 million

Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 58%

Streaming: HBO Max, Amazon Prime

Bottom line: George Clooney stars as a Jim Cramer-style host of a TV show, "Money Monster," based on Cramer's real-life show "Mad Money." And if you don't look very deeply at what's going on, it works. 

"Money Monster," directed by Jodie Foster, got mixed reviews, but part of that may have been with its drama-heavy marketing. We think it's actually more of a thriller.

And you know what? "Money Monster" made a lot of money, more than tripling its budget at the box office.

20. Barbarians at the Gates

Director: Glenn Jordan

Starring: James Garner, Jonathan Pryce, David Rasche, Fred Dalton Thompson, Peter Riegert

Budget: N/A (HBO Films)

Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 75%

Streaming: YouTube

Bottom line: Based on the book by investigative journalists Bryan Burrough and John Helyar about the hostile takeover of RJR Nabisco, "Barbarians at the Gate" was such a big hit in 1993 that after being shown on HBO, it was also shown on FOX. 

The reason it was such a big hit was almost solely because of the dynamo presence of the late James Garner .

Garner won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Miniseries or Movie and lifted the film to the Primetime Emmy Award for Best Television Movie and Golden Globe for Best Television Movie. 

19. The Company Men

Director: John Wells

Starring: Ben Affleck, Tommy Lee Jones, Chris Cooper, Kevin Costner, Maria Bello, Rosemarie Dewitt, Craig T. Nelson

Budget: $15 million

Worldwide box office: $8.1 million

Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 55%

Streaming: Hulu, Amazon Prime, Starz

Bottom line: This is a very well-done, little-seen movie that somehow manages to wrangle four Oscar winners onto its cast with Ben Affleck, Tommy Lee Jones, Chris Cooper and Kevin Costner. 

The movie's lack of success at the box office can point to bad timing in regard to one cast member. It came out right as Affleck's career renaissance was happening, and if it's delayed maybe six months, it gets much better play. 

Director David Wells sparkles in his movie directorial debut. He'd already made a name for himself as the showrunner on hit TV shows like "ER," "The West Wing" and "Shameless."

18. Too Big to Fail

Director: Curtis Hanson

Starring: William Hurt, Billy Crudup, Paul Giamatti, Topher Grace, Cynthia Nixon, Bill Pullman, Tony Shalhoub, James Woods

Worldwide box office: NA

Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 76%

Streaming: HBO Max, Hulu, Amazon Prime

Bottom line: One of the last films directed by the late Curtis Hanson ("L.A. Confidential," "8 Mile," "Wonder Boys") is a slow burn and was one of the most honored television films of 2011, raking in 11 Primetime Emmy Award nominations. It also scored a Screen Actors Guild Best Actor in a Television Film or Miniseries Role award for Paul Giamatti as Ben Bernanke. 

The real star here, however, is William Hurt as U.S. Treasury Secretary and former Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson, a man given the task of making sure the world economy doesn't collapse following the financial housing crisis in 2008.

17. The Secret of My Success

Director: Herbert Ross

Starring: Michael J. Fox, Helen Slater, Richard Jordan, Margaret Whitton

Worldwide box office: $111 million

Bottom line: There are parts of the 1987 box-office smash "The Secret of My Success" that didn't age very well, but it's hard to deny the star power of Michael J. Fox in the mid-to-late 1980s. 

How else can we explain the success of this film, that made almost $100 million at the box office? The plot involving Fox as a lowly mailroom delivery person who becomes the head of a Fortune 500 company is almost too stupid to comprehend.

But thanks to Fox, they somehow pull it off. 

16. Inside Job

Director: Charles Ferguson

Starring: Matt Damon (narrator)

Budget: $2 million

Worldwide box office: $7.9 million

Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 91%

Bottom line: This Academy Award winner for Best Documentary Feature gives us a look at the big picture when it comes to "worldwide systemic corruption" in our financial systems worldwide. 

Narrated by Oscar-winner Matt Damon, the documentary is divided into five parts that trace the U.S. economy through its first period of regulation following the Great Depression , through the catastrophic results of deregulating the banks in the early 1980s and through the housing crisis in the late 2000s.

It's as epic as it sounds.

15. The Wizard of Lies

Director: Barry Levinson, 

Starring: Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer, Alessandro Nivola, Hank Azaria, Nathan Darrow, Kristen Connoly, Kathrine Narducci

Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 63%

Streaming: HBO Max

Bottom line: Based on the true story of the largest financial fraud in U.S. history, Robert DeNiro shines as Bernie Madoff, who owned and operated a Wall Street investment firm that scammed a reported $64.8 billion from clients. 

The truly heartbreaking stuff in the film comes from Madoff's relationships with his wife, played by Michelle Pfeiffer, and his children.

And nothing is darker than after Madoff is sentenced to 150 years in prison and his family deals with the fallout from his crimes.

14. Boiler Room

Director: Ben Younger

Starring: Giovanni Ribisi, Vin Diesel, Nia Long, Nicky Katt, Scott Caan, Ben Affleck, Tom Everett Scott

Budget: $7 million

Worldwide box office: $28 million

Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 78%

Bottom line: If you ever feel like diving into the late 1990s, watch "Boiler Room" and its assembly of an All-Star lineup from that period — including Vin Diesel, Ben Affleck, Scott Caan, Giovanni Ribisi and Nia Long. 

This movie works as a financial flick, with a lot of the same stock thieving points as "The Wolf of Wall Street," and also as a thriller.

Over time, the movie has drawn some rightful comparisons to another financial classic, "Glengarry Glen Ross," for its ensemble cast.

13. Die Hard with a Vengeance

Director: John McTiernan

Starring: Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, Jeremy Irons, Graham Greene, Colleen Camp, Larry Bryggman, Sam Phillips

Budget: $90 million

Worldwide box office: $366.1 million

Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 83%

Streaming: HBO Max, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Cinemax

Bottom line: What is it about the "Die Hard" movie franchise that makes a clear-cut series of action movies expand across genres? Just like the original has an argument for being a Christmas movie, we can make the case for "Die Hard with a Vengeance" being a Wall Street movie. 

Two plot points in particular get DHWAV on the list — the attempted bombing of the Wall Street subway station by villain Jeremy Irons and the main plot point of trying to steal $140 billion in gold bullion from the Federal Reserve.

See how easy that was?

12. Arbitrage

Director: Nicholas Jarecki

Starring: Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon, Tim Roth, Brit Marling, Laetitia Casta, Nate Parker

Budget: $12 million

Worldwide box office: $35.5 million

Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 62%

Streaming: Hulu, Amazon Prime, Epix, Sling TV

Bottom line: This movie kind of sums up a lot of Richard Gere's career — underrated and awesome and with him as the leading man.

Gere is cooking with gas in this role as a Bernie Madoff-type broker who runs a Wall Street fund with his daughter, tries to pull off a billion-dollar deal (with half of it in money that doesn't really exist) and then gets caught up in a murder. 

There's also some great turns with Susan Sarandon, Tim Roth and Brit Marling in supporting roles, and a twist ending that shows why Gere earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a Drama.

11. 99 Homes

Director: Ramin Bahrani

Starring: Andrew Garfield, Michael Shannon, Laura Dern

Budget: $8 million

Worldwide box office (budget): $1.9 million

Streaming: Crackle, Tubi

Bottom line: Two of the better actors to come up in the last two decades, Michael Shannon and Andrew Garfield, get a chance at a two-fisted drama chronicling a corrupt real estate investor and his assistant, who he actually had evicted from his family home. 

In a sense, "99 Homes" is really a morality play, and with Shannon and Garfield at the heart, it's really easy to get sucked up into cheering for Garfield no matter what he does because he has such a great screen presence.

Does the ending seem too tidy? Maybe, but we still loved it.

10. The Pursuit of Happyness

Director: Gabriele Muccino

Starring: Will Smith, Jaden Smith, Thandie Newton

Budget: $55 million

Worldwide box office: $307.1 million

Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 87%

Streaming: Philo

Bottom line: Here's how big of a star Will Smith was by 2006. A gutwrenching drama about a homeless San Francisco man struggling to make his way through an internship at a brokerage firm made over $300 million at the box office. 

What propels the movie is Smith's charm, charisma and vulnerability, no doubt given a huge lift by having his son, Jaden, play his character's son as they struggle to make it out of poverty.

The movie was based on the true story of stockbroker Chris Gardner, and Smith received his second Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for his role.

9. Glengarry Glen Ross

Director: James Foley

Starring: Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Alec Baldwin, Ed Harris, Alan Arkin, Kevin Spacey, Jonathan Pryce

Budget: $12.5 million

Worldwide box office: $10.7 million

Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 88%

Streaming: Hulu, Amazon Prime

Bottom line: Just an absolute classic.

Based on David Mamet's Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name, we get Oscar winners and Oscar nominees almost all the way across the board playing a group of real estate salesmen willing to use whatever dubious means they can to save their jobs when they're told by a corporate trainer only two of them will ultimately be retained. 

