The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese)

[Boner M]

[wigwam]

:|

[Pop Trash]

It was incredibly awkward watching this in a packed theater between my parents (my dad hated this and can't stand Scorsese in general) and some Parents of the Year who brought their two boys no older than 9 in tow. More thoughts later but I'm afraid the situation clouded my enjoyment of it all.

[Pop Trash]

Also this is sadly inevitable:

http://www.businessinsider.com/banke...street-2013-12

[Boner M]

I'd be praying for sudden death every minute if I saw this w/ my parents.

[Pop Trash]

I'd be praying for sudden death every minute if I saw this w/ my parents.

Honestly sitting next to two kids who couldn't have been older than 9 with their guffawing Juggalo looking dad was way more soul crushing.

[ledfloyd]

Inre: that article. Does the film need to tell us what Belfort is doing is wrong? Is it irresponsible for Scorsese to assume we understand this?

May go see this tomorrow, more likely it'll be over the weekend.

[Pop Trash]

Inre: that article. Does the film need to tell us what Belfort is doing is wrong? Is it irresponsible for Scorsese to assume we understand this?

May go see this tomorrow, more likely it'll be over the weekend.

I think the film is pretty intoxicating in depicting this lifestyle as a gas-gas-gas. I'm not sure Scorsese is being "irresponsible" exactly but his (with a huge assist from Schoonmaker's brilliant editing) directing is good enough to confuse this with propaganda at least by certain viewing parties. I can easily see this sitting on a typical dudebroz shelf along with DVDs of Scarface and Fight Club as films with satirical elements buried under the alluring style of the protagonist's follies. AO Scott's NYT review is right on about this.

[Winston*]

The guy is introduced throwing a dwarf at a bulls-eye. I think the film's pretty damn clear we're not supposed to side with him.

Anyway pretty good stuff. Like an It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia version of Goodfellas.

[Watashi]

I have no idea why they released this on Christmas.

[Boner M]

I have no idea why they released this on Christmas.

The thriving 'drunks & angry loners' demographic.

[plain]

Okay, so this was obviously pretty great. Manic, ridiculous, and easily the funniest movie of the year. Essentially Goodfellas 2.0, but way more raucous and over-the-top. The opening 80 minutes are the best, the rest is Marty being ballsy and not giving one fuck. Sure, it's uneven, but I'm okay with the film's length and repetitive structure. The best Leo-Marty collaboration. Can't wait to see it again.

[number8]

Man, this was fucking exhilarating. I wanted it to go on for another 3 hours, it was so good.

I love that the guy introducing him at the New Zealand conference at the end as "the baddest motherfucker I ever met" was the real Jordan Belfort, basically talking about himself. Come to think of it, I wish the last scene of the movie was him selling the rights of his book to Paramount and breaking the fourth wall again telling the audience that he can sell anything to schmucks like us, even making us think that a depraved self-centered asshole like him is an interesting protagonist. But maybe that'd be too gimmicky.

Essentially Goodfellas 2.0, but way more raucous and over-the-top.

I think a lot of people are saying this because of how similar all the beats are, but I really think this should be considered a sequel to it. It kinda adds a lot more to the morality of it if you see it after Goodfellas, in order to compare how these two greedy capitalistic figures with essentially the same personality and characteristics end up being so different in their circumstances simply because they choose different crimes to commit.

[number8]

Well this is awkward. I tweeted about this movie and now Steve Madden's wife is following me on twitter.

[eternity]

When it's good, it's next-level, but there are times when the movie slows down to the speed limit.

[Sxottlan]

Maybe the funniest film I've seen this year. The delayed quaalude trip was a stitch. Some sequences just fly. Other times you feel the three hour running time, which leads to some unevenness.

And perhaps the bravest performance DiCaprio has ever given.

[

Show Spoiler

candle in the ass.

]

[eternity]

I have no idea why they released this on Christmas.

It's a film about excess and greed. Isn't that exactly what Christmas is all about?

