The first is The Jewel, an Italian movie based on the 2003 $20 billion Parmalat bankruptcy, still apparently Europe’s biggest bankruptcy.

The second in Capital, a French movie by Costa-Gavras, loosely based on the shenanigans leading up to the 2008 financial crisis.

Capital is the more moralizing of the two, and also has a major plot hole, and an idiotic love angle involving a supermodel, that is just plain idiotic.  The Jewel is more ruminative, and the love affair less ridiculous.  Neither teaches much about the economics of the whole phenomenon.  The Jewel at least plausibly suggests that those responsible had a variety of motives, from pure greed to over-zealous commitment to the company’s survival, as an end in and of itself, regardless of cost.  Still they kept my attention, and were much better than the Richard Gere film Arbitrage which was truly awful.