The Wolf of Wall Street

[El Unicornio, mang]

New Martin Scorsese film. The trailer isn't all that promising but that tends not to matter these days. It's Scorsese so it will have at least a degree of quality that puts it above most other mainstream fare

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iszwuX1AK6A

And hopefully Joanna Lumley will be channeling Patsy Stone.

[mcbpete]

Hmm,  the trailer makes it look like a needless Wall Street remake with some pointless gross-out shite added on top to appeal the idiots of the audience. I hope the trailer is misleading

[Pepotamo1985]

The trailer makes it look like a needless Wall Street remake with some pointless gross-out shite added on top to appeal the idiots of the audience.

This, basically.

[Garam]

Wall St greed seems like a good Scorsese theme, and this is the first modern day New York film he's done since Bringing Out the Dead, so it's nice to see him back on hometurf.


But for the love of god, please make Silence and The Irishman next, and don't let Leo anywhere near either of them. If he jumps from this to that fucking Sinatra biopic next i'm going to give up hope.

[Default to the negative]

I watched this trailer the other day. The Matthew McConaughey bits are pretty bad, aren't they? I doubt it's really a comedy but they do the stoppy-starty LAUGH NOW thing with the music and play those scenes like he's doing a comedic turn of such hilarious magnificence that you'll be rushing to the cinema just to see this side-splitting character. And the monkey too. But I think they must be misrepresenting the film. It can't possibly be that shit.

[El Unicornio, mang]

I don't think it will be shit, Scorsese hasn't made a shit film since Boxcar Bertha in 1972 (and even he admits that one was shit), there is a degree of quality control with Scorsese and Schoonmaker, but then again I don't think he's made a truly amazing film since Casino.

I also agree that he has to make The Irishman, preferably with De Niro (or Day Lewis, or both).

[Ignatius_S]

I don't think it will be shit, Scorsese hasn't made a shit film since Boxcar Bertha in 1972 (and even he admits that one was shit)....

The main problem with that film was that he was working within the confines of the exploitation market, which was at odds with what it achieved. It's nicely shot, has some great performances and the idea is decent - it doesn't fire on all cylinders, but neither is it a bad film.

*edit* I would take it over other Scorsese films.

[Default to the negative]

It looks a bit like Goodfellas in some ways. The bit with Leo talking into the camera, asking "Was all this legal?" looks similiar to Ray Liotta's fourth-wall-breaking monologue in the courtroom.

[Small Man Big Horse]

It looks a bit like Goodfellas in some ways. The bit with Leo talking into the camera, asking "Was all this legal?" looks similiar to Ray Liotta's fourth-wall-breaking monologue in the courtroom.

That's what I thought, which gives me some optimism. I mean even if it is treading over old ground, hopefully it'll be a lot more energetic and stylish than his most recent work (though I haven't seen Hugo yet).

I've only ever seen it once but I loved Bringing Out The Dead, for me it's his last great film, a darkly comic gem that at least explored different ground for a change.

[Pepotamo1985]

It looks a bit like Goodfellas in some ways. The bit with Leo talking into the camera, asking "Was all this legal?" looks similiar to Ray Liotta's fourth-wall-breaking monologue in the courtroom.

Leo seems to be doing an impersonation of Liotta's voice from Goodfellas too.

[Glebe]

*bump*

http://www.totalfilm.com/reviews/cinema/the-wolf-of-wall-street

Nice jubbley!

[vrailaine]

Was really weird that this had such a tight embargo, were they terrified that people would think it was a great big pile of shite?

[Glebe]

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/65486

Several passages in that review make me feel queasy. Is this another sneaking-admiration-for-the-utter cunt-movie?

With so much horror and cruelty in the world, not helped by the greed and ignorance of the wealthy and powerful, do we really need to indulge in these mean, nihilistic dramatic recreations of real arseholes lives? I love Scorsese's films and I'm sure I'll go see it, but I hate the assumption that everyone secretly wants to be an evil little creep. Just because it doesn't paint the guy as a 'hero' doesn't mean it has anything positive to say.

Oh, and this:

http://metro.co.uk/2013/12/17/leonardo-dicaprio-slammed-by-peta-for-monkeying-around-with-wolf-of-wall-street-chimp-4234696/

[Sam]

*bump*

http://www.totalfilm.com/reviews/cinema/the-wolf-of-wall-street

Nice jubbley!

