Popular reviews

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  Review by Ceez ★★★★ 2

  It’s just money; it’s made up. Pieces of paper with pictures on it so we don’t have to kill each other to get something to eat

  Star studded thriller about the eve of the financial crash of 2008. This film is so captivating with all sorts of characters, from morally bankrupt to good hearted people, but in the end they’re all in it for the same reason. If it wasn’t for The Big Short, this would be the definitive movie of the financial crisis.

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  Review by Andy Summers ★★★★★ 1

  Jeremy Irons has an Oscar. Kevin Spacey has two Oscars. J.C. Chandor will have one very soon if he continues to deliver anything as good as this and All Is Lost.

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  Review by Sam Van Hallgren ★★★★

  Gotta give WOLF OF WALL STREET some credit - it gave me an appetite for entertainment about The Street and its denizens that was left mostly unsatisfied by Scorsese's film. I've been reading LIAR'S POKER - Michael Lewis's fantastic account of the rise and fall of Solomon Brothers in the late 80s. And then last night I finally caught up with the excellent MARGIN CALL. I guess one of my primary gripes with WOWS was my lack of interest in spending time with its characters and their antics, while also still being interested in the mechanics of their operation. MARGIN CALL is all mechanics. Thrillingly so. Maybe even more of a gut punch a couple years later, as the stock market recovers and we start to forget our rage at these gamblers as they start to line our purses again. As if anything has changed.

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  Review by panos75 ★★★ 1

  A junior analyst discovers that the investment bank in which he works has amassed so many toxic mortgage backed securities that bankruptcy is almost imminent. This leads to a frantic night where his bosses try to find a way to dump these assets and save the firm.

  "Margin Call" is a thriller that examines the beginning of the great financial crisis of 2008 through the eyes of the people who found themselves in the midst of the storm. Chandor uses a docudrama method to recreate these fateful hours. While mostly effective, it eventually makes for a very dry presentation that saps some of the tension from a potentially riveting drama. Add to that the fact that the financial jargon used…

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  Review by Steve G 🇵🇸 🇾🇪 ★★★★ 3

  It takes a special talent to make a film about a subject and, for quite a lot of the running time, have much of your audience wonder what the hell anyone is talking about. It has to be a special talent because how else would a film like Margin Call end up being so utterly riveting?

  The purported plot sees a troubled Wall Street investment bank wrestle with the decision to sell off all its assets, assets they know are very soon to be worthless, after discovering that the firm has reached the limits of its spending and risk plunging the stock market and banking sector into crisis as a result.

  What I watched it as was, "Some bad stuff's…

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  Review by jaywill ★★★½ 1

  YOU’RE TELLING ME THAT’S *NOT* ELI ROTH?!?? 

  I feel like this has probably already been observed by tons of people, but I just noticed Kevin Spacey’s typecasting is always the unempathetic dickhead traitor villain? Literally these are the only films I’ve seen with him and they all fit the bill; The Negotiator, 21, Seven, Iron Will, Baby Driver, Superman Returns, A Bug’s Life, another movie which I won’t spoil, and now Margin Call.

  
  Lists:
  Four Horsemen of Financial Cinema

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  Review by Ian Curran ★★★★ 2

  “Please, speak as you might to a young child. Or a golden retriever. It wasn't brains that brought me here.”

  Ever since this GameStop malarkey I haven’t been able to get Stanley Tucci’s character out of my mind.

  There’s a scene where Tucci and Paul Bettany are sitting on the stoop of an immaculate Brooklyn Brownstone contemplating the major theme of the movie, nothingness.

  Tucci recounts the most meaningful piece of occupation he was ever involved in, the building of a bridge that significantly benefits commuters. It acts as an allegory for how one mans actions can have tangible benefits to others, and stands in contrast to the absurdity of moving “nothing” around from one account to another.

  Tucci is…

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  Review by Sam Thompson ★★★½

  An outstanding cast and a super tight script make for an enthralling watch. Chandor’s strength is his focus on these people’s reactions and realisations of the impending economic doom and their moral dilemma that comes with their early knowledge.

  Definitely worth a watch if you haven’t seen it.

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  Review by Matthew L. Brady ★★★ 2

  This is one of those movies where everyone calls flawless but I think it's well done on a acting and directing point of view, but I do think it's a bit overrated in my opinion.

  The story to Margin Call takes place in 2008 as a tense action as we follow one 24-hour period at an investment bank just before the financial crisis hits.

  Margin Call is a movie that I thought was alright. I do think the movie is well acted and nicely written, but to me the movie is a slow burn and I just don't think it's brilliant as people thought it was. It's not a bad film but I don't think it's a great film, just alright in my opinion.

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  Review by Andy Summers ★★★★

  When the shit hit the fan for the banking industry back in 2007 very few people outside the corridors of investment banking really gave a shit. That changed considerably when the fallout affected everyone from the man in the street to wealthy executives. The monumental fuck-ups of these overpaid, bonus obsessed scumbags changed the world...forever.

  A fictitious Wall Street investment bank going through a tough time discovers that certain parameters that control the volatile trading limits have been breached and that a critical meltdown of their company is imminent. As complex models of the company's financial stability show serious problems, especially in their mortgage and risk departments, it appears their mountain of toxic debt is going to bury them. 2:00am…

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  Review by Todd Hill ★★★★ 1

  The consensus is that “The Big Short” (2015) is the definitive movie about the Great Recession of 2008, and there’s probably no reason to refute that. But some consideration should be given to “Margin Call,” the debut of a filmmaker who’s been worth watching ever since, J.C. Chandor. A corporate drama, set in skyscrapers at night, about a bunch of Wall Street scumbags who have just realized their dangerous games are about to spill out into the economy at large, it features an all-star cast with Kevin Spacey — doing what he did best — at the center. We don’t for one minute understand what they’re so scared about, but it doesn’t matter; that’s good writing.

  warm3wind.medium.com

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  Review by Mike D'Angelo ★★★

  58/100

  [originally written on my blog]

  Intelligent, gripping, utterly persuasive...except that roughly every ten minutes Chandor fears we might not be getting it and applies the sledgehammer, to severely alienating effect. At times I started to wonder whether the self-aware monologues were intended as comedy, given the absurdly specific figures being casually tossed around: Paul Bettany knows off the top of his head precisely how much money he's blown on hookers and strip clubs in the past year ($76,520), while Stanley Tucci has no trouble mentally calculating that the bridge he once built has to date saved residents of the communities it spans 1,531 man-years of driving time. It's as if every so often the movie plays a game called…