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Chris Knipp
12-25-2013, 05:37 PM
Martin Scorsese: THE WOLF OF WALL STREET (2013)

http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/5134/8tqd.jpg
JONAH HILL AND LEONARDO DICAPRIO IN THE WOLF OF WALL STREET

Nothing exceeds like excess

Surely a sense of timeliness can't have led Martin Scorsese to film the story of Jordon Belfort, the junk stock czar whose multi-million dealing got him minor jail time and brought down his company. The tale of high energy Wall Street bottom feeders might better fit the beginning of the new millennium, when in fact a sharp little picture called Boiler Room directed by Ben Younger with Ben Affleck the star and Vin Diesel and Giovanni Ribisi in good dramatic roles told this story with breathless accuracy and style and a real ability to describe the machinations and tensions involved. For the bigger financial disaster of recent years the timely film was J.C. Chandor's Margin Call. Chandor delivered the Wall Street collapse story with an elegance that should put Scorsese to shame. The older director instead seems swelled-headed and over-budgeted this time, lacking the discipline to deliver a precisely edited and will-paced narrative, without the sense of proportion to know Jordon Belfort's voiceover narrative is no Scarface epic, nor Goodfellas either. Above all this movie is a saga of failed and uneven tone and bad taste. Is it funny ha ha or funny disgusting and weird? Nobody seems to know, and you can't make a good movie, whatever your clout and prestige level, without a secure sense of tone. Scorsese delivers lots of oohs and ahs and yucks, but it doesn't hang together, and the empty spaces flowed out into an excessive three hours. You need three hours for an epic, or a passionate exploration. This is neither. There's an hour too much.

At the end all that's clear is that The Wolf of Wall Street is made up of outrageous set pieces and sick laughs more than moralizing and seeks to sustain an unsustainable mood of hysteria and doped-up excess. We are led to revel in the bronze blonde babes, thrown dwarfs, pet chimp, public fucking, coke-snorting off every body part, vintage Quaaludes, smashed Ferrari, wife exposing her crotch and talking dirty to a home surveillance camera; the protagonist on his yacht trying to bribe FBI men, the (strategically denied) homophobia, yacht sunk in a terrible storm off the Italian coast, FBI closing in for arrests. Now and again DiCaprio delivers one hell of a pumped-up pep-talk. But falling into a common flaw of biopics, Scorsese blows up his protagonist disproportionately and fails to show how his adrenalin trickled down to his company of salesmen. Also as with the genre, the picture is most memorable and illustrative in its early sequences that show how Belfort lost his stockbroker job in the big 1987 stock market crash and then discovered a legally dubious suburban "pink sheet" penny stock boiler room with 50% profits and became a star there and soon started his own. This is not pomposity but process, and it's interesting. The rest is slow and repetitious and obvious. For kitsch lifestyle excess this year Soderbergh's HBO Liberace film Behind the Candelabra is more precise and more historical.

This isn't really a biopic at all, of course: it just seems as drawn out as one. Really Belfort's story only covers a decade or so. For all this the source is Jordan Belfort's own published memoir, as adapted by "Sopranos" writer Terrence Winter -- who turns the story into a series of inflated TV episodes that confuse Wall Street crooks with gangsters. Okay, there may not be that much difference, but the Devil is in the details, and the details are what make a good movie.

This movie makes one ask: were Scorsese and DiCaprio really ever so good together? They seem to have egged each other on to more and more excesses of grandiosity, to each other's flashiest, but not best, work. Scorsese has long been a burnout, and DiCaprio, once a marvelous actor, is looking like one here too: a bronzed, glowing degenerate -- at 39. What DiCaprio gets to do in The Wolf of Wall Street is, in its way, fabulous. This is an actor ready for any challenge. He delivers high energy salesmanship so contagious and testosterone/adrenalin-rich as the coked-up, Quaaluded-up, boozed-up Belfort it may make you want to give him your life savings, or join his team. But is this acting -- or coaching? (Belfort becomes a motivational speaker -- a life coach.) The level of hysteria, alternating with intoxication, reaches its zenith with DiCaprio as Belfort pitching to his giant roomfuls of salespeople, and its nadir when he crawls out of a posh club after he's OD'd on vintage 'Ludes, looking like a human turned into a large worm.

