THE WOLF OF WALL STREET: The Film Babble Blog Review

Opening today at a multiplex near you:



THE WOLF OF WALL STREET

(Dir. Martin Scorsese, 2013)

While last year’s Oscar winning ARGO summoned the ‘70s in its opening moments by using the old bright red Warner Brothers logo, and the recent release of AMERICAN HUSTLE did the same by way of a vintage Columbia Studios logo, THE WOLF OF WALL STREET, just goes with the current Paramount Pictures silver mountain design, proving upfront that it doesn’t need any help bringing the retro.



Martin Scorsese’s 23rd film, and fifth with Leonardo DiCaprio, nails the rampant excess of the ‘80s greed era with such a fearlessly funny, and raunchy as Hell glee that it makes Oliver Stone’s 1988 insider trading spectacle WALL STREET look like Sesame Street.



DiCaprio portrays Jordan Belfort, an ambitious Bronx-born stockbroker (or more accurately Stock swindler), who hit it rich in his ‘20s by founding the Long Island firm Stratton Oakmont. As our protagonist puts it in voice-over narration (and at times breaking the fourth wall asides to the audience): “The year I turned 26, I made 49 million dollars as the head of my own brokerage firm…which really pissed me off because it was three shy of a million a week.”



DiCaprio’s Belfort also tells us that he gambles “like a degenerate,” screws scores of hookers, has three different federal agencies looking to indict him, and, as if it’s the most important part of his personality, that he really loves drugs (a large mix of Quaaludes, Xanax, pot, and cocaine make up his daily regimen).



As DiCaprio’s partner in white collar crime and coke, Jonah Hill plays Donny Azoff (name changed to protect the guilty Danny Porush). Hill, with blindingly white capped teeth and funnier than he’s ever been, could be seen as the Joe Pesci to DiCaprio’s Ray Liotta if we were going to go down the GOODFELLAS goes to Wall Street route that many critics will no doubt take.



We witness DiCaprio’s corrupt character’s rise and fall by way of a furious pace provided by Scorsese’s longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker which never lets up until the end. It’s such an electrifying ride that it never drags or feels like it’s anywhere close to its actual length (it’s just under 3 hours at 179 minutes). In fact, I’m seriously hoping the Blu ray/DVD release features the four hour cut that’s been reported).



Everybody in the cast shines especially Matthew McConaughey in a short but sweet role as a mentor to DiCaprio who extols the virtues of jerking off, Kyle Chandler as a hard-nosed FBI agent looking to bust DiCaprio, Rob Reiner in an amusing performance as DiCaprio’s father who affects a fake British accent when speaking on the phone, THE ARTIST’s Jean Dujardin suavely playing a Swiss banker, The Walking Dead's Jon Bernthal as a tough guy cronie, and newcomer blonde bombshell Margot Robbie as DiCaprio’s former model wife.



Terence Winter’s Screenplay, based on Belfort’s book of the same name, is full of sharp dialogue (except when the characters are all coked up then it’s appropriately sloppy), plus obvious but inevitable references to Gordon Gekko, THE GODFATHER, and Thomas Wolfe’s 1987 novel “The Bonfire of the Vanities” (let's just forget the awful movie version) because Belfort, of course, considers himself a “Master of the Universe.”



The amped-up soundtrack is dead on as well with classic blues by the likes of John Lee Hooker, Howlin’ Wolf, and Elmore James rubbing up alongside Devo, Cypress Hill, and Sir Mix-A-lot (Scorsese restrained himself this time and included no Stones tracks), all under the supervision of another longtime Scorsese collaborator, The Band’s Robbie Robertson, who serves as executive music producer.



New to the Scorsese team is cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto (BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, ARGO) who captures in stunning tracking shots the swaggering sweep of its subject’s debauched lifestyle.



A stand-out sequence involving an DiCaprio, f-ed up beyond belief on a massive amount of Quaaludes having to crawl back to his car parked right outside at a country club reaches surreal heights of hilarity due in no small part to Prieto’s keen camera eye.



While I liked how David O’ Russell’s AMERICAN HUSTLE does a great job scamming folks into thinking they’re watching a Scorsese film, it’s so much more intoxicating to see the real thing.



At 71, Scorsese proves that he can still make master class cinema as THE WOLF OF WALL STREET is the director and DiCaprio’s finest film together, one that's much more deserving of a Best Picture Oscar than 2005’s THE DEPARTED, and I say that having really loved that movie.