Every performance in "Glengarry Glen Ross" seems like a home run, but ultimately it's Alec Baldwin's berating of the real estate agents and his "Always Be Closing" monologue that still captures our imaginations.

8. American Psycho

Director: Mary Harron

Starring: Christian Bale, Chloe Sevigny, Willem Dafoe, Jared Leto, Josh Lucas, Samantha Mathis, Justin Theroux, Reese Witherspoon

Worldwide box office: $34.3 million

Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 85%

Streaming: Peacock

Bottom line: The journey of "American Psycho" from one of the most controversial books of all time to the silver screen wasn't a straight line.

Director Mary Harron and Christian Bale were actually replaced by Oliver Stone and Leonardo DiCaprio during the development process. Then when Stone and DiCaprio backed out, the original director and star were brought back in. 

Harron's direction is deft, but Bale absolutely steals the show as serial killer/Wall Street broker Patrick Bateman, and small roles from Chloe Sevigny, Jared Leto, Reese Witherspoon, Justin Theroux and Josh Lucas early in their careers keep the film moving. 

7. Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room

Director: Alex Gibney

Starring: Andrew Fastow, Jeff Skilling, Kenneth Lay, Gray Davis

Budget: $700,000

Worldwide box office: $4.9 million

Streaming: Amazon Prime, Sling TV

Bottom line: Legendary film critic Roger Ebert probably said it best in his review of this Oscar-nominated documentary — "This is not a political documentary. It's a crime story." 

He also pointed out that watching the story of one of the biggest business frauds in U.S. history unfold won't just make you think. It will make you mad. Enron and its leaders, Kenneth Lay and Jeff Skilling, were leading a crooked company from the start, and nothing is worse than when they laugh about profiting off the California energy crisis. 

Now 16 years after its release, director Alex Gibney is in the running for best documentary filmmaker of all time.

6. Working Girl

Director: Mike Nichols

Starring: Harrison Ford, Sigourney Weaver, Melanie Griffith, Alec Baldwin, Joan Cusack

Budget: $28.6 million

Worldwide box office: $102 million

Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 67%

Streaming: Showtime, Hulu, Amazon Prime

Bottom line: This movie was a monster box office hit in 1988 thanks to the frowned-upon decision to cast Melanie Griffith in the leading role as young stock trader Tess McGill opposite Harrison Ford and Sigourney Weaver. 

It was a star-making role for Griffith, who was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress. The film also was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actress for Joan Cusack, and Carly Simon won an Oscar for Best Song for "Let the River Run."

5. Margin Call

Director: J.C. Chandor

Starring: Paul Bettany, Jeremy Irons, Kevin Spacey, Zachary Quinto, Penn Badgley, Simon Baker, Demi Moore, Stanley Tucci

Budget: $3.5 million

Worldwide box office: $19.5 million

Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 74%

Bottom line: This movie is interesting because its top-billed stars — Kevin Spacey and Jeremy Irons — chew up plenty of scenery, but it's the younger stars who really deliver the goods, along with too-brief appearances by Demi Moore and Stanley Tucci. 

Led by Paul Bettany and Zachary Quinto as the frontline soldiers for an unnamed investment firm, this film moves along at a pace that's not common for Wall Street movies thanks to director J.C. Chandor, who has had a pretty respectable career directing action movies.

4. Wall Street

Starring: Michael Douglas, Charlie Sheen, Martin Sheen, Daryl Hannah, Hal Holbrook, Terence Stamp

Budget: $16.5 million

Worldwide box office: $43.8 million

Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 81%

Bottom line: When you get your frontline stars all at the peak moments in their careers, or on their way up to that moment, you usually can bottle magic. That's what happens with "Wall Street" with the combination of stars Michael Douglas, Charlie Sheen and writer/director Oliver Stone. 

Douglas, playing Gordon Gekko, utters the famous line "Greed is good" and rode it to his only Academy Award for Best Actor win. Sheen beat out Tom Cruise for the role of Douglas' protege.

Oliver Stone's five-year stretch rivals any director in cinematic history — "Platoon" (1986), "Wall Street" (1987), "Born on the Fourth of July" (1989), "The Doors" (1991) and "JFK" (1991).

3. The Big Short

Director: Adam McKay

Starring: Christian Bale, Brad Pitt, Steve Carrell, Ryan Gosling, John Magaro, Finn Wittrock, Jeremy Strong, Marisa Tomei

Budget: $50 million

Worldwide box office: $133.4 million

Streaming: Crackle

Bottom line: The big bets in Hollywood were against director Adam McKay being able to pull off a movie about a complicated financial story. The thought was the director of hits like "Anchorman" and "Step Brothers" wouldn't be able to pull off the right tone. 

Man, were they ever wrong. McKay's opus about the 2008 housing collapse was a box-office hit and a ratings darling, bringing in five Academy Awards nominations — including Best Picture.

McKay was nominated for Best Director and won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.

2. Trading Places

Director: John Landis

Starring: Eddie Murphy, Dan Aykroyd, Ralph Bellamy, Don Ameche, Denholm Elliott, Jamie Lee Curtis

Worldwide box office: $90.4 million

Streaming: Hulu, Starz

Bottom line: Not every part of "Trading Places" aged very well, but the sheer star power of Eddie Murphy, Dan Aykroyd and Jamie Lee Curtis early in their careers propels this movie into the stratosphere. 

It is one of those movies that you just can't watch or rewatch without doubling over in laughter and the mega box-office numbers — an adjusted take of $240.1 million in today's money — speaks to what a hit this was for all involved.

Director John Landis reteamed with Murphy for "Coming to America" — one of the greatest comedies of all time. 

1. The Wolf of Wall Street

Year: 2013 

Director: Martin Scorses

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie, Kyle Chandler, Matthew McConaughey, Rob Reiner, Jon Favreau, Jean Dujardin, Jon Bernthal

Budget: $100 million

Worldwide box office: $392 million

Bottom line: There is no more clear-cut No. 1 movie about money, finances or Wall Street than Leonardo DiCaprio's rocket-launcher performance as "The Wolf of Wall Street" Jordan Belfort. 

This movie is infinitely rewatchable, and the 1-2 punch of DiCaprio alongside Jonah Hill rivals the very best screen duos of all time.

Nominated for five Academy Awards, the story of how this movie was made thanks to corrupt Malaysian financier Jho Low is almost as wild as the story itself. 

10 Best Finance Movies of the Last Decade

Learning about finance doesn't have to be boring with these flicks.

10 Best Finance Movies

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Whether you prefer action and thriller, comedy or drama, there are a host of motion pictures dedicated to financial issues.

There’s nothing like curling up on the couch and losing yourself in a movie. Beyond enjoying the hours of entertainment, there’s also a lot to be learned from the various lessons films provide. In fact, Hollywood has a way of making mundane topics such as finance more interesting and engaging for everyday consumers who may otherwise fail to learn about it on their own. There are a host of motion pictures dedicated to financial issues , whether you prefer action and thriller, comedy or drama.

Here’s a look at the 10 best finance movies of the last decade:

• "Moneyball"
• "Margin Call"
• "Too Big to Fail"
• "The Wolf of Wall Street"
• "The Gambler"
• "The Big Short"
• "Playing with FIRE"
• "Generation Freedom"
• "Crazy Rich Asians"

"Moneyball" (2011)

Movies about sports are a dime a dozen, but “Moneyball” explores more than just how to play the perfect baseball game. In fact, this drama also offers financial lessons, looking at how to do more with less, says Nick Loper, founder of SideHustleNation.com, a resource for people looking to make extra money or start a business in their spare time. The film, based on Michael Lewis' book: "Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game," takes you through the financial challenges faced by the Oakland Athletics baseball team. However, using a unique recruiting strategy, the manager was able to build a competitive team regardless of their tight budget. The lesson? Tracking your expenses and eliminating unnecessary purchases is essential to reaching your goals.

"Margin Call" (2011)

Everyone knows that the 2008 market crash left millions of Americans in financial turmoil, but not everyone understands why or how. That’s where "Margin Call" comes in – this action-packed thriller takes you behind the scenes into the high-stakes financial world right before the housing bubble burst. It’s astonishing to see how several key players from an investment firm reacted after they realized their mortgage-backed assets held no value. What they did leading up to the economic meltdown is eye-opening.

"Too Big to Fail" (2011)

American workers weren’t the only ones suffering financially following the economic collapse in 2008. U.S. companies both small and large also experienced the financial wrath, which threatened global economic stability. “Too Big to Fail” explored why several important institutions including AIG, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and the Big Three auto companies received financial relief funds from the government to avoid total economic collapse, which shed light on how the U.S. economy functions.

