The Wolf of Wall Street

Were you ever at a party or a bar or where you were sober or mostly sober? The people around you are drunk as hell and they are super fun and amusing. At least for a little while. Perhaps for the first two and a half hours, or so. Then you just want to get the hell out of there as quick as you can because amusing drunks turn to sloppy and annoying drunks real quick. If I had one criticism of Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street, it would be that. It's perhaps a bit too long. We could have done with one less scene of debauchery. There are two scenes in particular that could have been cut completely, or at the very least trimmed. I did read an article online that tried to make the argument that the three hour running time further illustrates the point of the movie, which is all about excess. That's an interesting theory, but I still think the movie would have been a tad better if it was cut down just a tad.

That being said, The Wolf of Wall Street is a goddamn great film. It's not about wolves, or even Wall Street really. This movie is about drugs. Or more particularly, addiction - addiction to drugs, addiction to sex, but mostly addiction to money. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Jordan Belfort and when we meet him he's young and impressionable, fresh faced and eager to please. At lunch with his very first boss and mentor (Matthew McConaughey, in the movie for only about twenty minutes, but I'll be damned if he doesn't steal every one of those twenty minutes), he refuses to drink alcohol, wonders how his boss can snort coke at lunch and then go right back to work. Flash forward a few years, and Jordan is running his own firm, doing a lot of shady, questionably moral / legal dealings and getting ridiculously, crazy, stupid rich. Like, so rich that he at one point wads up a hundred dollar bill and throws it in the garbage. He has so much money he doesn't know what to do with it all. So he gets himself a trophy wife. And a fancy mansion. And a lot of cars. And a yacht. And a helicopter. And a pretty outrageous drug habit (he claims he does so many drugs in one day that he could treat all of Manhattan for a month). The parties and the brazen disregard for any sort of normal life is all so outrageous that you wouldn't even believe it... if it weren't all absolutely true. And it is. Every thing that happens in this movie is true, which makes it all the more crazy. Eventually, Jordan gets what's coming to him, but not before he sleeps with tons of hookers, throws a midget at a human sized dart board, takes an orgy filled trip to Vegas and manages to sink a boat off the coast of Italy. This movie is wild!

With the exception of The Departed, Leonardo DiCaprio has never, never been better. I read an article where the author suggested its because he isn't needy, and has no desire to have the audience like his character. Maybe this is true. I think it's because he's never been so free. When was the last time DiCaprio looked like he's having fun in a movie? He is completely uninhabited, going places he has never gone before. He dances (and the ten or fifteen seconds where he dances at his wedding are, I think, the best goddamn ten seconds in all of film in the entire year)! He does physical comedy! He struts around and preens like the cock of the walk! He is having the time of his life playing this despicable douchebag and he's so unbelievably charming that you almost want Jordan to get away with all the terrible things he's done. Almost. DiCaprio isn't the only stand out. Jonah Hill is pretty superb as well, as Jordan's right hand man, a wasp-y weirdo who is perhaps a bit wilder even than Jordan. He absolutely nails the role. He's also never been better. Other stand outs include Margot Robbie as Jordan's volatile trophy wife, Jean DuJardin as a slick Swiss banker and Kyle Chandler as a straight arrow FBI agent. This is a cast of hundreds, and everyone nails it.

Now let's talk Martin Scorsese, because dude is 71 years old. He's already made his masterpieces. I wouldn't blame him one bit if he retired and spent five days a week golfing. But somehow he's making movies like he still has something to prove. He's making movies like a 28 year old fresh out of film school. He's making movies with more balls than kids half his age, or a third of his age. This movie has so much energy, is such a non-stop party that it's almost hard to believe it was directed by someone who is in his seventies. But Scorsese, more or less, showed absolutely everyone else who was boss with this movie. No one else is even close to him in terms of directing this year. There's him, and then everyone else. He is such a master of his craft that he manages to not let this movie go too far. Last week, I talked about David O. Russell ripping off Goodfellas, but letting the movie go too over the top. There was a big chance with that happening with The Wolf of Wall Street, but it never crosses that line. Scorsese keeps it in check, and keeps things from going into that campy zone.