Sure, WOLF covers similar ground to Scorsese's GOODFELLAS and CASINO in its wild depiction of money being the ultimate aphrodisiac, but its outlandish verve and gutsy-as-all-get-out attitude make it yet another major Marty masterpiece – a feast of a film that I can’t wait to go back to for a second helping.



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Matthew McConaughey & Jared Leto Make DALLAS BUYER’S CLUB Worth Joining

Now playing at an indie arthouse near you:



DALLAS BUYER'S CLUB

(Dir. Jean-Marc Vallée, 2013)

Because of his strong performances in BERNIE, KILLER JOE, MAGIC MIKE, and even THE PAPERBOY, last year I tweeted: “I think 2012 may go down in movie history as the year Matthew McConaughey started to give a shit again.”



I stand by that statement, as the man puts in some of his finest work yet here as Texan Ron Woodroof, a real-life AIDs victim who distributed alternate illegal medication through a homegrown buyer's club in the mid '80s to early '90s.



When we first meet the scrawny mustached Woodroof, we see that he's a redneck who's all about rodeo, that is, when he's not working his day job as an electrician. The Texan (as is McConaughey) is livin' it up with cheap booze and cheaper women, until one day where he gets electrocuted on the job and wakes up in hospital and is by told that he's HIV-positive.



Woodroof, furiously complaining that this is a mistake because he's not a homosexual, throws papers at his physicians (Jennifer Garner and Denis O'Hare) from their charts around the room, and angrily storms out after saying: “I got a newsflash for y'all, there's nothing out there that could kill Ron Woodroof in 30 days!”



After doing some research and having some effective flickered flashbacks about just how sordid some of his partying was with intravenous drug use and all, Woodroof accepts his predicament and goes looking for treatment. He learns through the help of a disgraced doctor in Mexico (an almost unrecognizable Griffin Dunne) that the only AIDS drug legally available at the time, AZT, is poisonous, so he begins the business of transporting unapproved anti-viral meds across the Mexican border.



Speaking of almost unrecognizable, Jared Leto, in feminine makeup and tacky '80s tramp garb, shows up as a transsexual AIDs patient named Rayon, who forms an unlikely friendship with Ron. Well, actually it's pretty likely in an indie film context like this.



Both McConaughey and Leto both put their all into their roles, including the loss of 80 pounds between them to inhabit these characters, but the narrative isn't well served by choppy plotting and one too many throwaway scenes.



In one such scene, McConaughey's Woodroof tries to masturbate using the visual stimuli of photos of woman on the walls of his makeshift hotel room office only to get pissed off at a picture of T. Rex rock star Marc Bolan that Leto's Rayon taped up.



Or another in which McConaughey spies an attractive woman in line for treatment at his office, checks if she's HIV-positive, then it cuts to him having sex with her in the bathroom. This was more amusing but just as expendable, as these scenes do nothing by confirm what we already know - our protagonist is still not queer. These bits would be better as deleted scenes on the later Blu ray/DVD release, not cluttering up the storyline.



But overall there are enough weighty moments and excellent acting (even Garner brings a touching well-placed poise I've never witnessed from her before) to satisfy most movie-goers and create some deserved award season buzz.



With a more focused less erratic screenplay, DALLAS BUYER'S CLUB could've had a lot more power, but alongside a well chosen supporting cast McConaughey and Leto's invested performances shine through the movie's muddiness.

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New Releases On Blu Ray & DVD: 8/6/13

 

The biggest new release out today on Blu ray and DVD is Joseph Kosinski’s OBLIVION, starring Tom Cruise as one of the last men on Earth in yet another sci-fi thriller set in a dystopian future. It’s a visually stunning ride, but a bit confusing at times as I wrote when the film was released theatrically last April (read my review here). The immaculately CGI-ed spectacle is available in a 2-disc Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy + UltraViolet edition, and a single disc DVD version.



Special features: Audio commentary with Kosinski and Cruise, a 48-minute featurette “Promise of a New World,” 4 minutes of deleted scenes, and the isolated M83 score, presented in 24-bit/96kHz Dolby TrueHD 5.1 surround. It’s Definitely one to consider over seeing ELYSIUM this coming weekend.