"The Wolf of Wall Street" (2013)

Chasing the American dream is an honorable goal, but greed can quickly take over when it comes to money – and no film portrays this better than “Wolf of Wall Street.” This action-packed thriller takes you on a wild ride following New York stockbroker Jordan Belfort, who scams his way from middle class to billionaire, with no regard of who he crushes on the way to the top. In the end, greed catches up to him, leading to financial ruin and jail time. Although there are many financial lessons to take away from this movie, perhaps the most important is that more money doesn’t equal more happiness.

"The Gambler" (2014)

Gambling can be fun in doses, but those who take it too far can cause irreparable financial damage, as this film explores. Beyond showcasing the dark side of gambling, "The Gambler" also highlights another important financial lesson: Saving money now allows you more freedom later, as explained by the lead character played by John Goodman. After all, it’s a lot easier to leave a job you're unhappy with when you have money saved in the bank.

"The Big Short" (2015)

The market turmoil of 2008 can be a cumbersome topic, but "The Big Short” makes it entertaining, offering endless scenes that keep you on the edge of your seat as it takes you through the series of events that led to the housing market crisis. The most important financial lesson to take away from this film is how the greed of a corrupt group of financial professionals can devastate the lives of millions of Americans throughout the country.

"Playing with FIRE: The Documentary" (2019)

Most people accept the typical way of living, working five days a week for 40 years before finally retiring at age 65 or later. But what if life could be different and you could have more freedom? ”Playing with FIRE” explores just that. This documentary about the Financial Independence, Retire Early movement , commonly known as FIRE, follows multiple people through their real-life journeys toward financial independence and early retirement, questioning societal standards about the traditional work schedule and consumer spending. Ultimately, viewers are challenged to consider the possibilities of forgoing excessive spending in exchange for fewer financial restrictions and more lifestyle flexibility.

“It's a reminder that wealth is invisible; the flashiest spenders might not have a strong balance sheet and vice versa,” says Paula Pant, founder of AffordAnything.com and host of the Afford Anything podcast, who also was interviewed in this documentary.

"Generation: Freedom" (2019)

If you ever feel like you're wasting your life on long commutes and pointless meetings rather than spending time with people you care about or seeing the world, “Generation: Freedom” will help you discover a new way of living and working. “This movie shows how it's possible to design the lifestyle you want by working from your laptop from anywhere around the globe and building passive income streams that allow for flexible lifestyles,” Pant says. The film highlights the true stories of various people of all ages and backgrounds about how they built income streams around their ideal lifestyle, rather than forcing their life to fit around their work. You just may learn how to build your own dream life after watching.

"Parasite" (2019)

Wealth gaps are prominent throughout the world, but just how much money shapes the way people live and interact becomes apparent in the movie “Parasite.” This film offers a thoughtful portrayal of class, inequality and the relationship between the wealthy and the poor , says Stefanie O’Connell, personal finance author at stefanieoconnell.com. “What's particularly compelling to me about this film is how characters on both sides of the wealth divide are flawed, messy and complicated, and the true villain in this story is no one person but the system that pits the characters against each other and shapes their actions and ultimately their destructive outcomes.”

"Crazy Rich Asians" (2018)

“Crazy Rich Asians” is anything but your typical finance-focused film. In fact, this romantic comedy looks deeper at how money impacts personal relationships , following lovebirds Rachel and Nick as they take a trip to visit his family in Singapore. It is at this point that for the first time in their relationship, Rachel realizes just how wealthy Nick’s family is. Though many would assume this brings happiness, it actually causes concern. After all, regardless of how much or little money your partner has, failing to understand his or her financial matters can cause a divide in a relationship. The lesson here: Couples need to talk about money early on, says Bobbi Rebell, author and personal finance advisor at Splitit, an installment payment-plan service, who suggests talking about spending and saving values to ensure your goals align for the future.

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• 10. The Big Short
• 9. Barbarians at the Gate
• 8. American Psycho
• 7. Glengarry Glen Ross
• 6. Rogue Trader
• 5. Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
• 4. The Wolf of Wall Street
• 3. Boiler Room
• 2. Margin Call
• 1. Wall Street
• Finance Movie FAQs

The Bottom Line

• Career Advice

The 10 Best Finance and Wall Street Movies

Yarilet Perez is an experienced multimedia journalist and fact-checker with a Master of Science in Journalism. She has worked in multiple cities covering breaking news, politics, education, and more. Her expertise is in personal finance and investing, and real estate.

The financial world, in all its incarnations, makes for great cinema. Tragedy, comedy, ingenuity, catastrophe, and redemption are all present in the many finance movies that Hollywood has produced over the years.

While most finance movies portray financial professionals in a less than flattering light, the unbelievable stories of excess, risk-taking, and, of course, greed all make for compelling cinema. They are required viewing for anyone thinking of, or already working in the business.

The 10 finance and Wall Street movies below, in no particular order, were chosen for their financial and stock market storylines plus their "plucked from the headlines" resonance.

Key Takeaways

• Learning about the world of finance through books and finance movies may help investors make better sense of financial products, services, and representatives.
• Wall Street movies can bring the financial landscape into focus for individuals looking for employment in the industry.
• A number of movies about finance that are both entertaining and educational have been made.
• The Big Short is based on the nonfiction best selling book about the 2007-2008 financial crisis by financial journalist Michael Lewis.
• Margin Call is about a large Wall Street investment banking firm during the early days of the financial crisis of 2007-2008 and the firm's impending financial collapse.

10. The Big Short (2015)

Based on the nonfiction book "The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine" by Michael Lewis, this movie follows a few savvy traders as they become aware — before anyone else — of the housing bubble that triggered the financial crisis in 2007-2008.

The movie is known for how it cleverly presented explanations of sophisticated financial instruments. For example, it has actress Selena Gomez explain what synthetic CDOs are at a poker table and actress Margot Robbie explain mortgage-backed bonds  in a tub with champagne.

9. Barbarians at the Gate (1993)

This 1993 TV movie centers on the leveraged buyout (LBO) of RJR Nabisco, and it's based on the 1989 book of the same name by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar. While the movie does take some creative liberties in portraying this real-life event, audiences may be shocked and amused at the incompetence and greed of Nabisco’s CEO F. Ross Johnson and the behind-the-scenes negotiations and skullduggery around this famous LBO.

8. American Psycho (2000)

In this violent and thought-provoking film adaptation of the critically acclaimed Bret Easton Ellis novel set in the backdrop of finance, Christian Bale plays a wealthy investment banker with a dark and deadly secret.

While there is actually little about finance in this movie, American Psycho does shed light on the surreal world inhabited by the financial industry's elite class, and the utter disconnect they have with reality. 

7. Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)

An acclaimed big-screen adaptation of a David Mamet play, this infinitely quotable movie focuses on a team of downtrodden real estate salesmen whose morals have been utterly eroded after years of working for their unscrupulous company.

The movie showcases the greed and underhanded tactics that those in financial product sales positions may be exposed to. It underscores the unremitting pressure exerted on salespeople by their superiors who have sales goals to meet. 

While the entire cast is top-notch, Alec Baldwin’s motivational speech steals the whole movie. It brings to light the best and worst aspects of working in the financial industry under enormous stress.

6. Rogue Trader (1999)

This movie tells the true story of Nick Leeson, a trader who single-handedly caused the insolvency of Barings Bank , the world’s second-oldest merchant bank .

A rising star on the Singapore trading floor, Leeson blew up as quickly as he rose, covering enormous losses from his superiors in carefully hidden accounts. His actions eventually lead to the mother of all failed trades with a short straddle position on the Nikkei, which ends up experiencing a large sigma move.

While the movie is entertaining, it's Leeson’s story itself that makes for a great lesson in risk management and financial oversight.

5. Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005)

Though the events contained in the documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room occurred more than 20 years ago, they still have the power to shock. Based on the best-selling book of the same title, the film relies on a trove of video footage, congressional hearings testimony, and interviews with Enron executive Mike Muckleroy and whistle-blower Sherron Watkins, to argue that Enron, far from being a stellar energy corporation that lost its way, was actually a con game almost from the beginning.

In one of the more stunning revelations, the film lays out how the California energy crisis of 2001 was a sham created by Enron traders, who are overheard asking plant managers to "get a little creative" in closing plants for "repairs." Enron shut down up to 76% of California's energy industry, as it criminally manipulated the state's energy supply and relentlessly drove up the price of electricity.

4. The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

This Martin Scorsese-helmed biopic chronicles the rise and fall of a famous stock scammer, Jordan Belfort. It features excellent performances by Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill.

The Wolf of Wall Street is based on real-life events. This finance film looks at the infamous Stratton Oakmont, an over-the-counter brokerage firm, and a  pump and dump scheme that helped launch the IPOs of several large public companies during the late 1980s and 1990s.

3. Boiler Room (2000)

While Barbarians at the Gate takes place in the glitz and glamor of a corporate boardroom , Boiler Room is set on the absolute lowest rung of the financial firm ladder: the pump and dump scheme.