Interesting stuff about the camerawork. Especially, using Prieto who can do gritty (Alejandro Gonzales Innaritu) and beautiful (Brokeback Mountain). That review makes me feel quite excited, but this could still be Goodfellas-lite or another solid but unremarkable bit of coasting like The Departed. I completely agree his last good film was casino, which was every bit as good as Goodfellas.

[El Unicornio, mang]

Really looking forward to this. Don't think Scorsese has ever made a bad film, although I agree that Casino was his last truly great one. This sounds like it is similar in tone to that, very fast paced and playful.

[Bored of Canada]

Really looking forward to this. Don't think Scorsese has ever made a bad film, although I agree that Casino was his last truly great one. This sounds like it is similar in tone to that, very fast paced and playful.

I really hated Gangs of New York, can't think of any others that I've actually hated though. But I'm drawing a real blank on all his filmography right now.
But yeah, he's generally alright to great.

I might end up seeing this. Probably when it comes to Blu-Ray or DVD though.

[El Unicornio, mang]

I wasn't a fan of that either, come to think of it, although I think it's worth it for Daniel Day-Lewis's performance. Found it a bit better when I watched it again more recently, although I thought Diaz and DiCaprio were miscast.

[Bored of Canada]

I wasn't a fan of that either, come to think of it, although I think it's worth it for Daniel Day-Lewis's performance. Found it a bit better when I watched it again more recently, although I thought Diaz and DiCaprio were miscast.

It's a surprisingly undeveloped film. The premise seems very exciting, if not hugely cerebral. Like a stylish vehicle to have lots of conflicting gangs with their own themes fighting. A Victorian-era Warriors, or something. But even Daniel Day Lewis' performance isn't worth it, I don't feel. Nothing really makes much sense. There doesn't feel to be much real tangible story to be gripping onto. It's just a series of barely connected events that are all very broad, but without the right sense of tone or mood to make the broadness all feel right. It's just a really odd movie. A huge misstep in almost every way.

Now I'm looking back through his filmography now. Shutter Island I really didn't like either, but I still feel that was a well executed film, I just remember feeling confused because it was all kind of building towards a 'twist'. But from seeing the mental asylum setting and hearing the premise, I just immediately assumed that the whole '

Spoiler alert

You're actually a patient and you imagined all this.

[close]

thing would inevitably come, and after it happened, I was excitedly waiting for twist to happen, the subversive one that would catch me completely off guard with this obvious red-herring, and change how I perceived the narrative, like a good twist would, and the final act would be brilliant.

Then the credits rolled! It just ended and I was utterly confused. I'm not the arsehole who excitedly tries to pick the twist from the start of a film and spoil it for others, I like things to surprise and wash over me, but for it to end like that, building towards that. I don't know. It was a disappointment. It wouldn't have been that bad if the rest of the film had been particulary interesting, but I really felt the rest of the plot was just in service of building to the actual obvious 'twist', and it relied on that to be good.
Twists are fine for films. I don't hate them, but the films themselves need to be good for the other 80 minutes or whatever.

Fight Club's quite a good film regardless of the twist. Despite quite a lot of the fans of it being terrible and kind of ruining the joy of it, it IS still a good film if you ignore them. And the twist is really nice and it changes certain things, but if you took it out, it'd still be a great film.

If you took out the twist of Shutter Island, or Sixth Sense, I don't think it would be.

Regardless, Shutter Island was a nice looking film. Good work on the DOP. All those world war two scenes were bloody lovely.

EDIT: Ah, sorry. I've just come in here being negative about stuff. These are the exceptions. I think all of his other films are good. Sorry to be so critical. 

[Pepotamo1985]

Ah, sorry. I've just come in here being negative about stuff.

Don't apologise, I think you summed up concisely yet perfectly comprehensively why Gangs of New York is shit.

It does indeed occupy a bizarre, oxymoronic stylistic limbo - it's not well-developed, engaging or serious enough to pass for a drama, it's way too glacial in pace to be classed as an action film, too fictional to pass as a historical record and too unfocused and too unambitious to classify as an epic. Ultimately, it's a snapshot of an imagined history of nothing. The film leaves you constantly scratching your head, trying to work out what the point of it all is.

[Johnny Textface]

Didn't he have to cut a load out of it or something? I remember watching and thinking that the narrative rushed by after about the half way mark.

[Johnny Textface]

I thought Hugo, while expertly made and beautiful to look at, was a load of boring old shit.

[Funcrusher]

I've only ever seen it once but I loved Bringing Out The Dead, for me it's his last great film, a darkly comic gem that at least explored different ground for a change.