I know I just spent three paragraphs praising the hell out of The Wolf of Wall Street, but keep in mind, it's not for everyone. Four people walked out of the theater that I was in, even before the halfway mark. This movie is absolutely brazen and wild and out of control. Jonah Hill masterbates! All the orgies! Leonardo DiCaprio snorts coke off a hookers ass, and later, Margot Robbie's tits! Speaking of, so. much. nudity. All the nudity. Plus, they say variations of f**k something like 560 times, according to IMDB (I don't know whose job it is to count). So, The Wolf of Wall Street may not be your cut of tea, but if you can take the craziness, it's definitely one of the best, most outrageous, ballsiest movies of the year.

Grade: A-

The Spectacular Now

Remember when high school movies used to be meaningful? You would to connect with every richly developed character and the movie would effect you in a way that would meaning something to you for the rest of your life. The movies were funny, romantic, and also a little sad. They didn't trivialize the emotions of teenagers because they were young. The teenagers in these movies had actual, real problems and they persevered because of that or in spite of it. John Hughes more or less made an art form out of making movies like this and when you talk about the greatest high school movies of all time, you can't not mention him. His films are very 1980's but also feel timeless. Then something shifted and high school movies turned into a joke - an endless parade of raunchy jokes and oh-so-much alcohol. But lately I think the tide is turning again. Last year, The Perks of Being a Wallflower was one of my favorite movies of the year. It even made my year end Top Ten list against some pretty heavy competition. This year, you've got The Spectacular Now, a movie that is just as great as it's title. And while it features all the cliches you have come to know and love from tired genre movies (cute boy falls for not-so-pretty-until-you-really-look-at-her girl, the prom, graduation), it never feels recycled. It always feels fresh and daring.

Miles Teller stars as Sutter, the most popular boy in school. But here's the rub - he's popular because, wait for it, he's nice. He's nice to everyone. He is quite possibly the most likable boy in school. He has the biggest heart and is just as likely to talk to the school jock about sports as he is to talk to the school nerd about anime books. Of course, he has his demons, mainly the fact that he is almost always drinking. When his super popular, life of the party girlfriend (Brie Larson) breaks up with him, he goes into a downward spiral which leaves him passed out and hungover on a lawn where he's found by Aimee (Shailene Woodley), a shy girl he goes to school with. She is sweet and helpful to him. The transformation of the not-so-pretty girl into the pretty girl isn't physical here. Aimee is already beautiful (Sutter even tells her this because she doesn't know it herself). Unlike every other high school movie, her transformation is purely mental. Sutter gives her something no one else can - self confidence. At first, Sutter doesn't have the best of intentions. He hangs out with Aimee for selfish reasons - maybe she can help him with math, which he's failing, maybe he can make his ex jealous. But he begins to fall for her, although at a way slower pace than the way she falls for him, which is head over heels and fast.

The Spectacular Now has a great script and the performances feel raw and real. Everyone is talking about how this is Woodley's breakthrough performance and I agree. She is truly a revelation. However, more people should be talking about Teller, who, for me, is truly the star. He makes Sutter so damn likable that even when you question his motives (which is pretty often, actually), you never stop rooting for him to make the right decisions and clean up his act. He has so much charm, so much charisma and his chemistry with Woodley just oozes off of the screen. It feels less like a movie than a snap shot into the lives of these kids and their struggles. Aimee is supporting her family and trying to stand up to her mom so she can go away to college. Sutter has a bag load of daddy issues from his father abandoning him. They find each other in a way that feels real. I'm not sure I see this movie as a romance movie. To me their relationship is failing right from the start. But it is romantic if you think about it in terms of how they change each other's lives for the better. The movie ends enigmatically, not really knowing what happens for this couple, but either way, this is the first kind of love, the good kind that may hurt a little at the time but stays with your forever, shaping who you are as a person.

Of course, the movie isn't perfect. About two-thirds of the way through, Kyle Chandler shows up like a tornado. He steals the goddamn movie away from everyone with his deadbeat dad (miles away from his unforgettable turn as Coach Taylor on Friday Night Lights). You can immediately tell where Sutter gets his charisma because Chandler, as his dad, charms every person he meets in the movie, and the audience. And he's a terribly unlikable character, but, my Lord, if you don't want to know more about him, if you don't want to follow his character to the depths of the earth. His performance is so powerful that I'm sure it will stay so fresh and vivid in my mind for months to come. The problem is, that after he's gone, it's sort of like all the air gets sucked out of the movie. From that point on, the movie relies too heavily on melodrama and never fully recovers its footing. Still, two-thirds of a damn near perfect movie is still a pretty great accomplishment, and a feeble third act can't stop me from recommending this movie so very strongly. Go see it now. It's one of the years best.

Grade: B+