The term refers to unscrupulous firms boosting the price of a security with misleading and sometimes false statements. They then sell their own holdings of the security, leaving investors with stock that's lost its value.

Boiler Room is a work of fiction but pump-and-dump firms are very real, as are the pain and suffering they inflict upon their victims.

This finance movie serves as a warning for those starting to invest in the stock market to stick to transparent, solid companies and to invest based on sound fundamentals. Viewers of Boiler Room won't soon forget the adage “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”

2. Margin Call (2011)

Perhaps the most financially accurate movie on the list, Margin Call takes place over the span of 24 hours in the life of a Wall Street firm on the brink of disaster (modeled closely after some of the bulge bracket banks ).

Margin Call does little to hide its contempt for the reckless risks taken by some of the largest banks in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis . It highlights the trading of complex derivative instruments that investment banks themselves barely understood.

A poignant scene in the movie features two main characters talking about the catastrophe that is soon be unleashed upon, not just their firm but the whole, unsuspecting financial community of companies and investors as well, as a janitor stands between them, completely oblivious to what is going on.

1. Wall Street (1987)

One finance movie every professional should consider seeing is the Oliver Stone classic that got thousands of college graduates to utter the immortal phrase “Blue Horseshoe loves Anacott Steel” as they rushed to their Series 7 exams.

Originally crafted to show the excess and hedonism associated with finance, Wall Street still wields power as a recruiting tool for traders, brokers , analysts, and bankers nearly 30 years after it was made.

Although the Wall Street movie serves to warn us about the dangers of insider trading , let’s face it, who wouldn’t want to be Bud Fox or even Gordon Gekko and indulge a bit in our greedy side. After all, it was Gekko who famously said, “Greed is good.”

What Are Some Other Finance Movies?

Some other types of Wall Street movies you might try include Working Girl (1987), with Melanie Griffith, Harrison Ford, and Sigourney Weaver; Bonfire of the Vanities (1990), based on the book by Tom Wolfe and starring Bruce Willis, Tom Hanks, and Melanie Griffith; and Arbitrage (2012), starring Richard Gere.

Are There Any Movies About Bernie Madoff?

Madoff, the investment manager who ran a Ponzi scheme and stole over $64 billion from unsuspecting investors (including director Steven Spielberg and actor Kevin Bacon), died in jail in 2021. Theatrical and documentary films about him include:

• The Madoff Affair (2009) on PBS's show, Frontline
• Chasing Madoff (2011), the documentary based on the book by Harry Markopolos, who investigated Madoff for a decade and tried to get the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to take action against him
• Madoff (2016), the TV mini-series based on the book by Ben Robbins called The Madoff Chronicles
• The Wizard of Lies (2017), an HBO film about Madoff starring Robert DeNiro and Michelle Pfeiffer

Any Movies Made About Bitcoin?

Yes—though there are currently more documentaries than movies. Check out Crypto (2019), a crime thriller about money laundering involving crypto. And stay tuned for upcoming FTX projects, starting with one based on the upcoming book on Sam Blankman-Fried by Michael Lewis (author of "The Big Short" and "Moneyball").

These movies are a must-see for any prospective financial pro. Even if you aren’t thinking of a career in the field, these films can provide a bit of insight into the wild and sometimes absurd world of finance.

As the saying goes, “truth is stranger than fiction,” and as events like the 2007-2008 financial crisis , the fall of Enron , and the Madoff scandal show, real life can be far more unbelievable than any tale Hollywood can craft. 

Cambridge University Press. " Enron and the California Energy Crisis: The Role of Networks in Enabling Organizational Corruption ."

Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). " BrokerCheck: Stratton Oakmont Inc ."

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Film Review: ‘The Big Short’

Adam McKay's financial-crisis comedy turns a dense economics lecture into a hyper-caffeinated postmodern farce.

By Andrew Barker

Andrew Barker

Senior Features Writer

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Of all the current century’s most cataclysmic world-historical events, the 2008 financial crisis is probably among the most poorly understood. Filmmakers looking to rectify this have already approached the story from a number of angles, from sober-minded documentary (“Inside Job”) to operatic boiler-room drama (“Margin Call”), but the route taken by “The Big Short” is by far the most radical, turning a dense economics lecture into a hyper-caffeinated postmodern farce, a spinach smoothie skillfully disguised as junk food. Taking style cues from hip-hop videos, Funny or Die clips and “The Office,” Adam McKay’s film hits its share of sour notes; some important plot points are nearly impossible for laypeople to decipher even with cheeky, fourth-wall-obliterating tutorials, and the combination of eye-crossing subject matter and nontraditional structure makes it a risky bet at the box office. But there’s an unmistakable, scathing sense of outrage behind the whole endeavor, and it’s impossible not to admire McKay’s reckless willingness to do everything short of jumping through flaming hoops on a motorcycle while reading aloud from Keynes if that’s what it takes to get people to finally pay attention.

Adapted from Michael Lewis’ bestselling book “The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine,” McKay’s film traces the roots of the global market collapse through the eyes of those who saw it coming and figured out ways to profit from it. First out of the gate is Michael Burry (Christian Bale), a stock-picking shaman with a glass eye and an utter lack of social graces, who crunches numbers while pacing his office barefoot and blaring Mastodon. By actually bothering to go through the thousands of individual mortgages that make up the securities that underwrite so much of the banking industry, Burry realizes that a dangerous number of subprime home loans are on the verge of going south, and decides to plug more than a billion dollars of his investors’ money into credit default swaps, effectively betting against the housing market.

His seemingly insane investments create enough of a stir on Wall Street to attract the attention of alpha-douche banker Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling, who also serves as the film’s foul-mouthed narrator). Thanks to a fortuitous wrong number, Vennett winds up going into the credit-default-swap business with Mark Baum (Steve Carell, playing a fictionally named character), a self-hating hedge funder with a centimeter-long fuse. The potential windfall also interests the bumbling small-potatoes investment team of Charles Geller (John Magaro) and Jamie Shipley (Finn Wittrock), who loop in a former banker-gone-New Age (Brad Pitt) to help get them a spot at the grown-ups’ table.

Despite sturdy, energetic performances from all the actors mentioned above, only Carell’s Baum manages to register as a genuine, empathetic character; not coincidentally, he’s also the only one to express believable compunctions about getting rich off a looming fiscal catastrophe. Indeed, despite its satirical bent, “The Big Short” often seems a bit too eager to present these men as sympathetic, when all they really did was prove to be smarter than the average investor about a downturn that caused so much misery for so many innocent people.

Simply balancing this many characters (there are also significant roles for Marisa Tomei, Adepero Oduye, Hamish Linklater, Rafe Spall and Jeremy Strong) would be difficult enough, but McKay is also tasked with talking his audience through immensely — and at times intentionally — esoteric financial products and procedures. Sometimes he does this through onscreen text, and at others he’ll halt the narrative to have attractive celebrities spell out terms like “synthetic collateralized debt obligation.” Aware of how quickly viewers can tire of watching terrible men in suits screaming jargon at each other, the director also splices in lightning-fast montages of period-appropriate pop culture and sometimes seemingly random imagery to keep up the pace. (Editor Hank Corwin more than earns his paycheck here with the sheer amount of visual information he’s managed to process, though the film could have done with a more low-key shooting approach than d.p. Barry Ackroyd’s somewhat exhausting camera movement.)

“The Big Short” is miles removed from McKay’s previous films like “Anchorman” and “Talladega Nights,” but a bit of their broadness remains, and his attempts at more subtle metaphorical commentary — an S&P analyst (Melissa Leo) with a vision condition, a drunken SEC agent (Karen Gillan) throwing herself at anyone with a Goldman Sachs business card — are way too on-the-nose. As it nears its final act, however, the film takes an effective turn for the serious, with even our cynical investor-heroes surprised to learn just how deep the institutional rot in the country’s financial systems really went.

And perhaps McKay’s hyperreal approach is exactly what this story needs, given how far removed from the reality-based community so many of the highest-paid financial gurus were at the time. (More than once, the film has to directly address the audience just to stress that, yes, the scene talking place actually did happen.) In the pic’s most viciously surreal sequence, Baum and company travel to Florida to see firsthand some of the mortgages that are threatening to go belly-up, finding cul-de-sacs full of abandoned houses, highly motivated McMansion sellers, and a pair of meatheaded mortgage consultants who chuckle over writing six-figure home loans for buyers with no income or down payment. Baum steps aside and consults with one of his agents. “Why are they confessing?” he asks, confused. “They’re not,” comes the reply. “They’re bragging.”

Reviewed at AFI Fest (closer), Los Angeles, Nov. 13, 2015. MPAA rating: R. Running time: 130 MIN.