 

Next up, Derek Cianfrance’s crime drama THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES, starring Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper, is out in 2-disc Blu ray (+DVD + Digital Copy + UltraViolet), and 1-disc DVD editions. The film which consists of two stellar acts, and one so-so one as you can read here, comes packaged with such Special Features as a Director’s commentary with Cianfrance, 10 minutes of deleted and extended scenes, and a 5 minute featurette: “Going to THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES.”

A indie that came out around the same time that I enjoyed quite a bit more is also now available on home video this week: Jeff Nichols’ MUD, starring Matthew McConaughey as a little less confident than usual yet still somewhat slick fugitive outlaw who befriends a couple of kids (Tye Sheridan and Jacob Lofland) on an island in the middle of Arkansas’ Lower White River. Special Features; Director’s commentary with Nichols, and four short featurettes (“A Personal Tale,” “The Arkansas Ensemble,” “Southern Authenticity,” and “The Snake Pit”).

Walter Salles’ not very well received 2012 adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s classic 1957 novel ON THE ROAD, starring Garrett Hedlund, Sam Riley, and Kristen Stweart drops today in both single disc Blu ray and DVD editions, as does Terrance Malick’s TO THE WONDER, also a film that got mixed reviews, starring Ben Affleck and Olga Kurylenko (she’s also in OBLIVION btw), and Wayne Blair’s much better reviewed ‘60s soul-singing girl group comedy drama THE SAPPHIRES, starring Chris Dowd, hits the shelves in a 2-disc Blu ray set, and 1-disc DVD edition (read my review of the tuneful charmer here).

A documentary that’s gotten it’s fair share of acclaim, Amy J. Berg’s WEST OF MEMPHIS, which concerns the case of the West Memphis Three in a different light than that seen in the PARADISE LOST docs, is now available on Blu ray and DVD in single disc sets with a bunch of Special Features including nearly an hour and a half of deleted scenes, a commentary (with writer/director Berg, Damien Echols, and Producer Lorri Davis), Toronto International Film Festival Q & A and Press conference footage, a brief featurette entitled “Damien's Past (Re-Creations),” and the theatrical trailer.

 

Older titles out today for the first time on Blu ray: Arthur Hiller’s 1976 Gene Wilder/Richard Pryor thriller comedy SILVER STREAK, Wes Craven’s 1983 cult classic SWAMP THING, David Setzer’s 1986 teen favorite LUCAS, and James Toback’s 1987 rom com THE PICK-UP ARTIST, starring Robert Downey Jr. and Molly Ringwald. 

Also on the vintage front, Disney has out a 50th Anniversary Edition of SWORD IN THE STONE, a 40th Anniversary Edition of ROBIN HOOD, and a 25th Anniversary Edition of OLIVER & COMPANY. All 3 animated titles are new to Blu ray. 

TV season sets now available include Strike Back: The Complete Second Season, Duck Dynasty: Season 3, Community: The Complete Fourth Season, The Borgias: The Third Season, Smash: Season 2, and a “Best of” box of the short-lived SNL rip-off Fridays (1980-1982), that launched the careers of Seinfeld’s Larry David and Michael Richards.


For a more complete list of what’s out this week visit Amazon’s lengthy list at their New Releases department.

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Current Indie Films Offer Big Stars Without The Blockbuster Bombast

You don’t have to wait for the summer super hero sequel season (kicking off this Friday with IRON MAN 3) to see big name stars for a bunch of them are currently starring in indie films at your local art house. 

For instance, Derek Cianfrance’s (BLUE VALENTINE) highly touted crime drama THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES, now in its 3rd week in the Triangle area, boasts star turns by Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper. 

The film tells a story set in the town of Schenectady, New York, that spans 3 character threads. Gosling’s scenario involves the bleach blonde pretty boy turning to a life of crime (robbing banks with the help of his circus-honed motorcycling skills) in order to support the year old baby that former flame Eva Mendes just told him he is the father of.

One of Gosling’s robberies is foiled by Cooper as a young law student turned cop and then his scenario begins. Cooper takes advantage of his hero status to further his career, realizing the system’s just too damn corrupt (mostly in the form of a slimy, us usual, Ray Liotta - could Liotta ever play a cop that’s not corrupt?).

The third act has Cooper’s kid (Emory Cohen) growing up to be a troubled teenager who befriends a fellow student, Dane Dehan, who turns out to be Gosling’s kid. Gosling’s and Cooper’s acts crackle with energy, but the final act lost me. It felt like it could have been incorporated into the second story-line or at least not be so drawn out. Perhaps it simply lacked the star power of the first two thirds. Whatever the case, the film has just enough storytelling drive to make it worthwhile.

