Ruthless corporate raider Gordon Gekko returns to the silver screen next week in Oliver Stone's Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. Gekko was introduced in 1987's Wall Street, and his greed-is-good philosophy made the character a cultural icon and cult hero, as well as won Michael Douglas an Academy Award. The questions is, will Gekko hold up in the new millennium? We'll soon find out.

In the meantime, here's a glance at some of the best of Wall Street movies thus far. Are your favorites on the list?

• Pi (1998). A thriller about a paranoid mathematical genius on the run because he might just have discovered a way to accurately predict the behavior of the stock market. A Sundance Festival award winner. See trailer.

The world's most famous rogue trader is about to have his encounter with the criminal justice system. Jerome Kerviel, made famous by transactions he made while a trader at Societe Generale, will go to trial.

He's been charged with forgery, breach of trust and unauthorized computer use. If the French legal system finds him guilty, he could spend up to five years in prison and face a fine of up to €375,000.

Kerviel allegedly made unauthorized trades that cost SocGen more than €5 billion. The losses -- and underlying activity -- came to light in January 2008 as one of the largest trading losses ever to be sustained.

Last week a rogue trader caused the price of oil to spike up to $73.00 per barrel. Last week also we had some bleak news hit the tape. The jobs market got worse with 467,000 jobs lost. Wages are dropping due to shortened work weeks and factory shut downs. Unemployment rose to 9.5%. Consumer confidence also fell.

Now all of this is finally penetrating the minds of investors. The stock market is selling off and now the word has gotten to the oil traders who are selling oil and oil products in the commodities markets. Crude oil for August delivery fell to $63.76 per barrel. Gasoline for August delivery fell 5.83 cents to $1.7325 per gallon and heating oil dropped 6.62 cents to $1.6354 per gallon. Natural gas slid 15.7 cents to $3.158 per 1000 cubic feet.

This post is part of a series on some of the most memorable companies that have disappeared.

I credit Nick Leeson for creating jobs for lots of my friends. Back in 1995, when he single-handedly brought down Barings Bank with currency trading run amok, I had never heard the term "risk management." But I soon started hearing right and left of friends getting highly paid jobs at financial firms in the "risk management" department.

Apparently, after Mr. Leeson lost $1.4 billion dollars in unauthorized trading rendering Barings insolvent, financial institutions around the world decided to put in more rigorous systems of checks and balances that would keep such things from happening. Hence, newly expanded risk management departments.

Founded in 1762, Barings Bank was the oldest merchant bank in London, financed the Napoleonic Wars, and was the Queen of England's own bank.

All the drama on Wall Street these days -- from the credit crunch to the housing slump, everything from runs on the bank to rogue traders -- had the Hollywood Reporter wondering recently why Hollywood isn't cashing in on the fun. Given how well most of the serious Iraq War/War on Terror movies have done lately, perhaps moviemakers will be searching for greener pastures. Heck, Gordon Gekko is scheduled to make a reappearance next year in a Wall Street sequel tentatively called Money Never Sleeps.

Until then, with a little help from the Internet Movie Database, here is a list of some of Hollywood's best takes on Wall Street so far.

• American Psycho (2000). Christian Bale stars as a soulless investment banker with a taste for violence and kinky sex. Based on the bestselling book by Bret Easton Ellis.
• The Bank (2001). This award-winning Australian film is set in a corrupt corporate bank, and like Pi features a maverick mathematician who may have found a way to accurately predict stock market fluctuations. Stars Anthony LaPaglia.
• Barbarians at the Gate (1993). This Emmy-winning made-for-television movie is based on the leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco in the 1980s. James Garner won a Golden Globe for his portrayal of the company's CEO.
• Boiler Room (2000). A college dropout joins a small brokerage house and discovers that his new career isn't all it's cracked up to be. This film has been compared to both Wall Street and Glengarry Glen Ross. Stars Giovanni Ribisi and Ben Affleck.

The New York Times headline blares "French Trader Is Remembered as Mr. Average," and goes on to describe a mid-level employee with nothing in his background to suggest that he would become possibly the biggest rogue trader in the history of the world. The Times reported that:

He failed in a bid for town council in his 20s; he never rose higher than a green belt, a mid-level rank, after years of judo training -- because of his bad knees; and he attended an average college where he earned respectable but unremarkable grades.

It's anticlimactic in a way. We expect crooks and fraudsters to fit a certain image: brash, arrogant, reckless, charismatic. But few people know fraud better than Barry Minkow; in his teens and early 20s he perpetrated the infamous Zzzz Best fraud, spent seven and a half years in prison, and has since helped regulators uncover over a billion in fraud -- and he wouldn't be surprised.

Rogue Trader is based on the story of Nick Leeson, the trader in charge of Barings Bank's Singapore operations in the mid-1990s. Leeson gained infamy after he lost $1.6 billion of the bank's money, forcing England's oldest merchant bank into liquidation. Leeson had been hiding his trading losses from the firm and was eventually sent to prison in Singapore for fraud.

Ewan McGregor turns in a fantastic performance as the terrified, brash gambler, and this is definitely compelling cinema. But for investors and followers of financial malfeasance, it's even more interesting.

Leeson's crimes and the failure of Barings Bank were made possible by extremely poor internal controls -- the same problems that led to the collapse of companies like Enron and Worldcom. In addition, a compensation structure that rewarded Leeson's risky gambling with the bank's money, even though it was illegal, was also a key contributor.