• Production: A Paramount release, presented with Regency Enterprises, of a Plan B Entertainment production. Produced by Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Arnan Milchan. Executive producers, Louise Rosner-Meyer, Kevin Messick.
• Crew: Directed by Adam McKay. Screenplay, McKay, Charles Randolph, based on the book by Michael Lewis. Camera (color), Barry Ackroyd; editor, Hank Corwin; music, Nicholas Britell; production designer, Clayton Hartley; costume designer, Susan Matheson; art director, Elliott Glick; sound, David Wyman; supervising sound editor, Becky Sullivan; re-recording mixers, Anna Behlmer, Terry Porter; visual effects supervisor, Paul Linden; visual effects, Bylola, Industrial Light and Magic, assistant director, Matt Rebenkoff; casting, Francine Maisler.
• With: Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Christian Bale, Brad Pitt, Marisa Tomei, Hamish Linklater, Rafe Spall, Jeremy Strong, Adepero Oduye, Karen Gillan, Max Greenfield, Billy Magnussen, Melissa Leo, Margot Robbie, Anthony Bourdain, Richard Thaler, Selena Gomez, John Magaro, Finn Wittrock, Byron Mann.

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• <i>Barbie</i> Is Very Pretty But Not Very Deep

Barbie Is Very Pretty But Not Very Deep

T he fallacy of Barbie the doll is that she’s supposed to be both the woman you want to be and your friend, a molded chunk of plastic—in a brocade evening dress, or a doctor’s outfit, or even Jane Goodall’s hyper-practical safari suit—which is also supposed to inspire affection. But when you’re a child, your future self is not a friend—she’s too amorphous for that, and a little too scary. And you may have affection, or any number of conflicted feelings, for your Barbie, but the truth is that she’s always living in the moment, her moment, while you’re trying to dream your own future into being. Her zig-zagging signals aren’t a problem—they’re the whole point. She’s always a little ahead of you, which is why some love her, others hate her, and many, many fall somewhere in the vast and complex in-between.

With Barbie the movie —starring Margot Robbie, also a producer on the film—director Greta Gerwig strives to mine the complexity of Barbie the doll, while also keeping everything clever and fun, with a hot-pink exclamation point added where necessary. There are inside jokes, riffs on Gene Kelly-style choreography, and many, many one-line zingers or extended soliloquies about modern womanhood—observations about all that’s expected of us, how exhausting it all is, how impossible it is to ever measure up. Gerwig has done a great deal of advance press about the movie, assuring us that even though it’s about a plastic toy, it’s still stuffed with lots of ideas and thought and real feelings. (She and Noah Baumbach co-wrote the script.) For months now there has been loads of online chatter about how “subversive” the movie is—how it loves Barbie but also mocks her slightly, and how it makes fun of Mattel executives even though their real-life counterparts are both bankrolling the whole enterprise and hoping to make a huge profit off it. The narrative is that Gerwig has somehow pulled off a coup, by taking Mattel’s money but using it to create real art , or at least just very smart entertainment.

Read More: Our Cover Story on Barbie

It’s true that Barbie does many of the things we’ve been promised: there is much mocking and loving of Barbie, and plenty of skewering of the suits. But none of those things make it subversive. Instead, it’s a movie that’s enormously pleased with itself, one that has cut a big slice of perfectly molded plastic cake and eaten it—or pretend-eaten it—too. The things that are good about Barbie — Robbie’s buoyant, charming performance and Ryan Gosling’s go-for-broke turn as perennial boyfriend Ken, as well as the gorgeous, inventive production design—end up being steamrollered by all the things this movie is trying so hard to be. Its playfulness is the arch kind. Barbie never lets us forget how clever it’s being, every exhausting minute.

That’s a shame, because the first half-hour or so is dazzling and often genuinely funny, a vision that’s something close to (though not nearly as weird as) the committed act of imagination Robert Altman pulled off with his marvelous Popeye. First, there’s a prologue, narrated by Helen Mirren and riffing on Stanley Kubrick’s 2001, explaining the impact of early Barbie on little girls in 1959; she was an exotic and aspirational replacement for their boring old baby dolls, whose job was to train them for motherhood—Gerwig shows these little girls on a rocky beach, dashing their baby dolls to bits after they’ve seen the curvy miracle that is Barbie. Then Gerwig, production designer Sarah Greenwood, and costume designer Jacqueline Durran launch us right into Barbieland, with Robbie’s approachably glam Barbie walking us through . This is an idyllic community where all the Dream Houses are open, not only because its denizens have no shame and nothing to hide, but because homes without walls mean they can greet one another each day with the sunrise. “Hello, Barbie!” they call out cheerfully. Everyone in Barbieland—except the ill-fated pregnant Midge , based on one of Mattel’s many discontinued experiments in toy marketing—is named Barbie, and everyone has a meaningful job. There are astronaut Barbies and airline pilot Barbies, as well as an all-Barbie Supreme Court. Garbage-collector Barbies, in matching pink jumpsuits, bustle cheerfully along this hamlet’s perpetually pristine curbs. This array of Barbies is played by a selection of actors including Hari Nef, Dua Lipa, Alexandra Shipp, and Emma Mackey. The president is also Barbie—she’s played by Issa Rae. (In one of the early section’s great sight gags, she brushes her long, silky tresses with an overscale oval brush.)

Barbieland is a world where all the Barbies love and support one another , like a playtime version of the old-fashioned women’s college, where the students thrive because there are no men to derail their self-esteem. Robbie’s Barbie—she is known, as a way of differentiating herself from the others, as Stereotypical Barbie, because she is white and has the perfectly sculpted proportions and sunny smile of the Barbie many of us grew up with—is the center of it all. She awakens each morning and throws off her sparkly pink coverlet, her hair a swirl of perfectly curled Saran. She chooses an outfit (with meticulously coordinated accessories) from her enviable wardrobe. Her breakfast is a molded waffle that pops from the toaster unbidden; when she “drinks” from a cup of milk, it’s only pretend-drinking, because where is that liquid going to go? This becomes a recurring gag in the movie, wearing itself out slowly, but it’s delightful at first, particularly because Robbie is so game for all of it. Her eyes sparkle in that vaguely crazed Barbie-like way; her smile has a painted-on quality, but there’s warmth there, too. She steps into this role as lightly as if it were a chevron-striped one piece tailored precisely to her talents.

Barbie also has a boyfriend, one Ken of many Kens. The Kens are played by actors including Kingsley Ben-Adir and Simu Liu. But Gosling’s Ken is the best of them, stalwart, in a somewhat neutered way, with his shaggy blond hair, spray-tan bare chest, and vaguely pink lips. The Kens have no real job, other than one known as “Beach,” which involves, as you might guess, going to the beach. The Kens are generally not wanted at the Barbies’ ubiquitous dance parties—the Barbies generally prefer the company of themselves. And that’s why the Kens’ existence revolves around the Barbies . As Mirren the narrator tells us, Barbie always has a great day. “But Ken has a great day only if Barbie looks at him.” And the moment Robbie does, Gosling’s face becomes the visual equivalent of a dream Christmas morning, alight with joy and wonder.

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You couldn’t, of course, have a whole movie set in this highly artificial world. You need to have a plot, and some tension. And it’s when Gerwig airlifts us out of Barbieland and plunks us down in the real world that the movie’s problems begin. Barbie awakens one morning realizing that suddenly, nothing is right. Her hair is messy on the pillow; her waffle is shriveled and burnt. She has begun to have unbidden thoughts about death. Worst of all, her perfectly arched feet have gone flat. (The other Barbies retch in horror at the sight.) For advice, she visits the local wise woman, also known as Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon), the Barbie who’s been “played with too hard,” as evidenced by the telltale scribbles on her face. Weird Barbie tells Robbie’s confused and forlorn Barbie that her Barbieland troubles are connected to something that’s going on out there in the Real World, a point of stress that turns out to involve a Barbie-loving mom, Gloria (America Ferrera), and her preteen daughter, Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt), who are growing apart. Barbie makes the journey to the Real World, reluctantly allowing Ken to accompany her. There, he’s wowed to learn that men make all the money and basically rule the land. While Barbie becomes more and more involved in the complexity of human problems , Ken educates himself on the wonders of the patriarchy and brings his newfound ideas back to empower the Kens, who threaten to take over the former utopia known as Barbieland.

By this point, Barbie has begun to do a lot more telling and a lot less showing; its themes are presented like flat-lays of Barbie outfits , delivered in lines of dialogue that are supposed to be profound but come off as lifeless. There are still some funny gags—a line about the Kens trying to win over the Barbies by playing their guitars “at” them made me snort. But the good jokes are drowned out by the many self-aware ones, like the way the Mattel executives, all men (the head boob is Will Ferrell), sit around a conference table and strategize ways to make more money off selling their idea of “female agency.”

The question we’re supposed to ask, as our jaws hang open, is “How did the Mattel pooh-bahs let these jokes through?” But those real-life execs, counting their doubloons in advance, know that showing what good sports they are will help rather than hinder them. They’re on team Barbie, after all! And they already have a long list of toy-and-movie tie-ins on the drawing board.