These are memorable moments. But lots of other films that tell better, more interesting stories have such moments too. DiCaprio can't carry over the hyped-up salesmanship into his personal scenes with Jonah Hill as his closest associate or Margot Robbie as his high-life wife Naomi. He lacks the recognizable tone and aura, the sweetness he had even in Baz Luhrmann's overblown Gatsby. This dialogue is crap when you compare it to the silver-toned venom DiCaprio delivered so suavely in Django Unchained. Chalk it up to his loyalty to "Marty," who gives his witty pal Fran Lebowitz a moment as a judge here - a wink-wink, but not her finest hour either.

In this superficially impressive but ultimately disappointing movie there are several vivid performances besides DiCaprio's, Rob Reiner as Belfort's father Max; Kyle Chandler as the appealing, real FBI agent out to get Belfort; Jean Dujardin as a genteelly crooked Swiss banker; many others are good. We might have done without Matthew McConaughey's starved AIDS-ravaged Dallas Buyers Club look as Belfort's original mentor, Mark Hanna, but of course he is good, and the scene of the two men is memorable and repellant. But so are all the scenes, and we get the point about two hours before they're all done. Where is Scorsese's perspective?

The Wolf of Wall Street, 179 mins., opened in the US, France, and other countries 25 Dec., 2013; in the UK 17 January 2014.

Johann
12-27-2013, 09:21 AM
I saw this Christmas day and I think it's quite awesome.

This is misogynistic (quite on purpose), it's in-your-face, and it showcases some ripe nastiness that exists to this day.
"Characters" like Jordan Belfort are among us right now.
Katherine Monk gave a great (4 stars) review of this, and she said it way better than I could:

Few people can make the descent into debauchery as much fun as Scorsese.
Some get waylaid by morality along the way and lose their nerve, but not Marty.
He slices thick, juicy slabs of Sin into this cinematic sandwich and that grease oozes perfectly from the golden brown sides.
There's no question it's gross. But that is why The Wolf of Wall Street's howl proves so haunting: It snaps a selfie of society with Soul Juice trickling down our triple chin.

Amen Katherine.
I also like that you pointed out that Belfort is such an interesting villain because he was Real, but that real people don't function like movie characters. So true. As you said, real peeps procrastinate and avoid conflict. Is Scorsese's direction "smooth rubbernecking", tho?
Maybe it is.
And it's sexist and depraved too. You hit all the bases, Katherine. that's what I look for in reviews.

Chris, I don't think Scorsese was ever a burnout. His films may not be what people expect of him, but I don't care.
He's doing what he feels. And frankly, he's earned the right to do that. I think Woody Allen deserves way more criticism for his later films than Scorsese. DiCaprio is allowed to really play here. This is one film that will wag the tongues.
I loved it.

Chris Knipp
12-27-2013, 12:24 PM
Katherine Monk sounds like you. Are you sure she's not your creation? :-)

Really not getting "waylaid by morality" and losing their "nerve" is not much of an achievement. If that's your thing, go see ONLY GOD FORGIVES. It leads on a path to trash. I was disappointed by AMERICAN HUSTLE -- I'd expected more fun and more cleverness -- but it does look much better after seeing Scorsese's WOLF. And in fact it has much better reviews. I don't know why AUGUST, OSAGE COUNTRY, which I just saw, did so poorly with critics (if Metacritic is to be believed) than these others (well, not ONLY GOD FORGIVES -- that hit bottom critically). But all of these Christmas week releases have been a disappointment, these, and INVISIBLE WOMAN, HER, all I've seen. I have not seen GRUDGE MATCH or LONE SURVIVOR or 47 RONIN or JUSTIN BIEBER'S BELIEVE so who knows? But I think the great end of year releases have been:

ALL IS LOST
NEBRASKA
INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS (even though I don't like it)
and
THE SELFISH GIANT

Is TV smarter than movies now? Watching Aaron Sorkin's THE NEWSROOM in my spare time. Do any of these require the IQ level that assumes?

