I watched Boiler Room last night and it reminded me of a few other films about sales & greed, falling somewhere between Rogue Trader and Wall St with a hint of American Psycho. I'd say Boiler Room sneaks into the top five:

5. Boiler Room follows a trainee stock broker with a conflicted moral compass as he navigates through the murky waters of a backstreet trading firm. If you've seen Will Smith's character's noble efforts in the same role as a trainee trader in The Pursuit of Happyness (ranked 407 in the Top 1000), just imagine the absolute opposite. These trainees aspire to fast money and fast cars and quote Gordon Gecko word for word while destroying lives with their dubious stock picks.

4. Rogue Trader is based on the true story of Liam Neeson, a broker on the Nikkei index in Singapore who cooked the books to hide the big gambles, eventually resulting in catastrophic losses for his employer Barings Bank. Ewan McGregor gives a very strong and believable performance as Neeson, but the script really doesn't quite seem to live up to the legend. We're also made acutely aware that through the protagonists constant narration between scenes that this is a very one-sided story, so it comes as no surprise that it's based on Neeson's autobiography.

3. Glengarry Glen Ross follows a group of Chicago real-estate salesmen who spend their evenings cold-calling unsuspecting punters and tricking them into investments. By giving the junk property lots that they're flogging grand titles such as The Glengarry Highlands of Florida, they prey on their victims lifestyle aspirations and begin a frantic hard-sell when they pick up on even a modicum of interest. When sales are flagging, Kevin Spacey's office manager finds himself unable to motivate the sales agents, who rudely brush him off with boasts of former glory and complaints at the quality of the leads he gives them. At wits end, he calls in Alec Baldwin's hotshot executive to rip into them, imploring them to "Always Be Closing!" before laying down the gauntlet: a vicious sales contest in which he will fire the worst- performing, and buy the best earner a new car.

2.American Psycho is adaptated from Bret Easton Ellis's satirical novel, where horrific violence serves as a metaphor for the morally vacant world of 80's finance. Christian Bale is Patrick Bateman, one of several vice presidents working in mergers & acquisitions/ "murders and executions" for a large bank. By day a narcissistic Bateman sits in his office obsessing over symbols of wealth and style such as restaurant reservations and designer suits. I particularly enjoyed the oft- referenced business card scene, a particularly telling episode where Bateman panics when exchanging business cards with a colleague, realising that a collegue's card is more upscale than his "..it even has a watermark". At night, Bateman lets off steam from these episodes by brutally slaughtering prostitutes and homeless people in completely surreal episodes, complete with rambling monologues about Whitney Houston and Huey Lewis. At the end of the day, the viewer is left wondering whether or not these episodes are even "real" in the line of the plot, or merely the fantasies that overflow from Batemans's mind.

"it even has a watermark"

1. Wall Street is without a doubt the quintessential film about greed in my opinion, impressive as much for how well it has aged and stayed relevant as for the striking snapshot of 80's yuppie culture that it captures. Charlie Sheen stars as Bud Fox, a young stockbroker with a burning ambition for the top and an obsession with Gordon Gecko, a takeover mogul at the very top of the heap. Michael Douglas delivers a standout performance as the manipulative Gekko, giving Fox all the trappings of wealth that he desires: a fancy apartment, possessions and a girlfriend to match. However, nothing comes without a dear price in Fox's new life soon finds that Gekko has laid more traps for him than he can handle, jeopardising the lives of the people he loves.

"greed is good"

ok well a couple more you should see.. The Spanish Prisoner & Pi
At a tangeant plot-wise, David Manet's sleight-of-hand thriller The Spanish Prisoner tells the tale of John Ross, a Hitchcockian hero working for a large corporation. As the author of a mysterious process for influencing the stock market, Ross' believes he is due great compensation for his work. When this is not forthcoming he finds himself losing faith in his employers, instead placing his trust in some fast friends. The film is crafted as an intricate puzzle and each plot-twist is heightened by the increasingly nervous disposition of the character as his situation becomes more and more desperate.

With parallels in plot to The Spanish Prisoner and an even darker tone, Pi is a gritty, immersive story of a mathmatician who discerns patterns in the stock market using a home-made supercomputer and is subsequently hounded by a wall st trading firm.

and coming soon:
Oliver Stone brings Gekko back amid a backdrop of real-life financial crisis to be unleashed on a new generation this September with the release of Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. This time, Michael Douglas' classic character finds himself out of prison but also out of power in the circles he once wielded control over. Luckily he's in spades with a new young upstart, this time it's his estranged daughter's fiance Jacob (played by Shia LaBeouf). Early reviews of this seem quite positive so I'm really excited to see if they manage to pull off creating a late sequel to a classic and recreating such a notorious villain.