Meanwhile, we’re left with Barbie the movie, a mosaic of many shiny bits of cleverness with not that much to say. In the pre-release interviews they’ve given, Gerwig and Robbie have insisted their movie is smart about Barbie and what she means to women, even as Mattel executives have said they don’t see the film as being particularly feminist. And all parties have insisted that Barbie is for everyone.

Barbie probably is a feminist movie, but only in the most scattershot way. The plot hinges on Barbie leaving her fake world behind and, like Pinocchio and the Velveteen Rabbit before her, becoming “real.” Somehow this is an improvement on her old existence, but how can we be sure? The movie’s capstone is a montage of vintagey-looking home movies (Gerwig culled this footage from Barbie ’s cast and crew), a blur of joyful childhood moments and parents showing warmth and love. Is this the soon-to-be-real Barbie’s future, or are these the doll-Barbie’s memories? It’s impossible to tell. By this point, we’re supposed to be suitably immersed in the bath of warm, girls-can-do-anything fuzzies the movie is offering us. Those bold, bored little girls we saw at the very beginning of the film, dashing their baby dolls against the rocks, are nowhere in sight. In this Barbieland, their unruly desires are now just an inconvenience.

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Dumb Money Never Sleeps: 13 Thrilling Financial Films

A little less than two months after 1987’s Black Monday, the worst global stock market crash since the Great Depression, Wall Street was released in theaters. As the Dow attempted to recoup some of the 22.6 percent that it had dropped in a single trading session and people around the globe grappled with the consequences of the elusive financial world, a movie illuminating the amoral intricacies of Wall Street made its way to the big screen. Suddenly, Wall Street was a much more palpable thing and an entirely new type of movie was born: the finance film.

While at first glance it might seem hard to find a compelling narrative in the minutiae of the stock market, many films since Wall Street have managed to succeed. While some truly fictional works have emerged, the financial film canon feeds on true events and succeeds most when it’s rooted in reality. The volatility of the market has provided an endless source of material, after all, with the 2007-2008 global financial crisis alone inspiring almost half of the financial films on this list.

The 2021 GameStop short squeeze is just the latest event to inspire a movie, Dumb Money , which hits theaters everywhere this week. Directed by Craig Gillespie , the film chronicles the wild saga of the squeeze, which rocked the stock market when Redditors drove up the price of what had previously been considered a lost-cause investment and a remnant of a bygone pre-digital download era. Clever, funny, and genuinely thrilling, the movie has all of the hallmarks of an epic finance film. In honor of the release of Dumb Money , we’ve rounded up some of the best finance films to premiere since the subgenre first found an audience 36 years ago.

Wall Street (1987)

Set against the intoxicating all-or-nothing backdrop of 1980s Wall Street, Wall Street was the first movie to truly capture the glitz, glam, and danger of the stock market. The film follows young, hungry junior stockbroker Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) as he attempts to worm his way into a working relationship with Wall Street legend Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas). In a desperate attempt to appease the older man, Bud shares some insider information, which pays off handsomely for Gekko. The two kick off a toxic, insider-trading-fueled partnership that ultimately underscores the dangers of greed and excess. While the movie features fictional characters, bucking the trend of most successful finance films, the main players are composites of several Wall Street players (including director Oliver Stone’s stockbroker father).

Rogue Trader (1999)

Despite the massive success of Wall Street , it didn’t spawn an immediate crop of copycats. Over a decade later, Rogue Trader was one of the first financial films of substance to make its way into theaters. Based on the true story of Nick Leeson’s risky and unauthorized trading on the SIMEX exchange in 1995, which resulted in the shocking bankruptcy of Barings Bank, the movie skews more toward thriller than Wall Street . Ewan McGregor stars as Leeson and chronicles the man’s meteoric rise and subsequent fall as he hid more than £800 million in losses, effectively ending one of the oldest merchant banks in England and causing global financial distress. While the film creates an interesting enough narrative with Leeson’s fraudulent work, the most enticing part of Rogue Trader comes as Leeson and his wife (Anna Friel) attempt to flee Singapore after the bank goes bust.

Boiler Room (2000)

When Seth Davis (Giovanni Ribisi) — who runs an unlicensed casino out of his home — is recruited to work at brokerage firm J.T. Marlin, he sees it as an opportunity to impress his family who disapprove of his vocation. Seth finds success there but also realizes that his firm is a chop shop that essentially scams investors. When he learns that J.T. Marlin’s founders are planning to cut ties with the firm and destroy evidence of their wrongdoing, Seth teams up with his federal judge father to scam the firm back via an IPO scheme in an effort to help get the investors some of their money back. If any parts of the story seem familiar, it’s worth noting that The Wolf of Wall Street ’s Jordan Belfort (more on that later) went on to claim that Boiler Room was loosely inspired by his life (although writer-director Ben Younger says it isn’t so).

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010)

What better plot to hinge the return of Wall Street on than the 2008 financial crisis? Where the first movie was set amidst the insane success of ’80s Wall Street, the follow-up plays on the downfall of the stock market and global financial catastrophe. In Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps , Gordon Gekko is released from prison and publishes a book where he predicts upcoming economic decline. At the same time, his estranged daughter Winnie (Michelle Williams) is dating a talented young prop trader named Jake (Shia LaBeouf). Jake strikes up a relationship with Gordon and attempts to reconcile father and daughter in exchange for information about his own company. But Gekko, proving that some things never change, has some ulterior motives.

Limitless (2011)

While this might seem like an unconventional choice at the outset, Limitless was able to highlight the near-inhuman perception skills required to continually succeed on Wall Street. When struggling writer Eddie (Bradley Cooper) tries out a new unregulated nootropic drug, NZT-48, he acquires an unparalleled gift for recall and analysis. As soon as he can get his hands on more, he begins investing in stocks, and his newfound pattern identification skillset is put on full display. He gets hired at a brokerage firm and eventually even catches the attention of businessman Carl Van Loon (Robert De Niro), who is intrigued by Eddie’s financial skills and the concept of NZT. When Eddie begins to realize that everyone on NZT is either dead or dying and that other users are desperate for more pills to a murderous degree, it becomes a fight for his life. While the movie is more than anything a science fiction thriller, the stock trading aspect is one of the more fascinating parts of it, as it highlights that share prices often have more to do with public perception and psychology than actual corporate success.

Too Big to Fail (2011)

Just as the 2007 to 2008 financial crisis changed the world, it also changed financial films and reinvigorated the subgenre. Most movies in the years immediately following the financial crisis attempted to unpack the same thing: How the hell could this have happened? Based on journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin’s book of the same name, Too Big to Fail details the initial attempts to abate the financial crisis when the housing bubble began to burst. The movie looks at the financial leaders, from Wall Street to the White House, who worked to bail out the big banks with the Troubled Asset Relief Program in an effort to stabilize the United States’ financial situation. Unfortunately, a lack of oversight in TARP legislation meant that many of the banks that received loans went on to give big bonuses to executives, sewing distrust among everyday Americans.

Margin Call (2011)

Margin Call centers on an unnamed investment bank over a 24-hour period right as the financial crisis starts. Amid widespread layoffs, the firm cuts loose its risk management lead (Stanley Tucci) who had been developing a model that predicted the danger of the bank’s stake in mortgage-back securities. Leaving a co-worker (Zachary Quinto) with a flash drive of his findings, the firm eventually comes to realize that it’s overleveraged and in grave danger of bankruptcy if it doesn’t dump its most toxic assets. The bosses acknowledge that by getting rid of the assets in a fire sale, they’d be wrecking their relationships and contributing to the inevitable economic crisis. They do it anyway and somewhat save themselves to the detriment of everyone else. By focusing on one fictional firm over one night, the movie provides an intimate portrait of corporate greed and the lack of public interest considered during the crisis.

The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

One of the most enthralling depictions of Wall Street in all of its ’80s and ’90s insanity, Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street chronicles the rise and fall of Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio). After his firm shutters on Black Monday, newbie stockbroker Jordan takes a job selling Penny Stocks in a boiler room brokerage firm and hones his borderline-illegal sales skills. He eventually starts his own firm, Stratton Oakmont, with his neighbor Donnie Azoff (Jonah Hill) and the two find immense success in their pump-and-dump schemes. As Jordan begins to indulge in the coke-fueled partying side of Wall Street, he also starts to partake in increasingly illegal actions, ultimately attracting the attention of the SEC and FBI and leading to his downfall.

