“The worldwide rise in house prices is the biggest bubble in history,” The Economist said in a 2005 article. It’s true that plenty of those articles quoted economists and real estate industry representatives arguing there was no bubble and nothing to fear, but there are also clips discussing the possibility it could end with tears.

‘Drive My Car’: In this quiet Japanese masterpiece, a widower travels to Hiroshima to direct an experimental version of Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya.”.

‘Passing’: Set in the 1920s, the movie centers on two African American women, friends from childhood, who can and do present as white.

‘Spencer’: Kristen Stewart stars as an anguished, rebellious Princess Diana in Pablo Larraín’s answer to “The Crown.”.

‘Summer of Soul’: Stevie Wonder, Mahalia Jackson, Mavis Staples and others shine in Questlove’s documentary about the Harlem Cultural Festival.

Scott and Manohla Dargis, selected their favorite movies of the year. When no-money-down home loans were commonplace and home prices were soaring, there was widespread discussion of the possibility that the United States was experiencing a housing bubble. “The Big Short” makes a big deal of its protagonists realizing that there was a giant housing bubble in the middle of the last decade at a time no one else could see it. (Turns out, the best way to explain synthetic collateralized debt obligations involves a blackjack table and the singer Selena Gomez.) But a different, perhaps unintentional, lesson of the movie stands out to me. The movie does an impressive job of conveying arcane financial concepts that are very hard for a general audience to grasp.

Spoiler alert: In the end, the global economy collapses.

It is the strongest film explanation of the global financial crisis. “The Big Short,” the movie version of the Michael Lewis book about a bunch of misfits who foresaw the housing and mortgage bubble a decade ago and profited handsomely from its popping, is to be released widely Wednesday.

The big short characters