Thursday, April 7, 2016

2 Movies for Tonight


Looking for a good movie to watch tonight or over the weekend?  Maybe you had one but burned through it in just those few short hours it takes to watch something. Well guess what? I've got two movie recommendations for you to watch tonight! If you've already seen these, have no fear, I'll be back next week with another two movies for you watch. Leave a comment and I'll recommend some different ones for you!

The First movie... Spotlight.

Based on the new story that not only shook Boston but the entire world, Spotlight is the true story of the Boston Globe exposing the Catholic Church for hiding the molestation by Priests. In 2001, The Boston Globe got a new editor in chief, Marty Baron (Leiv Schreiber) who then meets the editor (Michael Keaton) of a section of the paper called Spotlight. The Spotlight section usually spends a year or more researching and developing a story focusing on one thing of interest. Marty tasks Spotlight with focusing on the story of a priest who's been found guilty of molesting young boys. While they are researching the story it appears there could be other piests who are guilty of the same thing. Spotlight reporters realize that not only could there be multiple priests guilty but the Catholic church could be covering it up. In 2002, Spotlight broke the story and their findings.

I was a little leary of watching this movie. I don't like to see bad things happen to people when it wasn't their fault. I knew the movie had to be good though because it won the Oscar best Movie of the Year award. I thought it was very good, well made and informative.

Favorite Quote- They knew and they let it happen! It could've been you, it could've been me, it could've been any of us. - Mike.

The Second movie... The Big Short.

In 2005, a California hedge fund manager Michael Burry (Christian Bale) discovered the U.S. housing market was extremely unstable. The market being based on subprime loans that were high risk and providing fewer and fewer returns. He predicted that the market would collapse sometime during the second quarter of 2007. He got on a plane and went to New York and began making investments with credit default swaps with several large banks. The banks took the money thinking the housing market was stable. Michael's investors are upset with the way he's spent his money and as time draws closer to 2007 with no return the investors want their money back. Michael freezes all of their withdraws because he believes he is right.
 
A New York trader named Jared (Ryan Gosling) gets wind of what Michael is doing and starts to invest in the credit default swap market. A wrong number dialed by Jared leads him to another hedge fund manager Mark Baum (Steve Carell). Mark hears Jared out and realizes the housing market is in for a collapse. Mark and  his team begin investing in the swaps and while hoping the market doesn't crash also set themselves up for a huge payday if it does. When the second quarter of 2007 rolls around, the market is going crazy and dropping. They all soon realize that Michael Burry may in fact be right.
 
 

I liked this movie but for me it was very hard to follow. I'm not a market trader and at the time I wasn't a home owner so I didn't understand it all. The movie does try to explain things as it goes because they rightly so expect that the average American doesn't know all about credit market swaps. I thought the movie was interesting and since it affected everyone so much in real life it was worth watching. My husband lost his job because of the 2007 crash and everyone knows at least one person who was affected by it.

Favorite Quote- If we're right, people lose homes. People lose jobs. People lose retirement savings, people lose pensions. You know what I hate about banking? It reduces people to numbers. Here's a number - every 1% unemployment goes up, 40,000 people die, did you know that? - Ben.

Have you seen these movies? What did you think?

3 comments:

Katie said...

I haven't even HEARD of either of these! I'm so bad about watching movies! haha

Mia @ The Chronicles of Chaos said...

I am definitely watching these movies soon! I was intrigued by them when they got nominated for Academy Awards. I don't get to the movies that often, so I usually wait for them to come out on OnDemand. :) Thanks for sharing, I always love good movie recs!

Olivia said...

We watched The Big Short a few weeks ago, and it was so good!