The Big Short (2015)

Seven years after the financial crisis decimated the economy, The Big Short (based on Michael Lewis’s book of the same name) was able to shed some light onto the very early days of the crisis and the people who figured it out before anyone else. When Dr. Michael Burry (Christian Bale) notices that there’s a surplus of subprime mortgage loans, he predicts that the housing market is a bubble about to burst and invests his hedge fund accordingly. While initially seen as a loose canon by fearful investors, a few other key Wall Street players, like the Steve Eisman–inspired Mark Baum (Steve Carell) and Greg Lippmann–inspired Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling), catch wind and attempt to suss out whether something as historically reliable as mortgage-backed securities could actually result in economic collapse. With witty turn-to-the-camera sidebars and several celebrity explainers (including Margot Robbie, Anthony Bourdain, and Selena Gomez), Adam McKay’s first dramatic directorial venture manages to expertly detail what went wrong in lively, palatable ways.

Money Monster (2016)

One of the few films to make this list that is not based at least loosely on a true story, Money Monster brings an imminent physical threat to Wall Street. When Lee Gates (George Clooney), the host of financial talk show Money Monster (think Jim Cramer’s Mad Money ) hosts a live episode the day after a stock he endorsed plummeted due to an apparent algorithm glitch, a disgruntled investor makes his way on-air with a gun and a bomb vest and holds Gates hostage. Gates eventually sympathizes with the man and works, alongside his producer (Julia Roberts), to find out what happened and if fraud is to blame, rather than just algorithmic error. Directed by Jodie Foster, the movie underscores that what might seem like chump change or simply a game for those on Wall Street is truly a matter of life and death for most everyday people.

The Wizard of Lies (2017)

Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, totaling more than $64 billion, remains the largest known Ponzi scheme in history and was one of the devastating contributing factors to the 2008 Wall Street pandemonium. While a number of documentaries and miniseries attempted to capture just what went down leading up to his 2008 arrest and how someone could have gotten away with fraud on such a destructive level, it was HBO’s The Wizard of Lies that finally pulled it off. Starring Robert De Niro, the movie is more than a look at Madoff’s inner workings and family. His wife, Ruth (Michelle Pfeiffer), and sons, Mark (Alessandro Nivola) and Andrew (Nathan Darrow), are just as much in the spotlight as the man himself, and the film ultimately serves as a familial character study.

Hustlers (2019)

While The Big Short and other films about the 2008 financial crisis were able to detail how it happened, few looked closely at the regular people affected by the crisis and its economic ripples throughout the world. Inspired by a New York story , Hustlers follows a group of strippers (helmed by Jennifer Lopez and Constance Wu) who find themselves financially suffering when their usual clientele scale back after the financial crisis along with the rest of the world. Struggling to get by, they begin drugging their clients (mostly Wall Street guys) and maxing out the men’s credit cards at their strip club before taking a cut of the profit. Straddling the line between hustle and greed, Hustlers became one of the best, most unexpected movies about the financial crisis and its labyrinth of repercussions.

Dumb Money (2023)

Following a relative dearth of finance movies, Dumb Money has emerged as one of the best and most enticing entries into the financial film canon. As opposed to most of the other Wall Street tales on this list, Dumb Money sees a happy ending for the (relatively) little guy — in this case, retail traders. At the center of the GameStop storm was Keith Gill (Paul Dano), who pumped his entire savings into the stock simply because he believed it was undervalued. Posting and sharing videos through the r/wallstreetbets Reddit page, Gill gathered a following, and people began to invest in GameStop, slowly inflating the price and panicking Wall Street bigwigs who had shorted the stock. While the movie is centered on Gill and the impacted hedge funds, it smartly highlights a variety of sympathetic amateur investors (the people who usually get screwed over in these movies) who are able to walk away with something to show for themselves. More than anything, Dumb Money accurately captures the punchy, whirlwind feel of COVID-era online communities and frustration with the ultrarich and powerful.

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Movie Reviews

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This review was originally published on October 9, 2020 and is being republished for Black Writers Week. 

“Time” is an intriguing title for Garrett Bradley ’s documentary about Sibil Richardson’s 20-year battle to get parole for her incarcerated husband. The titular noun is open to many interpretations: It could stand for the term describing a jail sentence, or the notion that all a prisoner has in a cell is time or, most devastatingly, how the incarcerated person’s life remains in a holding pattern while time carries life’s events forward on the outside. Kids grow up without parents, spouses endure without better halves, and parents grow older without their children bearing witness. Whatever the director’s symbolic intentions for naming the film, this beautiful and haunting documentary reminds us that there’s a human being behind those prison identification numbers, someone who is loved and is missed.

Bradley uses Sibil’s black and white home movies to show the passage of time. The film starts with one of her six children, Raymond, joking about how many girls he’s going to get on the first day of Kindergarten. We also see Sibil kissing her husband, Robert, in their car, a playful moment where he acknowledges the camera recording their affection for posterity. She will eventually become an advocate for the rights of the incarcerated while simultaneously trying to get Robert’s parole granted. Specifically, she hones in on how people of color receive harsher sentences for crimes than their White counterparts. “Our prison is nothing but slavery,” she tells a group who came to hear her speak. “And I am an abolitionist.”

History and current events remind us that, if you’re Black or brown, your reputation must be spotless. If you are arrested, falsely or otherwise, or killed by police, the first thing the news media and law enforcement do is determine how to discredit you so that it appears you got what you deserved. The company you kept, your youthful indiscretions, or even simply just looking like less than a respectable choirboy put you in the position to be more harshly sentenced or vilified. Felons of any race are often shunned upon release, stripped of much of their humanity even though the debt to society has been paid. They can’t vote, and many places will not hire nor rent to them.

If someone were innocent of a crime, and unfairly sentenced, they would also be subjected to this outcome. Sibil and Robert are guilty, however, so they do not automatically earn the outrage that viewers could engage if they were not. But this film isn’t seeking easy outrage; it’s simply enlisting our empathy and concern while documenting the effects of a corrupt system. It also touches on themes of faith and forgiveness, and the difficulties of cutting through the red tape of the judicial process.

“Time” lets us know early on that the Richardsons did the crime. On September 16, 1997, they pulled a heist at a Shreveport credit union. Before this, they ran the city’s first hip-hop clothing store and were well known in the community. With four kids at home and Sibil pregnant with twins, one can only imagine the financial desperation that led to armed robbery. In the state of Louisiana, the crime earns five to ninety-nine years. On June 15, 1999, Sibil took 12 years in a plea deal and was paroled in three-and-a-half. Robert rejected his deal and received an excessive sentence of 60 years without any hope of parole.

Once released, Sibil returns to her children, moves to New Orleans and begins the fight to get her husband re-sentenced. When we first see one of Sibil’s speaking engagements, she tells the audience that she has been on the outside for 15 years. From here, “Time” concerns itself with the most recent attempt at a potential re-sentencing verdict. Sibil wades through much bureaucracy, from having to wait for days while judges sit on reviewing Robert’s case to falling victim to a lawyer who does nothing yet charges $15,000 for his uselessness. Several scenes show Sibil calmly calling clerks and secretaries to get status updates. She seems unflappable, so when she finally loses composure and lashes out, cursing into the void, it’s a powerful, relatable response.

The footage Bradley presents of the family over the years was shot and narrated by Sibil, a visual record she’s been keeping for the man she has loved since she was 16. These documenting images change quickly, in montage and without any timestamp. Eventually, we realize the youngest twin sons, Justus and Freedom, are about to turn 18 and have grown up without knowing their father as a free man. They’re both college students, sharp and motivated. Though Sibil narrates most of the film, Bradley allows Justus to offer his own words for a few scenes. An older brother, Richard, is shown in medical school. With these scenes highlighting growth and resilience, “Time” refuses to be some kind of tragedy porn. Sibil and her brood demand justice, not pity. Her strength carries the film and elevates her sons toward success.

Most of “Time” takes place three weeks before a parole hearing may be scheduled for Robert. But this timeframe doesn’t play as a suspense thriller with tricks that manipulate one’s emotions. We never see Robert in jail, for example. Instead, the details come and go at the pace of real life, to the point where we feel tethered to the Richardsons like kin, each of us eagerly waiting for news to trickle down to us. Joining us is Robert’s mother, a character who spouts the type of wisdom tempered with tough love that any Black son or daughter will immediately recognize. Her attitude throughout is basically “I support you and I’ll pray for you, but y’all know you shouldn’t have done that b.s. in the first place!” As memorable as Sibil is, her mother-in-law steals the movie.

“Time” ends with a scene that will wring maximum tears of joy from the viewer. But those tears are bittersweet because the one currency humans cannot make more of is time. In a preceding sequence that doesn’t feel gimmicky at all, Bradley runs some of Sibil’s home movie footage in reverse, as if somehow dragging the clock backwards to make up for lost time. It’s a noble attempt that evokes an ethereal sense of grace. The crisp, black and white cinematography makes the entire film feel like a poetic ode to perseverance. The Richardsons will never get the years back that they’ve lost, but we’re left with hope that a triumphant future will stem from their reunion.

Now playing in select theaters; available on Amazon Prime on October 16

Odie Henderson

Odie "Odienator" Henderson has spent over 33 years working in Information Technology. He runs the blogs Big Media Vandalism and Tales of Odienary Madness. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire  here .

