Based on the book by Michael Lewis, THE BIG SHORT (2015) brings together solid direction, a stellar cast, and a powerful script to tell the story of the 2008 housing crisis that nearly crashed the world economy. The story focuses on several investors–a socially awkward doctor who reads numbers so well he can predict market trends, a rogue investor group led by a misanthrope, and two brilliant young investors looking for a big trade that will get them a seat at the big boys’ table–as they predict the crash and seek to cash in on it.

This is a complicated topic made simple through good storytelling. Basically, mortgages were aggregated as new investment products with high rates of return. As time went on, higher-risk loans were packaged with them, then very risky loans. Over time, few knew what was even in these products, which kept getting AAA credit ratings by agencies under financial pressure to do so. Then spinoff products began to arise around these products, resulting in say $10 billion becoming $100 billion, without anything justifying it other than the illusion there was value there. The SEC did nothing about it because they were underfunded, and the people who worked there wanted lucrative jobs when they got out of government. When higher-rate clauses in a wave of adjustable rate mortgages began to kick in in 2007, massive defaults cracked the system, which led to its unwinding and crash while revealing just how rotten and corrupt the entire market was.

The investors who saw this coming were modern-day Cassandras. As nobody has ever shorted the housing market, the banks create products just for them, thinking they’re crazy and that they’re making easy money. As everybody had a vested interest in keeping the illusion of stability going, the market kept rising and the AAA ratings held, even as the default rate kept rising. Finally, the system broke, big banks and investment firms were going down or in trouble, and millions of people lost everything. Not the banks, though, which got their bailouts, paid out huge bonuses to their executives, and years later went right back to the same highly risky investment products that got us into that mess.

THE BIG SHORT is a terrific movie that respects the intelligence of its audience, is cynical rather than preachy, and functions as a dark comedy about how the global economy nearly imploded out of sheer greed and willful ignorance. One thing is certain: If somebody can make a buck making a mistake and pass off its consequences to the public, they will do it again and again, and even romanticize the mistake as being brilliant and brave.

BBC3’s OUR WORLD WAR (2014), a three-part anthology miniseries about WW1, dramatizes the experiences of British soldiers based on war records and firsthand recollections. While a bit uneven, two of the episodes are amazing, very human portrayals of what warfare was like 100 years ago.

Again, this is an anthology series, telling three separate stories set during the Battle of Mons, Battle of the Somme, and the Battle of Amiens. As the stories are based on what actually happened, the events don’t follow a neat plot or character arc, defying expectations and achieving great authenticity. What they all have in common is that men bond during war, that a struggling nation will openly do anything to achieve victory, and that war is hell.

The first episode captures the British Fusiliers encountering a massive German attack at Mons. The episode is likeable but doesn’t seem to find its theme or footing. The director amply uses modern devices, such as a modern score, body cam to follow a runner relaying messages, and overlay maps depicting the enemy forces. These anachronisms generally work, though the body cam was unnecessary and jerked me out of the story. Still, I was intrigued to keep watching.

The second and third episodes are fantastic. The second episode deals with a soldier who signed up to fight and ends up assigned to kill somebody from his hometown in a firing squad. The story is split evenly between him debating his chaplain, who is far from a straw man and makes very reasonable points about what it takes to win, and fighting in a horrific battle. The third episode is by far my favorite, about the crew of one of the first tanks used in battle at Amiens. The tankers have to brave artillery shells, deadly fumes, a faulty engine, and the moral brick in the face that is the horrors they’re unleashing on the Germans with these new and advanced weapons.

If you like military action films, I encourage you to give this a go, but maybe start with episode 2, then 1, then 3 for a big finish.

GODLESS, a Netflix series, delivers great characters, dialogue, and action in a fantastic Western. Despite a saggy middle, the series starts off great and ends with one hell of a bang.

Frank Griffin (the great Jeff Daniels), leader of a ruthless outlaw gang, searches for Roy Goode (Jack O’Connell), his partner who turned against him. Roy is hiding in La Belle, New Mexico, a town made up almost entirely of women after a mining accident claimed the men.

In classic Western fashion, this is a story of good and evil in the beautiful, harsh, and empty Old West. Griffin is evil, a man of God raised in violence and believing violence is God’s way of teaching us something, and he loves Roy as family, making him a complex villain. Roy is good, an outlaw who turned against the man who raised him from the time he was an orphan looking for a family and finding it in the outlaw gang. They’re kin, and their conflict leads them on an inevitable collision course.

In La Belle, we’re given plenty of other characters and stories we can sink our teeth into. Marshal John Cook (the great Sam Waterston), who is going to get the cavalry to help him hunt down Griffin and his gang. Alice Fletcher and her Paiute son and mother in law, a very self-reliant and independent family who live on a ranch and give Roy Goode shelter. The sheriff (Scott McNairy, a great actor), who harbors a deep despair and is slowly going blind. Whitey, the young and brash deputy who loves the wrong girl. A nearby settlement of Black Civil War veterans (Buffalo soldiers) who just want to be left alone. The mayor, who dresses in men’s clothes and has a relationship with the town’s teacher, a former prostitute. Even the minor characters stand out, from the eccentric German artist to the Quicksilver mining executive to the guy who runs the livery stables.

Only seven episodes, the series introduces these characters and allows them to live and breathe naturally, without anything forced. They’re all likeable, the dialogue is excellent, the pacing good though a big bogged in flashbacks. The show ends with one hell of a bang as everything comes to a head, and the denouement is very satisfying.

This is the kind of TV I love–focus on characters and story, characters we can root for and agonize over if they don’t make it, realistic personal battles for redemption, no heavy-handed moralizing (which I thought we’d get with an Old West town run by women, and a nearby settlement run by Blacks), a terrific villain, defied expectations, and a fantastic climax.

Recommended, and a must if you like Old West stories.