Top 10 Best Movies To Watch in Economic Crisis

Economics isn’t only something you can learn from books and journals; in fact, it’s such a big aspect of contemporary life that many fantastic films have been made about it. The 2008 financial crisis and the development of game theory are only two examples of the wide range of topics that have been chronicled in films and will be of interest to economists. Try one of these ten movies for your next movie night if you’re looking for something that economists will enjoy.

Here are Some Top 10 Best Movies To Watch in Economic Crisis,

1. Rollover (1981, Dir. Alan J. Pakula)

Initial release: 11 December 1981

Director: Alan J. Pakula

Screenplay: David Shaber, David Weir

Box office: 1.09 crores USD

Budget: 1.6 crores USD

Music director: Michael Small

One of the first films to take place in the world of high finance and investment banking, Alan J. Pakula’s film opens with a series of tracking shots, moving the camera left-to-right across a series of ticking stock quotes, then dissolving to a busy trading floor. Pakula’s opening camera moves to attempt to establish a fluid visual palette, putting the world of the canyons of Wall Street on film for an audience that speaks to the increasing relevance of the financial sector in American culture at the dawn of the 1980s.

While other filmmakers may have depicted the world of Wall Street in a more compelling fashion, and with more mania, Pakula’s approach is to cloak the proceedings in a dark, heavy fog of conspiracy. The business meetings in his film are conducted in hushed tones, as a group of titans of industry attempt to pull off a devastating swindle, sucking all the capital out of the western markets, and causing a total global economic collapse.

2. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2011, Dir. Oliver Stone)

Release date: 24 September 2010 (India)

Director: Oliver Stone

Box office: 13.47 crores USD

Art director: Paul D. Kelly

Budget: 7 crores USD

Nominations: Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture,

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2011, Dir. Oliver Stone)

Returning to the characters he chronicled in 1987’s original film, director Oliver Stone, no doubt infuriated by the financial crisis and what he viewed as the careless, reckless behavior of the banking executives he demonstrated no love for thirty years before, releases his former antagonist, Gordon Gekko, into the canyons of Wall Street just before the crash of 2008.

The film opens with a surrealistic credits sequence, tracking the path of several floating bubbles, paired with a voice over from Shia LaBeouf’s Jake Moore (taking over the hungry young wolf role from Charlie Sheen’s Bud Fox) explaining the concept of an inflationary market bubble, the phenomenon occurring in the housing market at the time the film is set.

The popping of that bubble, dramatized in the film, where housing prices collapsed as homeowners began to default on their mortgages, leaving investors who had bet on their security holding the bag, sets the stage for the film’s middle section, where Gekko, Moore, and the other fictional characters navigate their way through the smoldering wreckage of America’s economy.

3. Inside Job (2010, Dir. Charles Ferguson)

Release date: 8 October 2010 (USA)

Director: Charles Ferguson

Cast: Matt Damon, Sigridur Benediktsdottir, Jerome Fons

Awards: Academy Award for Best Documentary (Feature)

Producers: Charles Ferguson, Jeffrey Lurie, Audrey Marrs

Budget: 20 lakhs USD

Box office: 79 lakhs USD

Inside Job (2010, Dir. Charles Ferguson)

Inside Job is one of the best documentaries of the 21st century. The film is narrated by Hollywood star Matt Damon and centers on the 2008 financial crisis. Charles Ferguson co-wrote and directed Margin Call. The documentary is told in five parts and explores how the collapse went down and who was responsible.

Inside Job also covers the financial crisis in Iceland, China, and other global financial hot spots. Inside Job won the Oscar for best documentary and is probably the most in-depth look at the 2008 financial meltdown.

4. The Big Short (2016, Dir. Adam McKay)

Release date: 22 January 2016 (India)

Director: Adam McKay

Adapted from: The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine

Awards: Academy Award for Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay)

Box office: 13.34 crores USD

Budget: 5 crores USD

If you’re looking for a funny yet informative guide on the causes of the 2008 financial crisis, The Big Short should be at the top of your watchlist. The film consists of three separate stories involving people who accurately predicted the crash of 2008 and got rich from it.

The Big Short also explains how the crisis came to be in layman’s language while also delivering hilarity. The Big Short also gets quite sad at times, especially while satirising the crooked banks and rating agencies that kept handing out bad loans one after the other, eventually causing the biggest financial crisis since 1929.

The Big Short went on to win an Oscar for its screenplay.

5. Margin Call (2011, Dir. J. C. Chandor)

Release date: 21 October 2011 (USA)

Director: J. C. Chandor

Producers: Zachary Quinto, Michael Benaroya, Neal Dodson, Corey Moosa, Joe Jenckes, Robert Ogden Barnum

Production companies: Before the Door Pictures, Before the Door

Awards: Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature

Distributed by: Lionsgate, Roadside Attractions

Margin Call is another star-studded drama about the 2008 financial crisis. The film isn’t inspired by a true story but feels like one. Margin Call takes place during the course of one day at an unnamed investment firm in New York.

The film centers on a rookie accountant who realises that his firm’s position in some assets is massively over-leveraged and that the debt will soon bankrupt the firm. Margin Call is set during the initial stages of the 2008 financial collapse, as the unnamed firm and all its top dogs meet and decide how to proceed further.

Margin Call is a fascinating watch about the workings of investment firms and how they’d rather destroy their reputation than incur a loss. The film is easy to understand and will be enjoyed by those with zero knowledge of finance as well.