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Blitz Reviews

Smart, sharp, shocking, and at times bloody (and bloodily) hilarious, Blitz's witty script and pacy action elevates its simple premise into a brilliantly gritty tale of moral ambiguity.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 11, 2016

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Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 29, 2011

As conventional as you can get without needing an epilogue that says "...next week on Blitz."

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Sep 6, 2011

America, where Statham does the majority of his work these days, seems to appreciate his particular talents. On this evidence, he might want to stick to Hollywood.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Aug 16, 2011

...Lester is no Don Siegel and Statham, though credibly formidable, lacks the conscience that made Harry Callahan human...

Full Review | Jun 28, 2011

Ultimately Blitz knows exactly where its strength lies.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | May 23, 2011

It is an unedifying film, slickly directed and photographed, but lacking conviction and much inferior to the police procedurals you can see any night on television.

Full Review | May 23, 2011

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | May 20, 2011

All three men give searing performances and young cinematographer Robert Hardy dwells with palpable relief on their expressive features.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | May 20, 2011

Not for the sensitive, this is an efficient, well performed thriller that makes a few unconvincing stabs at social commentary.

It's gritty, down and dirty, and Statham has never been better.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | May 20, 2011

The denouement strains credibility, relying on a character showing restraint when they've merrily pulled the trigger for the rest of the film.

Full Review | May 20, 2011

Who knows, we might be looking at the evolution of the guilty-pleasure movie - padded out with top-drawer talent to spare audience blushes.

Full Review | May 19, 2011

While the film recognises pressure and camaraderie, the plot is stretched like an under-sized string vest over a bulging six pack.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | May 19, 2011

It's all been seen before and will be seen again, and again.

This British crime thriller is so unapologetic about recycling cliches that it's actually hilariously good fun to watch.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | May 19, 2011

Statham gives a good account of himself as the no-nonsense Detective Brant, handy with his fists and ready with a wry one-liner, but an unoriginal plot and a general lack of excitement don't do justice to either him or the high-calibre supporting cast.

It's definitely not far from Clich Central. But if you're looking for Credibility Street, you'll soon get lost.

How can we sleep for grief that we don't have more films - even bad ones - starring Rylance?

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | May 18, 2011

It's Statham meets The Bill, meets Life on Mars, meets Death Wish, all cranked up with in-your-face attitude that makes no apologies ...

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | May 18, 2011

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What It Was Like to Be a Jewish Banker

In “The Money Kings,” Daniel Schulman tells the story of the Jewish immigrants who came to the United States and helped build America’s modern economic system.

By Jacob Goldstein

Jacob Goldstein is the host of “What’s Your Problem?,” a podcast about business and technology, and the author of “Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing.”

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THE MONEY KINGS: The Epic Story of the Jewish Immigrants Who Transformed Wall Street and Shaped Modern America , by Daniel Schulman

On Feb. 6, 1904, a group of powerful Jewish men met at the Fifth Avenue mansion of Jacob Schiff. Largely forgotten today (except by antisemitic conspiracy theorists), Schiff was a German immigrant who became one of the most powerful bankers on the planet, “a colossus in finance and Jewish life,” Daniel Schulman writes in “The Money Kings.”

That night, Schiff’s guests — who included Adolph Ochs, the publisher of The New York Times, and Oscar Straus, President Theodore Roosevelt’s minister to The Hague — were talking about the looming war between Japan and Russia. Schiff knocked on the table for silence and announced that he had been approached about arranging a loan to the Japanese government to help fund the war. Then he asked the same question my grandfather used to ask: What does it mean for the Jews?

That question recurs throughout “The Money Kings,” a sprawling history of the German Jews who came to the United States in the 19th century and helped create the modern economy while navigating their own identities as Jews, bankers and Americans.

Schiff is the book’s central figure, and by the early 20th century, on the eve of the Russo-Japanese War, his influence had spread beyond Wall Street. At the time, Jews were being raped and murdered in yet another series of pogroms in imperial Russia. These attacks burned such a lasting scar on the Jewish psyche that, earlier this year , an Israeli major general was moved to compare the slaughter of Israeli civilians on Oct. 7 to “a pogrom from our grandparents’ time.”

Schiff thought financing Japan’s war effort might help bring down the Russian czar and, hopefully, end the pogroms taking place under his rule. On the other hand, Schulman suggests, a Jewish banker taking sides in the war might also engender even more antisemitism in Russia.

Schiff decided it was a risk worth taking. He arranged the loan to Japan and wrote to the British banker Nathaniel Rothschild. He hoped that “Jewish bankers of influence” would “work with all their might against any Russian loans so long as existing conditions continue.”

Rothschild replied to Schiff’s letter: “There is absolutely no chance of Russia getting a loan in England.”

Japan won the war. Russia lost. For Schiff, who also bankrolled anti-czarist propaganda aimed at Russian P.O.W.s, it was a story of Jews rallying to oppose a brutally antisemitic Russian regime.

For antisemites, it quickly became a story of Jewish bankers conspiring to shape world events to the Jews’ advantage. Around the time the war ended, in 1905, the first full version of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” the canonical work of Jew-hating conspiracy theory, was published in Russia. It purported to reveal a Jewish plot to take over the world, and it would prove to be a deadly book.

“The Money Kings” shows how antisemitism was also a force that bound Schiff and his fellow Jewish bankers together. Shut out of much of society, they worked in the same offices and summered in the same towns and intermarried like European royalty.

Over the course of the book, the relationships become more and more convoluted. In 1875, Schiff married Therese Loeb, the daughter of a partner at Kuhn Loeb, the investment firm he went on to run. (A Goldman was a bridesmaid at the wedding.) Their daughter Frieda married into the powerful Warburg banking family in 1895. Later that year, when yet another Warburg married yet another Loeb, Schulman dryly informs us, the groom “became a brother-in-law to his brother’s father-in-law,” and “Frieda’s aunt now became her sister-in-law.”

There are many heroes in this book, and many journeys, and the journeys sometimes feel pretty similar to one another. It’s compelling the first time an ambitious young man leaves Bavaria to become an itinerant peddler, carrying his wares on his back through rural America, bringing his brothers over to the New World and rising to become a famous financier. It’s less compelling the second time.

The book occasionally drags, but Schulman, a senior editor at Mother Jones, is a thorough reporter with an eye for delightful details. The banker Solomon Loeb was so obsessed with work, Schulman writes, that he once concluded a letter to his son with, “Your Loving Kuhn Loeb & Company.” Long before Marcus Goldman went into business with Samuel Sachs, he was so poor that he gave his bride-to-be a bouquet of radishes because he couldn’t afford flowers.

There is a lot of finance in “The Money Kings.” Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers bring a new era of I.P.O.s to Wall Street in the early 1900s; around the same time, Schiff and J.P. Morgan battle for control of the Northern Pacific railroad. (In the end, they work it out like gentlemen and engineer a monopolistic merger.) Perhaps most significantly for the U.S. economy, Paul Warburg helps create the Federal Reserve in 1913.

But such events play as isolated episodes, and the book does not deliver a coherent narrative of the emerging American economy. Instead, the thread that binds is the Jewish experience in America. This is a story about Jews who happen to be bankers, not about bankers who happen to be Jews.

Near the end of the book, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” re-emerges from the muck to inspire an American wave of antisemitic conspiracy theorizing bankrolled by Henry Ford, the great industrial innovator and classic Jew hater.

In May 1920, The Dearborn Independent, a newspaper that was owned by Ford and circulated via Ford dealers around the country, launched a series titled “The International Jew.” It cited “The Protocols,” and advanced the plot: Schiff and the Warburgs, in this telling, had not just brought down the Russian Empire; they had also conspired to bring the Bolsheviks to power in 1917. (Unsurprisingly, these rich bankers did not in fact support the Bolsheviks.) International Jews, Ford’s paper said, were the “conscious enemies of all that Anglo-Saxons mean by civilization.”

The newspaper series was a crisis for American Jews. But Schiff, uncharacteristically, advised restraint. “If we get into a controversy we shall light a fire, which no one can foretell how it will become extinguished,” he wrote to a group of Jewish leaders in June. “I would strongly advise therefore that no notice be taken of these articles and the attack will soon be forgotten.”

Schiff died that September, so he did not live to see himself proved catastrophically wrong.

Ford turned “The International Jew” into a book (subtitle: “The World’s Foremost Problem”) and printed millions of copies. In 1922, The New York Times reported that Adolf Hitler, the leader of a growing group of Bavarian reactionaries, had a portrait of Ford on his office wall in Munich. On a table in Hitler’s anteroom, Schulman writes, there was a stack of copies of “The International Jew,” translated into German.

THE MONEY KINGS : The Epic Story of the Jewish Immigrants Who Transformed Wall Street and Shaped Modern America | By Daniel Schulman | Knopf | 570 pp. | $35