Nobody could accuse Robert Redford’s new political drama THE COMPANY YOU KEEP, which opened last Friday in Raleigh, of lacking star power. Apart from Redford’s lead role, there’s Shia Labeouf, Susan Sarandon, Nick Nolte, Chris Cooper, Julie Christie, Richard Jenkins, Stephen Root, and indie darling Brit Marling. Sadly though, all this talent can’t save the film from Redford’s tired soapboxing as you can read in my review “Redford’s Vanity Project THE COMPANY YOU KEEP Is A Star-Studded Dud” (4/26/13).

Much better is Jeff Nichols’ MUD, with Matthew McConaughey in the title role, also in its first week in the Triangle. 

McConaughey, a little less confident than usual yet still somewhat slick,  plays an outlaw on the lam, living on an island in the middle of Arkansas' Lower White River, who is discovered by a couple of kids (Tye Sheridan and Jacob Lofland). The kids help the fugitive get a boat down out of a tree (“that’s a hell of thing” McConaughey keeps saying about the boat’s predicament) and back in commission so he can escape with the love of his life, a redneck floozy played by Reese Witherspoon (the role couldn’t be more timely with her recent brush with the law and all). 

There a few glaring narrative conveniences - the kids seem to happen upon Witherspoon too easily, and later come to her hotel room at just the right time when she’s being roughed by a thug played by Stuart Greer for a few examples - but they could reasonably be chalked up to small town coincidences I reckon.

MUD is a mostly engrossing Southern drama driven by its superb cast, including Sam Shepherd, Nichols’ TAKE SHELTER star Michael Shannon, Joe Don Baker, Sarah Paulson, and Ray McKinnon, and its thoughtful screenplay by Nichols. 



But in a cast of recognizable faces, the 15 year old newcomer Sheridan, who could be considered the film’s true protagonist, stands out. Nichols’ has given the kid thematic weight in the form of a belief in love - a belief in danger of being squashed by a crush on an older girl (Bonnie Sturdivant) and the fact that his mother (Paulson) is divorcing his father (McKinnon) - but Sheridan carries it with poise.

So, if you’re looking for alternatives to the coming tidal wave of CGI-saturated blockbuster-wannabes on the big screen, THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES and MUD will provide the stars without the bombast. 

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KILLER JOE: A Twisted Good Time, If You Can Stomach It

KILLER JOE (Dir. William Friedkin, 2011)

It’s wonderfully fitting that this movie features rowdy local legends Southern Culture on the Skids on its soundtrack.

That’s because the psychobilly band often throws fried chicken into their just-as-rowdy audience, and in this movie, fried chicken gets used…well, I’m not going to tell you how fried chicken is used in this movie!

I will tell you that this NC-17 rated dark comedy (from the people who brought you BUG!) is a lot of twisted fun, that is, if you can stomach it.

In what may be his finest role this side of David Wooderson in DAZED AND CONFUSED, Matthew McConaughey plays the title character, a corrupt cop/hitman, who is employed by a Texan trailer trash family to murder one of their own so they can collect the insurance money.

As a scuzzy heavily in debt drug-dealer, Emile Hirsch hatches the plan to kill his mother, and convinces his scummy extremely dim-witted mechanic father (Thomas Haden Church with very unappealing patches of facial hair), to go along with it – as the target is his ex.

Church’s sleazy waitress wife (Gina Gershon), is also game, and Juno Temple as Hirsh’s flighty not-all-there sister is wrapped up in the caper too, as she is the beneficiary of her mother’s policy.

When Hirsh and Church can’t come up with the 25 grand to pay McConaughey, he decides to take Temple as a “retainer” until the insurance gets paid out, because he’s sweet on her.

Taking place in Texas, but filmed in Louisiana, KILLER JOE was based on a stage play written byTracy Letts, who also wrote the screenplay, so its tight plotting was honed in the theater. 

Its lengthy final scene, which will most likely come to be known as the “K-Fry-C scene,” could be an effective one-act-play on its own, as its set in one location, and has only the principle cast members in it. It’s a master work of gruesome violent power, which is going to turn a lot of people off, but I bet they’ll never forget it.

McConaughey, coming off notable turns in BERNIE and MAGIC MIKE, owns the title role. He’s never been slicker or more in control than in this formal speaking, dapper, and, yes, charming part, and it’s hilarious that despite all the gore (both Hirsh and Gershon get the Hell beaten out of them right in extreme close-up at different points in the flick), he never gets a drop of blood on his stylish black wardrobe.

