Indiewire is reporting that Inside Job, Charles Ferguson’s Wall Street expose, and one of the best films of 2010, is already doing well at the box office already, joining the ranks of Waiting for Superman and Catfish as the year’s biggest money makers in the doc category.
Meanwhile, Forbes’ Magazine’s Robert Lenzer wrote a few days back:
Larry Summers. Tim Geithner, Bob Rubin, Hank Paulson, Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke refused to make voluntary appearances in the documentary film on Wall Street’s collapse, which gets my vote for the Oscar documentary. Sadly, documentary film makers don’t have subpoena power. These Masters of the Universe were skewered anyway by a film that is a gripping, must-see narrative of the financial meltdown. Good on Sony Classic for giving the filmmakers total control over their product. The purity of the film’s narrative is impressive.
‘Inside Job’ is a comprehensive , exhausting series of ethical and sometimes illegal actions that casts Wall Street in a very dim light. It is the real thing– not a fictional concoction from Hollywood like  “Wall Street-Money Never Sleeps” –which is more Barnum & Bailey fantasy than a non-fiction-though clearly biased — documentary. I left Lincoln Center last night inspired by the muckraking and furious that no-one has gone to jail. The audience definitely wanted blood and gave the director Charles Ferguson a standing ovation– more than Oliver Stone will ever get for his cinematic mess.
A must-see. And anyway, wouldn’t it be great if this was the film that cracked Oscar’s Best Picture ten? If an animated film can do it, why can’t a documentary?
New Yorker’s David Denby:
The documentary “Inside Job,” written and directed by Charles Ferguson—who made “No End in Sight,” the best of the nonfiction movies about the Iraq war—doesn’t replace any of those works, but it provides the most comprehensive brief narrative of the causes of the crisis (which was set in motion well before that homeowner in Stockton signed a piece of paper). Many documentaries are good at drawing attention to an outrage and stirring up our feelings. Ferguson’s film certainly does this, but his exposition of complex information is also masterly. Indignation is often the most self-deluding of emotions; this movie has the rare gifts of lucid passion and informed rage.
