America loves a con man.
Saw The Wolf of Wall Street last Friday night (27 December); that's the new movie from director Martin Scorsese and writer Terence Winter (one of the main writers on The Sopranos and the creator, head writer and show runner for another HBO series, Boardwalk Empire), based on the eponymous memoir of convicted financial criminal Jordan Belfort, who was encouraged to write his story by Tommy Chong -- half of Cheech & Chong -- whom he met in prison.
The Wolf of Wall Street is a near-great movie, arguably Scorsese's best film since Gangs of New York (I wasn't much of a fan of The Departed when I first saw it in the theatre, but I've softened somewhat -- possibly in the head -- after viewing it a second time on DVD). It's terribly enjoyable: at once an homage to the barrier-breaking Hollywood movies of the then-young Turk directors (of which Scorsese himself was one, lest we forget) in the 1970s, it also suggests a Scorsese version of a Quentin Tarantino movie (or, at minimum, Scorsese's response to Tarantino's oeuvre); but behind the wild excesses of misbehavior on screen, it's an acerbic, bilious, pitch-dark meditation on the downside of capitalism in general and the financial industry in particular. (It's telling that Leonardo DiCaprio's Jordan Belfort disparages CDOs -- collaterized debt obligations; they're one of the main causes of the still-ongoing, despite reports to the contrary, economic malaise called in some quarters The Great Recession, because most pundits don't want to unlimber the big-D word -- as being too crooked and convoluted even for him to understand.) It's also easily the most damning indictment of the American Dream in a Hollywood movie since Scorsese's Goodfellas.
I also loved Scorsese's sort-of zombie sequence (where DiCaprio and Jonah Hill, strung out on ultra-powerful Quaaludes, fumble and wrestle in DiCaprio's / Belfort's kitchen), which was a witty fillip to the zombie craze that's taken over tv, comic books, movies and, based on the evidence of Amazon's Kindle store, self-published electronic books. (Have to say that Hill's fake horse-teeth choppers were as distracting as Sean Penn's jewfro in Carlito's Way, though.)
Other pluses for me were the cameo, as a judge, by acerbic humorist Fran Lebowitz (she was the subject of a Scorsese-directed HBO documentary, Public Speaking); the appearance of Shea Whigham, who plays Eli Thompson on Boardwalk Empire, in a bit part; the clip of an episode of the mid-1980s tv show The Equalizer, starring Edward Woodward (which was apparently at least partly inspired by a British tv show from the late 1960s / early 1970s that I've started watching this year, thanks to Netflix: Callan, also starring Edward Woodward), which featured Steve Buscemi (who played Tony Soprano's would-be massage therapist cousin Tony Blundetto, and is currently starring as Nucky Thompson in Boardwalk Empire, whose pilot Scorsese directed) as a guest star.
Far and away the biggest plus, and what really drives the movie along, over and above the fourth-wall breaking exposition by DiCaprio's Belfort, the jump cuts and the louche on-screen shenanigans, is the soundtrack: the soundtracks of Scorsese's movies almost always stand head-and-shoulders above their peers (Peter Gabriel's score for The Last Temptation of Christ gets my vote as best soundtrack evAH; the movie itself is an interesting misfire), and the songs heard in The Wolf of Wall Street are even better than those heard in The Departed, for all that I thought that the soundtrack of The Departed helped propel that movie and mask, to a certain extent, its flaws.
It's interesting that Scorsese seems to have glommed onto DiCaprio as his preferred leading man: The Wolf of Wall Street is DiCaprio's fifth Scorsese film (following Gangs of New York, The Aviator, The Departed and Shutter Island). DiCaprio's got a ways to go to catch up with Robert De Niro (Mean Streets -- probably still my favorite Scorsese movie -- Taxi Driver, New York, New York, Raging Bull, The King of Comedy, Goodfellas, Cape Fear, Casino), but he's made a respectable start. (And really, Mean Streets shouldn't be included in De Niro's tally, since he was only a co-star; Harvey Keitel was the leading man.)
Wish that the role of Hildy Azoff (MacKenzie Meehan) -- wife of Jonah Hill's Donny Azoff -- had been expanded a bit, but it probably would've made the movie a bit lopsided. Hopefully Meehan will get more quality film or tv roles.
It was fun to see Joanna Lumley -- a Bond girl in On Her Majesty's Secret Service; Purdey in The New Avengers (I've seen more episodes of this spin-off show than I have of Diana Rigg as Emma Peel in the original The Avengers, a lack that I really should address one day; Rigg was, it should be remembered, the main Bond girl from On Her Majesty's Secret Service) -- in a supporting role, as a veteran of "Swinging London", a period and cultural phenomenon satirized in the Austin Powers movies.
Could've done without the git behind me stage-whispering "YESSS!" every time DiCaprio's Belfort punched his second wife Naomi (the not entirely real-looking Margot Robbie); it wasn't as bad as the group of assholes who sat behind me in another, now defunct, theatre in 1988, lustily cheering Jodie Foster's character's being gang-raped in The Accused, but it was off-putting.
It's an interesting footnote that Wikipedia records that there was a (silent?) movie called The Wolf of Wall Street, released in February 1929, nearly nine months before the Crash of '29. (This movie starred the notable blowhard George Bancroft, Olga Baclanova -- best remembered today as the evil aerialist Cleopatra in Tod Browning's career-ending movie Freaks, she also appeared in the overrated The Man Who Laughs -- and Brandon Hurst, another alumnus of The Man Who Laughs, and who also appeared in the Lon Chaney version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, both versions of The Thief of Baghdad, the 1932 version of Murders in the Rue Morgue, and the even more vastly overrated [though seminal] 1932 horror movie White Zombie.)