I'd say it's minor fare compared to his earlier films but a decent enough film and streets ahead of what followed:

Gangs of New York - shit
The Aviator - incredibly average biopic
The Departed - really, really shit
Shutter Island - also shit
Hugo - haven't bothered

I do think his earlier films are amazing, but he's just totally lost it now, he's unrecognisable as the director who made those films. I don't think he's got the chops anymore to make a decent job of 'Silence' or 'The Irishman'.

[Sam]

The Departed is not 'really, really shit' by any stretch. Not as good as the HK films, not as good as Scorsese's earlier stuff, yes. At worse it's average.

Hugo is rather charming and lovely.

[Funcrusher]

The Departed is not 'really, really shit' by any stretch. Not as good as the HK films, not as good as Scorsese's earlier stuff, yes. At worse it's average.

I stand by my rating. It's fucking awful. Jack Nicholson's just an embarrassment, the whole thing is inept and dull, which given how great 'Infernal Affairs' was is just criminal.

[El Unicornio, mang]

Another thumbs up for The Departed here. The Aviator was a bit average, I thought. Gangs of New York is apparently quite historically accurate (and the sets are apparently very close to how it looked back then), for what it's worth. It's not a shit film, but poor by his standards.

Hugo is lovely and not really anything like any previous films of his. Bringing out the Dead I liked, would have been better if Nicolas fucking Cage wasn't in it though.

[Mister Six]

I thought Hugo, while expertly made and beautiful to look at, was a load of boring old shit.

Except for the Melies flashback, I agree. Well, except for the 'beautiful' bit, but I have a strong aversion to films that  have been orange-and-cyan colour graded out the arse.

[The Duck Man]

I like The Departed, although I could have done without the "ahhhhhhhhhhhh!" shot of a rat at the close. Plus, and I don't whether this is also true of Infernal Affairs, Di Caprio's character makes such absurd mistakes at the end:

Spoiler alert

Don't raise suspicion by racing away when you discover Damon, allowing him to delete your file (although surely this would easily be retrievable - plus Wahlberg could testify). Don't ask Damon to an isolated place to "arrest him" when others can turn up and ultimately shoot you, don't take someone else's word for it that they'll bring your buddy Wahlberg. Send the tape to the press and wait!

Also, shoes cover or no shoe covers, Mark Wahlberg would definitely be caught for Damon's murder. He didn't even wait for him to shut the door.

[close]

[Glebe]

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/65520

Seeing THE WOLF OF WALL STREET at BNAT was an amazing experience, and definitely one of the best movies I've ever seen there.  That crowd felt like it had done some of the many drugs that Jordan Belfort and his friends do during the course of that movie.  I think that some people might have misinterpreted my review when I said that it may be too late for moral outrage at the nefarious deeds of Belfort as he cheats and steals his way to the top, and they might think that Martin Scorsese has lost his sense of moral urgency.  Not a chance.  Scorsese shows us crime that is truly without limits; you think some Italians in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s were bad?  They are NOTHING in comparison to the avarice of these guys who happily wreck our way of life and walk away tossing hundred dollar bills like used tissues.

But Scorsese takes such glee in showing us these white-collar scumbags, and has so much fun telling this story, that it could be mistaken for indifference or even sympathy.  Don't believe that for a second.  Sometimes the best way to rouse people is to make them laugh at it first, and then as it slowly dawns on us that there are people doing this every hour of every day here in America, to slowly get angry.  But anger, Scorsese suggests, is useless.  Unless we do something, THE WOLF OF WALL STREET plays on a loop in the streets and skyscrapers of America, and nothing will change.  This is Scorsese's best film in years, and ranks up there with GOODFELLAS, RAGING BULL, THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST, and MEAN STREETS.

Well alrighty-then!

[vrailaine]

So this is one  of those films that I had absolutely no interest in, then somehow the obscene length has made my expectations shoot up. When's it out in not America?

[Garam]

I'm really looking forward to this. Last Scorsese in cinema i saw was Departed, which I thought was spectacular, while not one of his masterpieces, if that makes sense. I think his last truly great film was GoodFellas but this looks like an up-and-comer.

Departed was great. Nicholson was great. When I saw that I thought it was a 10/10 ignoring all criticisms cause i just enjoyed it so much. You can tell it doesn't mean so much to him personally, but for a for-hire job it's one of the greatest. Better than Casino.