Flashy acting and expensive mise-en-scene do not make a great film, in themselves. More is needed.

Johann
12-27-2013, 12:27 PM
It would be great if she was my creation. She gets paid.
Maybe she stole my mojo...:)

www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/movie-guide/Movie+review+Wolf+Wall+Street+with+trailer/9319519/story.html

Johann
12-27-2013, 12:52 PM
I have not seen JUSTIN BIEBER'S BELIEVE. More is needed.

I thought I'd quote you directly.
Did you just type those words? You funny guy, you!

Johann
12-27-2013, 12:59 PM
Actually, now that I think about it, Justin Bieber has A LOT in common with Jordan Belfort.
A LOT IN COMMON.

Johann
12-27-2013, 01:05 PM
Here's an interesting link:

www.slate.com/blogs/business_insider/2013/12/25/_the_wolf_of_wall_street_reviewed_by_bankers.html

Chris Knipp
12-27-2013, 06:46 PM
As that SLATE article you just linked to about watching TWOWS with a bunch of young stock salesmen shows, the culture of young Wall Street brokers is a boozy, druggy, heedless and morally empty one that would cheer at Jordan Belfort's worst excesses and law-flouting. It is a culture of idiocy, immorality, and greed and Scorsese has no perspective on it in this film. The Wall Street Journal's Joe Mordenstern (http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303290904579278012548994926)agrees with me in finding this movie unrewarding. "'The Wolf of Wall Street' demands a huge investment of time for a paltry return," Morgenstern concludes. Being an asshole and an addict is fun, for the addict and asshole, for a while, till he crashes and it isn't fun any more and a lot of people have been hurt in his wake and caught in the crossfire. Scorsese needs to make a grown-up movie.

I liked Scorsese's short doc on Fran Lebowitz. I do not judge her and he gave her good play. She is a wickedly funny and smart lady. Her ultra-brief turn in WOLF as a judge is unimpressive.

Scorsese's staging of Belfort's excesses is consistently impressive and fluent.

Jonah Hill is funny too. And of course DiCaprio, who throws himself into the role 200%, does a fine job. But was it worth it? I wish DiCaprio would turn to less bombastic and glitzy stuff like he did when he was young.

There was a big batch of words between "I have not seen JUSTIN BIEBER'S BELIEVE" and "more is needed"! No Metacritic score for BELIEVE yet but the Boston Globe's is quoted:
Where Bieber’s first concert documentary, 2011’s “Justin Bieber: Never Say Never,” chronicled his rise to fame, his new one is damage control. He needs that and more with me since he has lost his slim margin of cred (the first doc showed he had real musical talent as a tike) when he began performing with his shirt off and his jeans way down below his skivvies. Likewise my fondness for One Direction is fading since their flimsy songs have not developed in depth or musicality in two years and they now sport a plethora of unattractive tattoos on their arms that just look like random graffitti.

Remember that as bad as some of the current releases are, they're probably better than the January ones. I noticed today before AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY, the trailers shown were all for Valentin'e day releases. Made it look like January's don't even get trailers.

Johann
12-28-2013, 09:59 AM
There was a big batch of words between "I have not seen JUSTIN BIEBER'S BELIEVE" and "more is needed"! .

Yes indeed. :)
Just keeping things fresh and tasty. Fresh and Tasty....

I think Scorsese might be relying on the audience to find out who the real Jordan Belfort is, who is still a cretin in my book, despite doing "motivational" speeches.
That's what's truly horrifying about it: this guy has many peers, who are nothing but debauched and soulless bean counters.
That link I added drove that home.
Hell will be chock full 'O those Wall Street urchins.
CHOCK FULL.

Remember the stock exchange scene in The Dark Knight Rises?
Broker: "This is the stock exchange! There is no money here!"
Bane: "Then why are you people here?"

Pure Truth. Bane is the Badass of badasses.

Johann
02-24-2014, 09:17 AM
Do you think Leonardo DiCaprio will win the Oscar Chris?