Becoming Warren Buffett

Director: Peter Kunhardt and Brian Oakes
Year Released: 2017
Rating: 2.0

Pleasant - if generic - rundown of billionaire investor Warren Buffett's life and career, beginning with his early obsession with numbers, his discovery of compound interest and his rather peculiar relationship with first wife Susan, who would later leave him to go to San Francisco and 'set him up' with her friend Astrid, his second wife (this bit of strangeness gets glossed over). There isn't much in this that's particularly revelatory about the man or that couldn't be gleaned from a quick skim of Buffett's Wikipedia page, although the fact that he decides what to order from McDonald's based on market conditions just seems a bit ... um, coy (he tries very hard to seem like an ordinary person when, in fact, he's anything but ... a genius pretending to be a mortal). Any possible criticism of his capitalistic nature is immediately dismissed by the fact that he's pledged to give most of his wealth away upon his passing; understanding his ideas about 'value investing' can be better processed by reading either his writings or (his mentor) Benjamin Graham's The Intelligent Investor. As for me, I'll stick with dumping cash in Vanguard's ETFs and praying Emperor Trump doesn't obliterate the economy with a Tweet.