Burry spends his days studying mortgage bonds, which bundle thousands of home loans together so investors can share the repayments. He discovers that many of those loans went to people who could never realistically repay them. So why has nobody noticed? Vennett explains: “Wall Street loves to use confusing terms to make you think only they can do what they do.” Those terms are jargon, the special language of a job that outsiders can’t follow. The word is usually critical, and it is uncountable: “a lot of jargon”, never “jargons”. Used in real life: “The contract was full of legal jargon.”

Then he says, “So here’s Margot Robbie in a bubble bath to explain.” Playing herself, the actress explains that the banks ran out of safe home loans for their bonds and filled them with risky ones, called “subprime”. Then she tells you, in one rude word, what “subprime” really means. She is putting it in plain English. This is the moment to listen for. “In plain English” means simple, everyday words, without technical terms. To ask for it politely, say, “Could you put that in plain English?” Said sharply, “In plain English, please!” sounds impatient. Used in real life: “In plain English, we’re losing money.”

Burry, meanwhile, buys a kind of insurance on these bonds from the big banks: a credit default swap. He pays them every month, and if the bonds fail, they pay him many times more. In effect, he is betting the loans will fail, and the banks happily agree. Vennett hears about the bet and takes it to Baum’s team, where he builds a tower of wooden blocks: the top layers are the safest part of a bond, and the bottom layers take the losses first. He is breaking it down, explaining something complicated one piece at a time. Used in real life: “Sorry, I’m lost. Could you break it down for me?”

Baum suspects Vennett’s motives, so he flies his team to Florida to see for himself. They find streets of empty houses, brokers who boast about lending to people with no income, and a dancer who says, “I have five houses and a condo”, meaning a flat. If you were Baum, you might sum it up like this: “In a nutshell, these loans will never be paid back.” It introduces a very short summary, and can also close one: “That’s it in a nutshell.” Used in real life: “In a nutshell, we’re over budget and late.”

By 2007, more people are failing to pay, yet the bonds’ value strangely refuses to fall, so Burry’s bet pays nothing while he keeps paying the banks. When one of his investors confronts him, Burry insists, “I may have been early, but I’m not wrong!” If you were Burry, you’d say, “Bear with me.” It means “Please be patient a little longer”, and you’ll often hear it while someone looks for something. The usual reply is “Take your time.” Used in real life: “Bear with me — I’m just finding the file.”

The words reviewers reach for are the three bonus words above. Empire singled out the rage of Baum and the people who work for him. Script Magazine noted how quickly the film throws you into a head-spinning lesson on how home loans were packaged together. And ScreenCrush thought the humour faded in the last minutes, when the film starts to lecture its audience.