The Global Financial Crisis helped make 2011 one of the best years for films about business.

Ironically, the best was not seen on the big screen but was a launch month feature of Sky’s new premium SoHo channel. 

Too Big to Fail (HBO) was a superb combination of big name Hollywood stars playing real-life characters. In less than two hours, the film races through New York Times journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin’s reconstruction of those few weeks in September-October 2008 when the financial system was brought to its knees.

You know you are on to a winner when some of the key figures – from Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson through Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke to Warren Buffett – are quickly introduced and you immediately say … “Yes, that’s him.”

So all praise to the casting: William Hurt as Paulson, Paul Giamatti as Bernanke, Ed Asner as Buffett, James Woods as Lehman’s boss Richard Fuld, Matthew Modine as Merrill Lynch’s John Thain and Bill Pullman as JP Morgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon are just some. A woman to impress was Sex in the City’s red-haired Cynthia Nixon (as Paulson’s brunette adviser).

Nevertheless, Hollywood largely steered clear of the social effects of the global financial crisis. Nothing matched last year’s Up in the Air, though The Company Men came close. 

Again, the casting was the strongest feature, with Ben Affleck, Tommy Lee Jones, Christopher Cooper and Craig T Nelson as ship-building company executives in a declining business. Kevin Costner was a blue-collar builder with business worries of his own. 

Tom Hanks’ Larry Crowne took the feel-good approach to redundancy and re-training in a no-frills rom-com vehicle with a down-at-heel Julia Roberts.

The little-noticed Cedar Rapids neatly skewered the insurance and motivation industries in a small-town convention setting.

A string of Inception-inspired futuristic thrillers all had business at their centre, none of it flattering. The pick of the bunch was The Adjustment Bureau, with themes of free will versus determinism, and In Time, in which lives are traded as credits.

From the festival circuit, Israel’s The Human Resources Manager stood out as a black comedy about corporate responsibility while French workplace comedies Potiche and Romantics Anonymous were a tonic for grim times.

Out-of-the-box documentaries included Something Ventured (about Silicon Valley pioneers), Page One (behind the scenes at the New York Times), Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer and Freakonomics, a collection of acted-out parables from the popular book.

The best may be yet to come: Margin Call, which is doing for Wall Street what last year’s The Social Network did for Facebook, is due out in March.

The Wall Street Journal picks the year's 10 best films
Joe Morgenstern

1. A Separation Asghar Farhadi's Iranian “world-class masterpiece.” (Shown at the 2011 NZ International Film Festival and scheduled for April 2012 release).

The other nine, in alphabetical order, are:
The Artist Michel Hazanavicius's mostly silent, entirely black-and-white romantic comedy. (NZ release: Feb 9)
Bridesmaids A “heartening” Hollywood comedy hit.
Buck Cindy Meehl's documentary about a middle-age cowboy who gives horse-training clinics. Also shown at NZ International Film Festival this year. (NZ release: Jan 19)
The Descendants Alexander Payne’s “serious comedy, or comic drama, about family, land and a man coming to terms with his life in a contemporary Hawaii.”
Midnight in Paris Woody Allen redux.
Moneyball Smart and funny adaptation of Michael Lewis’ book on the baseball business. (NZ release: Feb 16)
Of Gods and Men French religious drama.
The Tree of Life “A singular, sometimes frustrating mixture of beauty and grandiosity.”
Young Adult “A comedy of depth and edgy distinction.” (NZ release: Jan 26)

Also-rans (*unreleased in NZ): Another Earth,* A Dangerous Method* (Apr 26), Drive, Happy Happy,* Incendies, Jane Eyre, Le Havre,* Like Crazy* (Feb 2), Margin Call,* Melancholia, The Names of Love, Senna, The Skin I Live In* (Mar 15), Shame,* (Feb 23), Super 8, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy* (Jan 19) and Win Win.