Director Friedkin can be stylistically difficult to pin down. Best known for the well-crafted classics THE FRENCH CONNECTION and THE EXORCIST, his diverse body of work seems to have touched on every genre, but I’m not sure he really put a distinctive stamp on any of them.

When the website kontraband.com recently named Friedkin on the top of the list as one of the “best worst directors,” it’s hard to argue.

Still, he tackles the stupid scheme-gets-skewed scenario with delicious gusto here, even if cinematographer Caleb Deschanel’s camera seems a bit too in love, maybe more than McConaughey appears to be, with Temple’s visage. I mean she looks like she’s 11 years old! The nude scenes almost seem to be pandering to pedofiles. But then, I guess that's keeping right in line with the territory.

Yet after such a summer crammed full of repeated formulas, it’s actually refreshing to see a film proud of its tawdry-ness and unapologetic about delighting in the sick despicable lives of the very bottom 99%.

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Tragedy + Time = BERNIE

BERNIE (Dir. Richard Linklater, 2012)

Is it really true that comedy is tragedy plus time? Or is that just something Alan Alda’s loathsome character pretentiously pontificated in Woody Allen’s CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS?

Well, Richard Linklater’s latest, BERNIE, takes the true story of a Texas mortician who kills a wealthy widow, and makes a matter-of-fact comic docudrama out of it that really works.

It’s not a case of “too soon” as it happened over 15 years ago, but even back then the facts surrounding the murder were more than just a little amusing.

Jack Black, in maybe his finest performance, reunites with his SCHOOL OF ROCK director Linklater to portray the title character, Bernie Tiede, who was the most beloved man in Carthage, Texas back in the mid ‘90s. And by a lot of accounts, he still is much loved in that tiny town, despite the fact that he, you know, shot an 81-year old woman 4 times in the back.

Bernie’s tale is told in large part by a number of actual Carthage town folk, in interview segments that frame the dramatized version of events. We are told, time and time again, what a good Christian, and respected figure of the community Bernie was. Folks often speculated about his sexuality because of his effeminate nature (which Black nails), and what exactly was his relationship with his later victim, Marjorie Nugent (sharply depicted by Shirley MacLaine), who he doted on.

Bernie’s reputation for being a standout gospel singer in the church choir is brought to life by Black’s sincere vocalizing, as is Tiede’s staging of local productions of Broadway musicals.

As the mean old Marjorie (one of the interviewees says: “there were people in town, honey, that would’ve shot her for five dollars”) MacLaine is also well suited. She’s played many surly acerbic characters like this, but here it’s a better fit than in the rom coms and melodramas she has been appearing in as of late.

The murder itself is shown in the film as a momentary lapse for an otherwise all-around decent man. But his handling of the situation by putting her in a freezer, and spending tons of her money in the months following, is where one can’t help but nervously giggle.

Especially when it takes nine months for Bernie to be found out, because, well nobody, except her accountant, missed Marjorie.

The reason for the killing, one that he blurts out while sobbing, is that Marjorie was cruelly monopolizing Bernie’s time. She orders him around, even getting him a pager, and insults his manhood. Still, he could’ve just walked away – he wasn’t obligated to take care of this old woman – but as one of the town folk says, he didn’t want to forsake his meal ticket.

A slick as always Matthew McConaughey (like Linklater a real Texan) plays Danny “Buck” Davidson, the self-promoting lawyer trying to convict Bernie. His bemusement at how the Carthage people stand behind Bernie is amply humorous, as is gung ho determination to win (he has to move the trial 50 miles away to St. Augustine in order to avoid acquittal).

With this kind of material, and with Black on board, they could’ve really gone over the top, but Linklater and crew never lose their grounding. The film sets a tone and stays with it, largely because of Black’s dialing back on his famous funny man persona.

The only complaints I have are iPhones weren’t around in the ‘90s, and that when they show pictures of the real people at the end (vacation photos of Tiede and Nugent together mostly), they don’t show us a picture of Danny “Buck” - presumably because he looks nothing like McConaughey.

Apart from that, BERNIE makes a solid case for the tragedy + time equation.

And stay through the end credits to see a brief glimpse of Black with the real Bernie, and film of James Baker performing his song “Bernie, What Have You Done?”

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