The Big Short (Adam McKay, 2015)

8.5/10
The tone of the movie was exactly what I expected going in, and it straddled the line of serious/comedic very well. With a directing history filled with comedies I was impressed by Adam McKay's ability to stay on the right side of the line. I even enjoyed the "dumbing it down" celebrity cameos which could have felt gimmicky and self-conscious in another movie but felt welcome in this one.
I haven't read the book (yet) but no doubt Michael Lewis provided ample material for McKay and the ensemble cast to work with. Everybody is pretty much great across the board, and the performances feel genuine despite the goofy hairpieces (in contrast to American Hustle, for example, which had goofy performances to match the wigs).
I was also glad they focused largely on the heart of the matter, the financial crisis and the "big short" plot itself. The Moneyball adaptation faltered shoehorning in Billy Beane's daughter. The Big Short veered a little in that direction (the brother's suicide) but mostly stayed on the right side of the line. Entertaining, informative and scary.

The Last Days of Disco (Whit Stillman, 1998)

6/10
I watched this one a while ago but never reviewed it. It was OK. It started off very promising with a really cool, persistent disco soundtrack. At first I thought the whole movie would take place over one night in the club, which would have been great. But as we got to know the characters better the movie took a dip for me. Writer/director Whit Stillman call this part of his "doomed-Bourgeois-in-love" trilogy and that's a pretty apt description of what happens here as you get to watch a bunch of white, well-to-do, attractive people bicker and try to find their way as young adults. Their problems come off as very much the privileged, first-world kind and none of the characters are especially sympathetic, and often they feel more like ciphers for Stillman's unique lines and phrasings as opposed to relateable adults. The beginning is good, the end is good, but I kind of wish the middle was a different movie about different things. Good soundtrack though!