This blog is a counterpart to The Great Movie Experiment, where we're compiling a list of the best movies of all time based on thousands of votes by users. Each vote is a head-to-head pairing of two movies... just click on the best one! As well as being good fun, each vote contributes to the rankings and brings us closer to the perfecting our list of great movies. Try it now!

If you haven't seen The Curious Case of Benjamin Button then I really suggest you do, if not for the wonderful story telling, then maybe for the revolutionary special effects that were created to bring an elderly Brad Pitt to life. Take a look at this clip to see what I mean:

The way we watch movies has taken a massive overhaul in the last few years. No doubt the majority of you have a big fancy plazma screen sitting somewhere in your house. Well, the movie industry is very aware of this; these big fancy TVs have drastically reduced your desire to hit the cinema and for a few years studios have been trembling in their boots to come up with a solution.

It seems that 3D has become the weapon of choice. I'm not talking Pixar and Dreamworks type 3D. There is a new, live action technology out there, most of which has been developed by James Cameron, called the Reality Camera System. It uses the latest HDTV video cameras and not film. Movie studios are now set to ramp up the amount of projects to be utilising it. And, in turn, cinemas installing the hardware to deal with the increase.

Using this technology will give movie goers a unique experience, enticing the public into the cinema hall and away from their pirated movie and/or 52" plasma alternative. Proving an obvious benefit to the studios.

We'll start to see real results of this in the coming years, as there are a myriad of projects in the pipeline, but there are a few big budget 3D movies already in production. James Camerons Avatar (Right) is set to be a blockbuster. Steven Speilbergo and Peter Jackson are colaborating to bring two Tintin movies to the 3D screen and Disney and Pixar are working on Toy Story 3(D). There are also plans to have 3D live sporting events and music concerts showing at cinemas, which I find very exciting.

The big question will be, how much am I going to have to pay for this? Well, at the moment, cinemas are charging for the glasses with the distibutor taking a big cut for providing them. So lets hope once 3D becomes the mainstream that we wont have to fork out more than the extra £5.00 that is currently being asked. I'm already skint after buying a Regular Popcorn.

I noticed while voting in The Great Movie Experiment that when Jurassic Park (currently ranked 3rd in the Top 1000) and The Godfather (ranked 5th) really stand out when they come up due to their distinctive bold black posters. Due to the the visual nature of the voting I wouldn't be surprised if (subconsciously or not) voting will be weighted slightly towards movies with iconic images. In this instance The Godfather is widely held to be one of the greatest movies ever made, but Jurassic park doens't receive the same kind of accolades. The traditional poster-making style means that unlike many other early 90's posters, the Jurassic Park image hasn't aged a bit in the 16 years since release. In fact, the distinctive bespoke typeface is likely much older than that as if I remember correctly, it was adapted from the signage on an old abandoned printmaking shop.

In the "I Can Read Movies" series artist Spacesick re-imagines popular films as well thumbed 60's novelisations. If only they were real!

Every one is so well done that it is hard to pick a favourite. Face Off, Close Encounters and Big all stand out for me as being particularly good, but Back to the Future takes top spot. Which one do you like best? All of these movie are being voted head-to-head on The Great Movie Experiment and Back to the Future is currently sits at 19th on the Top 1000 Movies list.

We've added individual actor/director/producer/writer profile pages for all the movies being voted on in the Great Movie Experiment. This means that you can compare the movies that somebody has appeared in by their relative rank in the Top 1000 movies. For example, Leonardo DiCaprio has 7 Movies in the Top 1000, of which Catch Me if You Can, The Aviator and Gangs of New York currently make up his personal Top 3. At the moment you can find a cast member by accessing the page for a movie and selecting from cast list on the left-hand side. The search box currently returns all movies, and will be upgraded to also search by cast member very soon.

Update 30/03/09: The livesearch box has been upgraded to search for people as well as movies.

Spoiler Alert: If you haven't seen The Sixth Sense yet you may not want to watch the 5 second re-cut.

It reminds me of a Threadless t-shirt - "Spoilt" which gives away the ending of a slew of popular movies in a single glance.

The Great Movie Experiment is all about compiling a list of the best movies based on head-to-head voting. After just two weeks of voting it is my great pleasure to announce that we have reached the marvelous milestone of 50 000 votes! A big thank you to all the early-adopters who have made this feat possible. Our list of the Top 1000 Movies is already starting to take shape. The very early leader as of this moment is Jurassic Park though it is of course changing daily at this point. My first reaction to seeing it up at the top was the realisation that possessing as it does such a striking and enduring poster will be swaying some votes toward it on visual impact alone. Of course there are several near the top that will soon topple it once they catch up on amount of votes, including classics such as Scindlers List and epics from the Lord of the Rings and Star Wars trilogies.