6. Too Big To Fail (2011, Dir. J. C. Chandor)

Initial release: 23 May 2011

Director: Curtis Hanson

Screenplay: Peter Gould, Andrew Ross Sorkin

Awards: Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Miniseries or Television Movie, MORE

Producer: Ezra Swerdlow

Cinematography: Kramer Morgenthau

Too Big To Fail (2011, Dir. J. C. Chandor)

Too Big to Fail is a television movie, but it feels like a blockbuster due to its sheer scale and A-list cast. Too Big to Fail depicts the events of the 2008 financial meltdown from the US government’s point of view.

Too Big to Fail follows the actions of then U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve System, Ben Bernanke, as they try to contain the problems during the 2008 crisis. Veteran filmmaker Curtis Hanson directed Too Big to Fail, based on the non-fiction book of the same name by Andrew Ross Sorkin.

Too Big to Fail received critical acclaim and is one of the best films to learn about the 2008 financial crisis.

7. 99 Homes (2015, Dir. J. C. Ramin Bahrani)

Release date: 9 October 2015 (USA)

Director: Ramin Bahrani

Nominations: Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture

Box office: 19 lakhs USD

Distributed by: Broad Green Pictures

Produced by: Ashok Amritraj; Ramin Bahrani; Kevin Turen; Justin Nappi

99 Homes (2015, Dir. J. C. Ramin Bahrani)

99 Homes is a family drama film set against the backdrop of the great recession. The film takes place in Florida during the 2010 housing crisis and follows a recently unemployed single father as he takes care of his son and mom after being evicted by a shady real-estate agent.

Ramin Bahrani co-wrote and directed 99 Homes, based on the true accounts of several people who lost their homes during the recession. While 99 Homes doesn’t tell us much about the 2008 financial crisis, it does a great job of portraying its devastating aftermath. 99 Homes is a must-watch for anyone looking for a hard-hitting drama about working-class people.

8. The Grapes of Wrath (1940, Dir. John Ford)

Release date: 15 March 1940 (USA)

Director: John Ford

Nominations: Academy Award for Best Directing

Awards: Academy Award for Best Directing, Academy Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role

Story by: John Steinbeck

Adapted from: The Grapes of Wrath

The Grapes of Wrath (1940, Dir. John Ford)

Long before the 2008 banking collapse, there was the Great Depression. John Steinbeck wrote the defining novel of the era, The Grapes of Wrath, which was made into a film by John Ford in 1940. The film was rather less bleak than the novel, and tried to end on a note of hope, when Ma Joad says, “We’re the people that live. They can’t wipe us out, they can’t lick us. We’ll go on forever, Pa, cos we’re the people.” Which has a flavor of Gone With the Wind about it.

I swear, I’ll never be hungry again. Despite its rather upbeat ending, the film, which starred Henry Fonda as Tom Joad, is still considered not only one of the best films about economic depression, but one of the best films ever.

In a brilliantly concise explanation, one ‘labor agitator’ explains why bosses encouraged mass migration to join the California labor force. ‘Maybe he needs 1000 men, so he gets 5000 there, and he’ll pay 15 cents an hour and you guys will have to take it because you’re hungry.’

The film won Best Director Oscar for John Ford, and was nominated for 6 more.

9. Rogue Trader (1999, Dir. James Dearden)

Initial release: 25 June 1999

Director: James Dearden

Box office: 9.7 lakhs GBP (UK sub-total)

Budget: 1.28 crores USD

Adapted from: Rogue Trader

Cinematography: Jean-François Robin

13 years before the global financial meltdown, 1 single trader gave the financial world a foretaste of what was to come, and, as with all disasters, the story was made into a movie. Rogue Trader starred Ewan McGregor as Nick Leeson, a derivatives trader for one of the world’s oldest banks.

Leeson is the manager of their Singapore arm, where no one actually checked what he was doing. Or how much he was losing. Which was a lot. He viewed the stock market as ‘one giant casino’. After an initial winning streak, Leeson began to lose money, and hid the losses in a secret account.

And no one noticed. Until the bank was down £830 million and the bank went bust, almost bringing down the London Stock Exchange with it. The story was gold dust, but the movie was not so well received, and, like its subject, lost a lot of money.

10. A Beautiful Mind (2001, Dir. Ron Howard)

Release date: 13 December 2001 (USA)

Director: Ron Howard

Adapted from: A Beautiful Mind

Nominations: Academy Award for Best Picture

Awards: Academy Award for Best Picture

Budget: 6 crores USD, 5.8 crores USD

A Beautiful Mind (2001, Dir. Ron Howard)

A Beautiful Mind is a 2001 American biographical drama film directed by Ron Howard. Written by Akiva Goldsman, its screenplay was inspired by Sylvia Nasar’s 1998 biography of the mathematician John Nash, a Nobel Laureate in Economics. A Beautiful Mind stars Russell Crowe as Nash, along with Ed Harris, Jennifer Connelly, Paul Bettany, Adam Goldberg, Judd Hirsch, Josh Lucas, Anthony Rapp, and Christopher Plummer in supporting roles. The story begins in Nash’s days as a graduate student at Princeton University. Early in the film, Nash begins to develop paranoid schizophrenia and endures delusional episodes while watching the burden his condition brings on his wife Alicia and friends.

A fictionalised version of the life of John Nash, the mathematician who created game theory – which went on to become a major topic in economics research. Exploring both Nash’s mathematical work and the schizophrenia that he suffered from, this film was a popular success as well as being highly rated by historians and those in the field of mathematics.

That’s the end of our list of the 10 best movies to learn about the financial/Economical crisis. Hopefully, you liked it. We’ve laid out movies from the many involved companies’ perspectives, the government’s perspective, and even from the POV of those who were most affected by the common folk. Stay tuned for more insightful lists on education and cinema.