Everyone falls asleep during Econ 101. That’s its primary purpose as a core class requisite. Students get to nap off the prior night’s festivities. The dull nature of economics is the reason why so few people supported the idea of charging bankers for their fraudulent activities during the housing crisis. It’s difficult to prosecute someone for larcenous activities only a small percentage of the world understands.

All of these reasons underscore what an amazing triumph The Big Short is. It takes one of the most inscrutable business concepts ever created, the CDO (aka collateralized debt obligation), and it relays the true events of how a few people bet against the most stable economic structure in the world. Men like Michael Burry and Mark Baum invested all their money in an odd gamble against the housing market, and they won. Despite their earning literally hundreds of millions of dollars, none of them walked away from the situation unscathed. The Big Short tells an infuriating story about the mercurial madness of big business, and it does so with an inimitable kind of verve. The fourth wall has never been shattered so entertainingly. Had one more voter turned in their ballot as promised prior to the deadline, it would’ve won the title of Best Picture. Since they didn’t, it lost by four measly points. The voting was that close.

Inside Out was our leader in the clubhouse throughout most of January. If we’d kept our original voting deadline, it would’ve won the Best Picture race by a comfortable margin. Alas, its primary advantage was that most people had already seen it by that point. As voters caught up on the other films this year and word got out that our staff favored four films above all others, Inside Out started to fade a bit in comparison to the projects above. The end result is that it slides to third place by only 11 points, basically a ballot’s difference from first place.





What we love about Inside Out is self-evident. Pixar has crafted another masterpiece about the difficulties of growing up. They first told a version of this story with Toy Story and also explored the themes in other classics such as Monsters, Inc. and Up. With Inside Out, they’ve taken on an entirely new appreciation, taking the audience inside the head of a preteen girl who is emotionally unequipped to handle her cross-country move from snowy Minnesota to sunny San Francisco. It’s a tender, touching tale of tween trauma. More importantly, it’s functionally a girl’s version of Where the Wild Things Are (the book, not the movie). Somehow, Pixar once again finds the perfect balance between children’s entertainment and adult themes. Inside Out narrowly missed becoming their third title to win Best Picture at The Calvins before eventually settling for third place.

The gap in the voting occurs between fourth and fifth place. Spotlight, our fourth selection, was also in the running for Best Picture up until the final two votes. After briefly leading with all but six votes counted, it eventually fell back a bit compared to the three titles above. Still, our staff adored this important procedural about the dangers of covering up heinous behavior, similar to Philomena two years ago. Spotlight is more than just a great movie. It also highlights the importance of investigative journalism in an era when so many people confuse clickbait with headline news.

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