Evengyny Thanks for the memories!

Marketic It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

MamaGravity good back-story, and good acting

Bergorks If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

SnoopyStyle In 2001, the massive Enron company goes bankrupt leading to a criminal scandal. Kenneth Lay founded the company in 1985 amidst Texas deregulation implemented by the Bushes. There are questionable schemes. There are massive gambling that led to hidden losses. Jeffrey Skilling uses murky accounting practices to pump up the numbers. Executive Lou Pai uses company money for his stripper habit and leaves with $250 million. They game California's deregulated electricity market with some disgusting comments. CFO Andrew Fastow deliberately hides the increasing debt with shell companies. It all collapses in a massive loss. This is in-depth and shows the ugliness of greed. I wouldn't even call it corruption since that seems to be what they intend to do. It is almost inevitable. It is in reality a criminal organization. Whatever small amount of high-minded capitalist ideals of deregulation is quickly lost with the need and greed for money.

morrison-dylan-fan 2010:Whilst I had read the odd piece or two,I did not pay much attention to in-depth investigative journalism.Arriving home one night,I decided to take a look at what was being shown on TV,and I found that the BBC were just about to show a documentary on a company called Enron.With having not heard about Enron before,I expected the doc to be a light- hearted affair which would show the day to day workings of the company.Catching me completely by surprise,the documentary detailed Enron's corrupt dealings piece by piece,with an excellent clarity. 2015:As I approached my 800th review,I decided that it was the perfect time to once again watch what has now become my favourite documentary,and 8th favourite film of all time,as I got set to ask Enron,"Why?"Outline of the documentary:Growing up in a poor house hold ,Ken "Kenny Boy" Lay had dreams of entering the business world.Lobbying in the '80s for the de- regulation of natural gases,Lay takes advantage of the situation,by starting a company called Enron.Two years into Enron's existence,two traders are discovered gambling all of Enron's cash on the oil market.Spotting the loss of millions just in time,Enron is able to keep the losses undercover.Instead of sacking the two traders,Lay tells them to "keep making us millions",which would lead to Enron becoming the seventh biggest company in the US,and eventually lead to Enron (and accountancy firm Arthur Andersen) being the (then) largest corporate bankruptcy in American history,and also the biggest audit failure.View on the film:Covering Enron from Ken Lay's lobbying days in Washington to Enron hitting the previously hidden iceberg in under 2 hours,director Alex Gibney's adaptation of the Bethany McLean & Peter Elkind book The Smartest Guys in the Room - The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron,displays a remarkable precision in placing every piece of the Enron scandal on a table which allows the viewer to approach the subject in an accessible manner.Keeping away from turning the title into a dry lecture, Gibney smartly decides to stay behind the camera and allow for former associates of Enron to do the talking in fascinating interviews,with Gibney and editor Alison Ellwood brilliantly inter-cutting archive footage and a pitch-perfect soundtrack to emphasis some of the most openly corrupt moments in Enron's history.Linking up the time-line of Enron's ("Enron will never fail") collapse, Peter Coyote delivers a wonderful narration,which gives a real gravitas to proceedings.Giving the film a stylish sheen, Gibney closely works with Maryse Alberti to make glass (which is not related to a Philip Glass track being on the soundtrack!) a subtle motif for the film,as Gibney's reflecting glass shows that before the ongoing world-wide financial crisis led to the "too big to fail" banks smashing into a previously hidden iceberg,there was Enron.

SnakesOnAnAfricanPlain This is the story of Enron, a legacy that unraveled so fast, that at the the time, I had no idea what was going on. The film manages to describe, in some detail, all the shady goings on. We are given an in depth look at corruption, greed and absent morals. Money is lost, money is embezzled and it soon becomes so complex that your head might explode. Luckily, the subject matter is so engaging and riveting that you can't look away. Some of those responsible for the mess do come across as tragic characters that have lost their way. A brilliant piece of work that may be one sided, but surely there's only one side to be on.

tieman64 William Muir, an animal breeder at Purdue University, once conducted an experiment in which hens were selected for egg productivity using two different selection methods. The first method involved selecting the most productive hens from different cages to breed the next generation of hens, whilst the second method involved selecting the most productive cages and using all the hens within those cages for breeding.At first glance it may seem as though the first method should prove more efficient. After all, eggs are produced by individual hens, so why not directly select the best? Why select at the group level, when even the best groups may have some individual duds? The results, though, told a completely different story. The first method caused egg productivity to sharply decline, even though the most productive hens were chosen each at every generation. The second method, in contrast, caused egg productivity to increase 160 percent in six generations, an astonishing response as artificial selection experiments go.What happened? In short, the first method favoured the nastiest hens who achieved their productivity by suppressing the productivity of other hens. After six generations, Muir had produced a nation of psychopath chickens, who plucked and murdered each other with their greedy, incessant attacks. In other words, traits that are "for the good of the group" are not always locally advantageous within the group and require a process of group-level selection to evolve.It's the same story in "Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room", a documentary about a nest of continuously promoted corporate psychopaths who fiscally rape shareholders and competitors, before their hatchery completely self-destructs. Unfortunately, like most of these stories, "The Smartest Guys In The Room" never pushes beyond CEOs, managers and complicit middle men (though they are deservedly attacked) to point fingers at what are really systemic problems.In a book titled "Systemantics", John Gall describes the nature of systems, and how they often eventually become living, breathing entities. Not only do they develop a sort of collective consciousness (or intelligence network), but they also develop the desire for growth, and mechanisms of self-preservation. Of course a system can take many forms (a country, an organisation, a religion etc), but in each case they house similar methods of self-preservation. In the case of a country, Patriotism is the mechanism of self-preservation. In an organisation, it is allegiance to a cause. In a religion, it is faith. In all cases, the adherents are bound within a collective organisational consciousness.Eventually the ego-like qualities of this organisational consciousness cause each system to lust for even greater power. Greater power in turn requires more personnel, which requires even larger budgets, which in turn leads to a never ending spiral of growth. To justify this growth, these systems have no choice but to abandon the original purpose for which they were created. Thus, a moderate original goal must be replaced with a lofty objective embalmed in complex terminology that is designed to sound virtuous (in Enron's case, betting on off shore oil to keep shareholders happy). The elimination of evil, anarchy, crime, and war are just some buzzwords used to cover a drive for acquiring or maintaining power. In all cases, the objective requires growth.This documentary damns Enron, but government bureaucracies play Enron's game as well. In the case of countries (today, of the largest 100 economies on the planet, 51 are corporations and not countries), the lack of profits which would keep a private company in check does not serve as a restriction for a system that can extract taxes as needed from a captive regional or global population. Even if commercial activity declines as a result of excessive taxation, the tax supported systems continue to grow (and often currencies are then expanded worldwide in a global competition of debasement). And as taxes increase, so too must patriotism by a corresponding amount to avoid insurrection. In some cases, the practical justification for a tax supported system disappears all together, leaving behind nothing but the naked lust for power. With its own language, its own culture, and its own survival mechanisms, the system then feels that complete domination is the only objective worthy of its inflated sense of Self. End result: the world falls under the control of tax supported psycho chickens who have the strength, and the motive, to rob almost every person on the planet...until they don't, and we laugh at them with documentaries like this.8/10 - Worth one viewing.