Dumb Money (2023), directed by Craig Gillespie

This is the true story of a challenge to the bully-boy tactics of the big players on Wall Street by small individual investors – known disrespectfully as ‘dumb money’. Small time investment analyst and nerd hobbyist Keith Gill feels the video game chain store Game Stop is undervalued. When a Wall Street hedge fund starts to sell the business short, which will likely destroy it, Keith calls them out and goes viral. He sparks a little-guy rebellion that saves the company from the wolves and shines a light on the broken system that enables the uber-wealthy to get away with monetary murder. The film starts slowly as it wades through a welter of financial details, which can be gobbledegook to those uninitiated in the share market. It attempts to counteract the dull detail with gratuitous sex scenes. Thankfully it gets past both sets of awkwardness to tell a story of how finance Goliaths can be beaten up by Davids, if not totally defeated. Paul Dano carries the film as Keith, ably supported by America Ferrera, Shailene Woodley, Seth Rogan and Pete Davidson. The filmmaker wisely avoids claiming total victory - not all the small investors made their fortunes and the fattest cats avoided any punishment more than embarrassment. But the film celebrates a small win against a corrupt and broken system that is behind many of the world’s ills.