The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

The Wolf of Wall Street (R) - Review

"Through the Eye of the Needle"

The Wolf is the life and times of stock maven Jordan Belfort, a tale of capricious sex, scandalous excess, and constant drug abuse.  Belfort reigned during the Wall Street years of the early 90s, forming a cadre of loyal sales men and nere'do'wells willing to screw anything to make a dollar, all they need is a pennicillin shot every couple of weeks to keep them going.  WOWS is another collaboration between Leonardo DiCaprio as Jordan and helmed by the cinematic genius of the one and only Martin Scorsese.

The raging parties in WOWS would make Caligula blush, and the coke-fueled pace runs full tilt for most of its 3 hour run time.  Leo's Jordan is much more believable than his Gatsby, he uses his money to buy power, friends and women with a kind of fun-loving innocence that is hard to fault.  This is the frenetic fun last third of Goodfellas played out over hour upon hour, never letting up and never showing a wink to the audience.  This is where Wolf may confuse some audiences yet is simply brilliant, for it never need apologize, money is its own excuse.  Jordan NEVER believes he has done anything wrong, never buys into the system of right and wrong on the stock market.  He is surrounded by laughing frat boys of his own employ, most conspicuous of the lot is Jonah Hill's grinning Donny, a best friend with a penchant for trouble making and pill popping.  The movie also never fully delves into the scams and legality of his firm, Jordan assures us into the camera that this is all boring chit chat better left unsaid, he'd rather concentrate on the amounts of money he is making because of it.  Hooked on 'ludes and cocaine, on the rush of the selling floor and the weekly morale parties he lavishly throws, once Jordan hears he is being investigated by the FBI he can't help but foolishly stick his powdered nose right in, leading to an eventual downfall that plays our more like the last angriest hours of a farewell party, the wildest and most dangerous ones.

Don't think Leo and Jonah do it alone, this is an amazingly talented ensemble cast too long to list but each one contributing some essential joke or sentiment that is a construction of huge structurally cinematic magnificence that will be longtime editor Thelma Schoolmaker's masterpiece.  There is no flotsam or unneeded exposition, it's lengthy runtime is somehow needed and exactly scalped.  Scene after scene of beauty/power/emotion zip by at a roaring Lamborghini's pace, so much so that it's easy to overlook the scope and skill of the camera work and editing, but do not blink or you'll miss more than just enough skin to make Hugh Hefner blanch.  The lack of downtime is astonishing, the amount of planning and energy to pull it off astounding, all accomplished by our elder film masters makes it simply incredible. The hilarious frathouse humor is onpar with the best modern comedies and needs to be since it constitutes the majority of the dialogue.  Once things get hairy and wives get as pissed as the Fed, only then does some self control become needed but cannot be attained.  Living in a world of money begging to be taken and coke holidays in Venice, how can one down shift back to NA Beer and vacations to Disney World?  Jordan and his crew cannot back down, they are as hooked on the cash as they are the pills and hookers.  Unfortunately for us Americans, unlike the world of mafia and blue collar crime that Marty usually inhabits, this world of white collar crime certainly does pay and in spades without all the ice picks and hallow points and lengthy jail sentences.

The true genius of Scorsese and Co.'s Wolf of Wall Street is that the criminality of it all is only a few shades from grey.  This is an indictment, pure and simple, of a financial system that allows 90% of what is occurring as legal, of money conjured from nowhere in IPOs and stacks of pennies that fall between the cracks in huge multinational transactions.  It hints the bubbles that burst, the banks that fail, the men that get rich and the families ruined, it shows it all without actually showing it, focusing instead on those grinning bastards that are on the other side of the phone sell sell selling, all through the energetic rose colored lens and unyeilding optimism of one of  the market's greatest champions, Jordan Belfort DWI extraordinaire.  The final shot holds that coke flaked mirror up to us, the audience, a multi-ethnic majority watching from our conference room chairs... observing and accepting the way things are instead of asking why it has to be this way, wishing instead on the magic numbers and looking for our own slice of the pie.

9 Leo's Backside Candles out of 10 (OUTSTANDING)

Hugo (2011)

Hugo (PG)

"Mustache twirling is so out of style"

A PG Martin Scorsese film? Yes, and one of his most beautiful productions he has made. The sets and lighting are incredible (you have my permission to skip the 3d though, Marty uses it to great effect, but I really don't feel it adds anything, it really still feels like a fad). The film touches on alot of things, literature, Paris, nostalgia, magic, wwI, etc. A boy and girl orphans run around a train station in postwar Paris, getting into adventures about the mysteries of a clockwork automaton. At it's core, it's a film about the love of film though. This is where the movie really shines, a swan song to those films that most people never bothered to watch, the heroes from the silent era, the earnest and innovative pioneers who developed the techniques and amusements we enjoy daily. Hugo is not perfect, its a little meandering and a tad long, there's some subplots that seem to go nowhere, the child actors are a bit child-actory (but not enough to bother), and in all honestly nothing much actually happens. Sacha Baron Cohen plays a great sinister slapstick inspector from a bygone era, Kingsley is of course filled with delightful gravitas. I've never seen a film that looks like it, the colors and movements are incredible. I've never read the book it's based on, but the inner film student in me was geeking out, and the irony of Scorsese's most SFX laden film which is itself a film about the magic of film and SFX wasn't lost on me. 

8.5 bushy eyebrows out of 10 (for a kids film, that's pretty damn good) (GREAT)

Shutter Island (2010)

Shutter Island (R)

"Why don't you tell me what really happened"

Great psychological thriller, very Hitchcock-like. If you remove the pretty terrible CGI you could have filmed this in b&w and no one could tell it from a classic thriller. Also, Leo didn't ever annoy me, which is a first. I rate it better than The Aviator, not as good as The Departed. 

