12. Other People's Money (1991)
is a drama/romantic comedy film starring Danny DeVito, Gregory Peck and Penelope Ann Miller. It was based on the play of the same name by Jerry Sterner. The film adaptation was directed by award winner Norman Jewison, and written by Alvin Sargent. This was the last substantial feature film role of Gregory Peck. He did appear in one other 1991 release, Martin Scorsese's Cape Fear (coincidentally, a remake of one his most famous films), but only briefly as a Southern lawyer. A corporate raider threatens a hostile take-over of a "mom and pop" company. The patriarch of the company enlists the help of his wife's daughter, who is a lawyer, to try and protect the company. The raider is enamored of her, and enjoys the thrust and parry of legal maneuvering as he tries to win her heart.
13. Barbarians at the Gate (1993)
is a television movie based upon the book by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar, about the leveraged buyout (LBO) of RJR Nabisco. Johnson's bid for the company is opposed by two of the pioneers of the leveraged buyout, Henry Kravis (who is played by Jonathan Pryce), and his cousin George R. Roberts. Kravis feels betrayed when, after Johnson initially discusses doing the LBO with Kravis, he actually takes the potentially enormous deal to another firm, American Express' former Shearson Lehman Hutton division. Ted Forstmann and his Forstmann Little buyout firm also play a prominent role. After Kravis and Johnson are unable to reconcile their differences, a bidding war ensues, which Kravis ultimately wins. Although not covered in the film, an unfortunate side effect of the greatly increased buyout price is the creation of an initially unforeseen and distinctly troubling level of debt for the company.
14. Pi or π, is (1998)
is an American surrealist psychological thriller film written and directed by Darren Aronofsky. It is Aronofsky's directorial debut, and earned him the Directing Award at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival, the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay and the Gotham Open Palm Award. The title refers to the mathematical constant pi. Like most of Aronofsky's films, Pi centers on a protagonist whose obsessive pursuit of ideals leads to severely self-destructive behavior.The mathematician Maximillian Cohen is tormented by a severe migraine since he was a kid, and he uses many pills to reduce his painful headaches. He is a lonely man, and his only friend is his former professor Sol Robeson. Max has the following assumptions, which rules his life: (1) Mathematics is the language of nature; (2) Everything around us can be represented and understood from numbers; (3) If you graph the numbers in any systems, patterns emerge. Therefore there are patterns everywhere in nature. Based on these principles, Max is trying to figure out a system to predict the behavior of the stock market. Due to his research, Max is chased by a Wall Street company with obvious interest in the results of his studies, and by an orthodox Jew follower of the Torah, who believes that this long string of numbers is a code sent from God.
15. Rouge Trader (1999)
is a drama film directed by James Dearden about former derivatives broker Nick Leeson and the 1995 collapse of Barings Bank. Based on Leeson's 1996 book "Rogue Trader: How I Brought Down Barings Bank and Shook the Financial World" it stars Ewan McGregor and Anna Friel. Ambitious, wide-boy Nick Leeson is determined to rise in the world and be more than a simple bank clerk. When his employers, Barings Bank, offer him the opportunity to go to Jakarta to sort out a problem that nobody else wants, he seizes the opportunity with both hands. In Jakarta he meets and marries Lisa and together they go to Singapore when the bank offers him the job of setting up their future options trading operation. To save money the bank allows Nick to operate both the floor trading and the back office facilities and force him to employ cheap, unskilled staff. His first year of trading is a big success and he makes large profits for the bank even though he has illegally broken trading rules and secretly covered up losses. Given more freedom, even more money and continuing unchecked, Nick starts to make losses and again attempts to trade out of them but this time he comes unstuck as his illegal trading generates even bigger losses. After the death of his unborn child Nick completely loses control and gambles without restraint with other people's money leading inevitably to a complete financial meltdown and the bankruptcy of the bank.
16. American Psycho (2000)
is a American psychological black comedy film co-written and directed by Mary Harron, based on Bret Easton Ellis's novel of the same name. It stars Christian Bale, Willem Dafoe, Jared Leto, Josh Lucas, Chloë Sevigny, Samantha Mathis, Cara Seymour, Justin Theroux, and Reese Witherspoon. Patrick Bateman is handsome, well educated and intelligent. He is twenty-seven and living his own American dream. He works by day on Wall Street, earning a fortune to complement the one he was born with. At night he descends into madness, as he experiments with fear and violence.
17. Nova - Trillion Dollar Bet (2000)
a documentary film. In 1973, three brilliant economists, Fisher Black, Myron Scholes and Robert Merton, discovered a mathematical breakthrough that revolutionized modern finance. The elegant formula they unleashed upon the world was sparse and deceptively simple, yet it led to the creation of a mulit-trillion dollar industry. Their bold ideas earned them a Nobel Prize and attracted the elite of Wall Street. In 1993, Scholes and Merton joined forces with John Merriweather, the legendary bond trader of Salomon Brothers. With 13 other partners, they launched a new hedge fund, Long Term Capital Management, that promised to use mathematical models to make investors tremendous amounts of money with little risk. Their money machines reaped fantastic profit, until their theories collided with reality, sending them spiraling out of control. This crisis threatened to bring markets around the world to the brink of collapse.
18. The Bank (2001)
is an Australian thriller/drama film starring David Wenham and Anthony LaPaglia. "I'm like God but with a better suit," declares Centabank CEO, Simon O'Reilly (Anthony LaPaglia) with pride. Welcome to the world of The Bank, ripe with avarice and corruption, where O'Reilly and his ilk can thrive and honest Aussie battlers lose everything. Enter Jim Doyle (David Wenham) a maverick mathematician who has devised a formula to predict the fluctuations of the stock market. When he joins O'Reilly's fold, he must first prove his loyalty to the "greed is good" ethos. Which way will he go? What does he have to hide?
19. Pursuit of Happiness (2006)
is an American biographical drama film based on Chris Gardner's nearly one-year struggle with homelessness. Directed by Gabriele Muccino, the film features Will Smith as Gardner, an on-and-off-homeless salesman. Smith's son Jaden Smith co-stars, making his film debut as Gardner's son, Christopher Jr.Chris Gardner has big dreams for him and his family but it doesn't seem to come together for him. Chris has an opportunity to be a stock broker but first he has to go through a grueling internship which means no pay. Chris decides to do it but when his wife leaves and he is evicted, he has to take care of his son on his own. So they find themselves sometimes living on the street and struggling to get by. But Chris is determined to make it.
20. Capitalism: A Love Story (2009)
is an American documentary film directed, written by and starring Michael Moore. The film centers on the late-2000s financial crisis and the recovery stimulus, while putting forward an indictment of the current economic order in the United States and capitalism in general. Film-maker Michael Moore begins this revealing documentary with the Roman Empire, and the beginning of greed. He takes the viewer to an era of American well-being without any competition from post-war Germany and Japan; prosperity; end of slavery, and the introduction of the Second Bill of Rights by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. But before this inclusion Roosevelt passes away, and the nation spins into anarchy, with indolent, right-winged, self-seeking politicians forming an unhealthy nexus with Corporations, and Wall Street, leaving the vulnerable without employment and health insurance, while putting billions at the disposal of banks and insurance companies - leaving them free to distribute this wealth amongst their executives without any conditions and audits, as well as portraying Barrack Obama as a Socialist. In this regressive era employers exploit their employees by paying them the minimum, but insuring them for large amounts, naming the organization as the beneficiary, demonstrating that they are more valuable after their demise. Middle-classed Katrina & foreclosure-ravaged Americans now must consider adapting to the new Bible (Wall Street Journal) and a new place of worship - Wall Street.