[dreamdead]

Echoing others, this is great for about the first two hours, but after the boat sinks, it starts to dawdle until the end--becoming more conventional, less direct address, and lacking the sort of excess that best allows the film to openly indict the lifestyle it reveals. The stuff with wife 2 is where I find the film most intriguing-especially when she's challenging him and trying to have control over him, as in the "no panties" scene or during their final sex scene.

I quite like the final lines of the film.

[Ezee E]

How Leo DiCaprio pulls off this role without being "over the top" is amazing, and also remaining charismatic despite all these horrible things he's doing. What a performance.

Yeah, no surprise that I love a Scorsese movie, but I'm glad everyone else is doing the same.

[Ezee E]

I'm really confused by the arguments on the web about this movie. It seems to be going, if you like the movie, you endorse the behavior? What the hell?

[Barty]

Yeah, the best movie of the year. I love Leo, and all his performances are usually fantastic, but this really was next level. Doubt he will win the oscar, but he should.

[Henry Gale]

This really is almost unbelievably excellent. Not sure I've ever been more impressed by DiCaprio, his physical comedy in this alone is more insanely accomplished and elating than anything most actors could ever hope to do onscreen, and then there's still everything else to his performance.

I really find it hard to think of a bad thing to say about it. My only reservation, which really isn't even a negative, might be how Scorsese almost overindulges in some long-winded improv riffing for a beat or two too long here and there. Not that any of it is unfunny, but it almost makes it seem like Apatow was brought in to visit Schoonmaker for a few days to help make sense of endless unscripted nuggets since it's something he's likely never had to deal with before.

Then there's the issue that always seems to pop up with this sort of material (as with anything that depicts criminal activity in ways that lets the audience understand the inherent appeal of it for the characters) that others may misinterpret or love it in ways that essentially side with the events in it, but I completely resent the idea of that being a fault of the film since I don't know how they could make Belfort any more indisputably awful, particularly towards the end. Just because Belfort and Azoff (who didn't even really exist) are made to be the core of the moral compass of everything that unfolds in this, that doesn't mean Scorsese is sitting in the backseat for its debauchery, letting it steer what it ultimately amounts to thematically. His direction is firmly at the helm of this every step of the way, his voice silently whispering through the subtext of every scene, informing every performance and tonal cue, and a lot of might be among the best work he's ever done (but I don't want to be more hyperbolic than that since it is less than a day old in my mind). If the movie is a mirror of sorts, then I don't think it's a skewed funhouse mirror like Spring Breakers or Pain & Gain might be, and whatever you see is more a reflection of your own wiring than the story. But I'm saying this as if the people who feel jealous by the film's events might ever realize that they're screwed up in that way, or even care.

[Izzy Black]

This was a riot of course, but it does get a bit repetitive.

I'm not sure it offers too much new in the way of this new cinema of excess either, but it's savagely entertaining.

The women were ciphers, but we all know that's not Scorsese's thing. I'm not sure it's too probing as a psychological portrait either since we don't see much reckoning with his victims. Sure, the idea might be that he doesn't reckon with his victims, but I'm not convinced, for instance, that Belfort never encountered situations where he had to confront his victims. Even if he rationalizes them into non-existence, the film strikes me as less interesting if it merely supplants his fantasy on the screen rather than showing how he constructs this fantasy himself.

But in any case, quibbles aside, Scorsese's handling of the excess sequences here are masterful, and the Quaalude sequences are some of the best stuff he's ever done. DiCaprio in a career best performance, although he was also fabulous in Django Unchained.

[Dukefrukem]

Apparently this movie used the F word 506 times, the most out of any Hollywood film.

http://variety.com/2014/film/news/wo...rd-1201022655/

[Ezee E]

Apparently this movie used the F word 506 times, the most out of any Hollywood film.

http://variety.com/2014/film/news/wo...rd-1201022655/

I thought about that. Kind of surprised that record has stood since 1999.