7.5 Leos out of 10 (GOOD)

New York Stories (1989)

New York Stories (PG)

"Big Apple Stories"

It's a movie about NY in 3 parts by 3 different directors, so deserve to be reviewed seperately:

Life Lessons - Martin Scorsese directs one of his finest films as Nick Nolte growls and roars as Lionel Dolbey, a larger than life modern artist driving himself and his assistant crazy with his desires and need to express himself on large canvases and piles of oil paint. Look for early cameo work by Buscemi, but the camera is the real star here, zooming, irising, slowing down and isolating to the LOUD rock and roll soundtrack, its the best photography in any of Scorsese's work, and that's saying something. 5/5.

 Life with Zoe - Get the fast forward button ready... Francis Coppola's piece is an indulgent look into a spoiled lifestyle seen through the eyes of an upperclass childhood (written unsurprisingly enough by his daughter, Sofia). Tries to be dream/fairytale like, instead comes across as bratty and privileged. Probably didn't mean to come across as snotty as it does, but its an unfortunate sour note and the main reason the film as a whole isn't as acclaimed as it could have been. 0/5

 Oedipus Wrecks - Woody Allen at his best is a comedy scriptwriter, and the ideas here are very funny. He plays himself, a man under the constant scrutiny and humiliation of his overbearing Jewish mother who disapproves of his every decision. There are several humorous to laugh out loud moments, culminating in a great visual gag that is so absurd that it works, Woody was always a big idea man, and the paranoid fantasy of how far this mother will go to maternally bend him to her intended lifestyle really has a delightful Kafka-esque torture to it, cartoony as it is. 4/5

As a whole film?  7 Leave Zoe at home Francis' out of 10 (GOOD)

After Hours (1985)

After Hours (R)

"8% is a bitch!"

A yuppie in New York working a dead end job gets a promising phone number from a young lady in a diner, setting off a bizarre chain of events in Soho that keeps him up all night amidst a paranoid nightmare in Martin Scorsese's funniest black comedy After Hours.

Featuring an all star cast of character actors, heavily featuring beautiful 80s actresses all playing ding-bat nutjobs like the stunning Rosanna Arquette (whom he'd feature in his masterpiece part of New York Stories a few years later), with lead Griffin Dunne (American Werewolf in London) pinballing between skirts in the early hours of the morning on a desperate chase for poon-nanny and subway-fare home.  The freaks come out at night, as do the paranoid, the psychos and the vigilante neighborhood watches apparently.  The unfortunate chain of events keep getting weirder and darker as the denizens of this New York City burrough stay up later and later.  If you ever wanted to see a Scorsese film featuring a weasle of a protagonist running for his life from a merrily tinkling Ice Cream truck, this is it.  It's light, it's dark, it's funky, it's also a Scorsese flick featuring a weaselly protagonist running for his life from a merrily tinkling Ice Cream truck, so big draws all around.

Meanwhile Scorsese's signature camera moves are turned up to eleven.  The complicated tracking shots, swish pans, push ins and zooms are in mass effect, almost a comedic echo of Hitchcock's nervous noir lens.  Comedy has never been his strong suit, but seeming to learn his lesson from The King of Comedy, the script and visuals sail through the zany lives and oddities on screen with an unconventional abandon and tightly edited.  The whip crash never leaves a dull somber moment, the dialogue's twists and turns veer from wry amusement to laugh out loud absurdity.  It all balances out and works, with its lovely quick pace and short run time, into one of Scorsese's most successful and efficient, yet overlooked, pieces of cinema art.  After Hours is his deepest foray into the surreal yet funny world of his favorite city; woe unto those who stumble into that world of artists, thieves and degenerates.  The Night Owls that stalk those streets don't suffer trespassers lightly.

8.5 Rat Traps, Beehives & Cream Cheese Bagel Paperweights out of 10 (GREAT)

Mean Streets (1973)

Mean Streets (R)

In-our-time-film-master Martin Scorsese once was an barely known filmmaker from NYU.  By his third film, Mean Streets, he had jolted out of the haze of would-be directors and film-artistes with this brash, poignant ode to life and crime in the Italian Burroughs of New York City, a subject which would launch him into pop culture adulation and art-scene worship.

With his rise comes fast ascension of two other stars, Harvey Keitel (Bad Lieutenant) and Robert De Niro (The Godfathers Part 2), both frequent collaborators and pals in the film.  Keitel plays the sinning Catholic Charlie, Martin's stand-in for himself and leading man.  Charlie is conflicted with guilt over his criminal ambitions, love life and religious upbringing.  His friend Johnny-Boy (De Niro) is also dragging him down due to his outrageous behavior and gambling.  It all comes to a head when the loan sharks come calling and Johnny's fiery nature boils over.  It is a gritty, true-feeling memoir of a life uncorrected, of gumbas in your peripheral vision and women in skirts flashing you their legs when you are drunk on a stool on a Thursday night.

Being one of Marty's first films, it is also one of his most personal.  The mob genre, which he later reinvented and became most famous for, is really not the main plot here and barely affects Charlies true feelings (at heart he is a good boy).  However the bad boy, Johnny, actually carries the film.  It is De Niro's energy and wild abandon-to-naturalistic-improvisation that really sparked this low budget drama into recognition.  Without Robert's Johnny this would be a interesting milestone in all their careers, but with it? The desperate need for crime, action, women and honor come to a simmering burst of gritty color all over the angry pavement.

7.5 Young Men, Old Crucifixes out of 10 (GOOD)