“The Big Short,” January 17, 2016 (2015), theater. Based on Michael Lewis’s book, this creative, funny, terrifying, and infuriating movie chronicles the meltdown of 2007/8 and the housing bubble, financial skullduggery, and almost universal corruption among the banks, Wall Street high flyers, the political establishment, and the financial media that led us lemmings over the cliff into crisis,…and then we bailed them out. Fingers wagged by our political reps such as H. Clinton, they responded “fuck you, very much.” Stellar acting from all in this one, although it’s really a “guy” cast. Hedge-fund oddity, Michael Burry (Christian Bale) figures out that the entire mortgage-backed securities market is a house of cards built on mountains of crappy mortgages, shorts the position big time with banks to the tune of billions with the aid of a piece of human vermin (there are so many in this film). Other marginals, most notably Mark Braun (the ever-more wonderful Steve Carrell) and his team of broken toys, and Charley Geller and Jaimie Shipley, two Boulder-boy newbie hedge fund wannabees who rely on their off-the-grid friend, Ben Rickert (a fine Brad Pitt), get on to what’s happening and take risky short positions as the banks/government/press collude to try to keep the pot from boiling over. As you may recall, things don’t go well, except for those playing the short game, and even they learn their successes come at the expense of the devastation of millions of lives. Sadly, the perps are still running the show. The film uses playful means to simplify the financial terms and arcane financial instruments and casino-like insanity that emerged. I wish they’d moved a bit beyond the Street and these instruments into the destruction of controls endorsed by some Dems (oh no, Mr. Bill!) and the GOP with the death of Glass- Steagall but you can only do so much in a film. They do take us into the neutered SEC. I saw a neighbor down the block after I came home, and he said the film left him feeling like he needed a drink. I felt like I wanted to blow the whole thing up.