Who says that Hollywood is in its own little cocoon, blithely unaware of goings-on in the so-called real world..?
The Wolf of Wall Street is a near-great movie, arguably Scorsese's best film since Gangs of New York (I wasn't much of a fan of The Departed when I first saw it in the theatre, but I've softened somewhat -- possibly in the head -- after viewing it a second time on DVD). It's terribly enjoyable: at once an homage to the barrier-breaking Hollywood movies of the then-young Turk directors (of which Scorsese himself was one, lest we forget) in the 1970s, it also suggests a Scorsese version of a Quentin Tarantino movie (or, at minimum, Scorsese's response to Tarantino's oeuvre); but behind the wild excesses of misbehavior on screen, it's an acerbic, bilious, pitch-dark meditation on the downside of capitalism in general and the financial industry in particular. (It's telling that Leonardo DiCaprio's Jordan Belfort disparages CDOs -- collaterized debt obligations; they're one of the main causes of the still-ongoing, despite reports to the contrary, economic malaise called in some quarters The Great Recession, because most pundits don't want to unlimber the big-D word -- as being too crooked and convoluted even for him to understand.) It's also easily the most damning indictment of the American Dream in a Hollywood movie since Scorsese's Goodfellas.
I also loved Scorsese's sort-of zombie sequence (where DiCaprio and Jonah Hill, strung out on ultra-powerful Quaaludes, fumble and wrestle in DiCaprio's / Belfort's kitchen), which was a witty fillip to the zombie craze that's taken over tv, comic books, movies and, based on the evidence of Amazon's Kindle store, self-published electronic books. (Have to say that Hill's fake horse-teeth choppers were as distracting as Sean Penn's jewfro in Carlito's Way, though.)
Other pluses for me were the cameo, as a judge, by acerbic humorist Fran Lebowitz (she was the subject of a Scorsese-directed HBO documentary, Public Speaking); the appearance of Shea Whigham, who plays Eli Thompson on Boardwalk Empire, in a bit part; the clip of an episode of the mid-1980s tv show The Equalizer, starring Edward Woodward (which was apparently at least partly inspired by a British tv show from the late 1960s / early 1970s that I've started watching this year, thanks to Netflix: Callan, also starring Edward Woodward), which featured Steve Buscemi (who played Tony Soprano's would-be massage therapist cousin Tony Blundetto, and is currently starring as Nucky Thompson in Boardwalk Empire, whose pilot Scorsese directed) as a guest star.
Far and away the biggest plus, and what really drives the movie along, over and above the fourth-wall breaking exposition by DiCaprio's Belfort, the jump cuts and the louche on-screen shenanigans, is the soundtrack: the soundtracks of Scorsese's movies almost always stand head-and-shoulders above their peers (Peter Gabriel's score for The Last Temptation of Christ gets my vote as best soundtrack evAH; the movie itself is an interesting misfire), and the songs heard in The Wolf of Wall Street are even better than those heard in The Departed, for all that I thought that the soundtrack of The Departed helped propel that movie and mask, to a certain extent, its flaws.
It's interesting that Scorsese seems to have glommed onto DiCaprio as his preferred leading man: The Wolf of Wall Street is DiCaprio's fifth Scorsese film (following Gangs of New York, The Aviator, The Departed and Shutter Island). DiCaprio's got a ways to go to catch up with Robert De Niro (Mean Streets -- probably still my favorite Scorsese movie -- Taxi Driver, New York, New York, Raging Bull, The King of Comedy, Goodfellas, Cape Fear, Casino), but he's made a respectable start. (And really, Mean Streets shouldn't be included in De Niro's tally, since he was only a co-star; Harvey Keitel was the leading man.)
Wish that the role of Hildy Azoff (MacKenzie Meehan) -- wife of Jonah Hill's Donny Azoff -- had been expanded a bit, but it probably would've made the movie a bit lopsided. Hopefully Meehan will get more quality film or tv roles.
It was fun to see Joanna Lumley -- a Bond girl in On Her Majesty's Secret Service; Purdey in The New Avengers (I've seen more episodes of this spin-off show than I have of Diana Rigg as Emma Peel in the original The Avengers, a lack that I really should address one day; Rigg was, it should be remembered, the main Bond girl from On Her Majesty's Secret Service) -- in a supporting role, as a veteran of "Swinging London", a period and cultural phenomenon satirized in the Austin Powers movies.
Could've done without the git behind me stage-whispering "YESSS!" every time DiCaprio's Belfort punched his second wife Naomi (the not entirely real-looking Margot Robbie); it wasn't as bad as the group of assholes who sat behind me in another, now defunct, theatre in 1988, lustily cheering Jodie Foster's character's being gang-raped in The Accused, but it was off-putting.
It's an interesting footnote that Wikipedia records that there was a (silent?) movie called The Wolf of Wall Street, released in February 1929, nearly nine months before the Crash of '29. (This movie starred the notable blowhard George Bancroft, Olga Baclanova -- best remembered today as the evil aerialist Cleopatra in Tod Browning's career-ending movie Freaks, she also appeared in the overrated The Man Who Laughs -- and Brandon Hurst, another alumnus of The Man Who Laughs, and who also appeared in the Lon Chaney version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, both versions of The Thief of Baghdad, the 1932 version of Murders in the Rue Morgue, and the even more vastly overrated [though seminal] 1932 horror movie White Zombie.)
Who says that Hollywood is in its own little cocoon, blithely unaware of goings-on in the so-called real world..?