The Wolf of Wall Street (new Scorsese)

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

IDK, feels like he's trekking some pretty well-worn trails there.

r.i.p. the rolling stones

ugh stop it with the sweaty bigface Marty

think that's just the reflection in your monitor dude

mite b fun

any trailer starting with a blunt & accented Leo self-identification is obviously ominous but i am happy to stay medium-intensity-excited for this

gotta agree w/shakes... really wish he found another actor for this

i like that the first licensed use of 'black skinhead' is for this trailer

this looks like it could be a good time but it also looks like they're only mining half a dozen scenes to put this trailer together. dicap looks like he's having a good time in this though, every other scors pic he's done he's been a bit too grim the whole time. this looks more like his 'catch me if you can' performance.

good time good time

so sick of baby ass face cuz otherwise yeah this looks fun. oh well.

gotta agree w/shakes... really wish he everyone found another actor for this everything

― i wanna be a gabbneb baby (Hungry4Ass), Monday, June 17, 2013 12:07 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

He comes off more like a kid in a school play than a wall street shark there.

i feel like i just saw leo play a guy who loves money in the great gatsby

with a period haircut too

some critic pointed out that as Gatsby he looks like Orson Welles

he kind looks a little welles-y in general

Somehow wall street movies rarely capture the fact that these guys are not as awesome irl as they are in their minds.

which prompts the question, when do we get the bloat?

xpost

ha

They're always action heroes slinging money instead of guns, even in the "critical" movies.

"Bloat on a Boat" wouldn't have been the worst title for this film

It actually took me two viewings to realize this was a period piece. Could just as easily have been set in 2013 - these greedhead scumbags are the same no matter the year.

some critic pointed out that as Gatsby he looks like Orson Welles

― ballin' from Maine to Mexico (Dr Morbius), Monday, June 17, 2013 3:37 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hah i can kinda see a connection w/ citizen kane

"Bloat on a Boat" would be apt:

Belfort was the final owner of luxury yacht the Nadine (renamed after his second wife, a British-born model) originally built for Coco Chanel. In June 1997, it sank off the east coast of Sardinia. The Italian Special Forces were called to rescue all aboard the vessel. Belfort has said he insisted on sailing out in high winds against the advice of his captain, resulting in the vessel's sinking when waves smashed the foredeck hatch.

wait this is a period piece? what period?

is last year a period?

90s

makes me think of wall street 2... mcconaughey even makes the same whistling noise as eli wallach

late '80s i think?

that eli wallach whistle was one of the strangest things i've seen in a movie

i was just thinking that it seemed weird to show wall street excess in a corporate office environment w/ particle board ceilings

particle board was all the rage, you're too young to remember

yeah this looks good. agree w/hurting that it'd be nice if they'd just replace all actors with new people I'm not sick of seeing but that's not really on the actors and I'll forget about it about ten minutes into the movie

ok '90s is right

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Belfort

they didn't bother with a period skyline I guess

or locations

that eli wallach whistle was one of the strangest things i've seen in a movie

― christmas candy bar (al leong), Monday, June 17, 2013 3:47 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

haha yeah. and then the little flying bird hand gesture!

yeah this looks good. agree w/hurting that it'd be nice if they'd just replace all actors with new people I'm not sick of seeing but that's not really on the actors and I'll forget about it about ten minutes into the movie

― Oral Sex in Sharp’s Ridge Park (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Monday, June 17, 2013 3:48 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh actually I just meant I wish they'd replace dicaprio with someone else in every movie he's ever done. I never ever like him.

although I can't say I was psyched to see Jonah Hill in this either

that eli wallach whistle was one of the strangest things i've seen in a movie

― christmas candy bar (al leong), Monday, June 17, 2013 3:47 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

haha yeah. and then the little flying bird hand gesture!

― i wanna be a gabbneb baby (Hungry4Ass), Monday, June 17, 2013 12:52 PM (42 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha i still dgi, but i like that he still has enough clout to improv like that

i still think dicap looks pretty good in this one.

thing w/scorsese and leo is that i'm not sure scorsese wanted to find his new deniro as much as he wanted to find his new liotta.

yeah. and i love that he's still out there acting, just like... who's gonna tell eli wallach he cant make birds with his hands, hes freakin 97

"you know what Fugazi is?

yeah it's one of my favorite bands."

Feels out of date, now that quants with Aspergers put these swinging dicks out of business.

just watched trailer again and im more sold on it. leo's probably gonna be fine, it's in his wheelhouse

except he doesnt play 26 y/o as credibly as he used to

This will probably be bad, with the one caveat that lots of trailers make a movie look far worse than it actually is. (Going by the trailer posted on the Scorsese thread). So maybe that's the case here.

im down with leo

and when he was 26 he played it like he was 17.

i saw boiler room. man, this guy gets two party movies made about him.

http://www.grantland.com/blog/hollywood-prospectus/post/_/id/79764/things-thrown-by-leonardo-dicaprio-in-the-trailer-for-the-wolf-of-wall-street

he seems like a really fun guy to party with.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-ZpaOmOzew

The Gauntlet down for Anybody Other Than Matthew McConaughey Who Wanted to Win an Oscar in 2014

lol no you pathetic sycophant

http://www.vulture.com/2013/06/the-wolf-of-wall-street-trailer-gifs.html

mcconaughey looks like Rod Hull i swear.

yeah see that youtube video of him captures what dicaprio and all the other people to do these roles rarely get -- the kid from queens turned sales douchebag.

mcconaughey's gonna be a pretty great weird-looking old guy

he looks exactly how you'd picture him http://resources3.news.com.au/images/2009/09/04/1225769/656443-jordan-belfort.jpg

mcconaughey's gonna be a pretty great weird-looking old guy

lol I had this thought too

he's been really fun recently, post romcom wasteland

I think mcconaughey looks like he'll be good in this, maybe enough to save it

wild supporting cast

Jon Bernthal
Jon Favreau
Ethan Suplee
Spike Jonze
Rob Reiner
Shea Whigham
Jean Dujardin
Joanna Lumley
Christine Ebersole

i guess jon favreau too old to play the lead. he's jerky enough.

vin diesel was good as the guy in boiler room. i think he was the guy. its been awhile. scorsese should just work with vin.

or wait did ben affleck play the main guy? he's good at being a dick. he's from boston.

joanna lumley?? *mind blown*

I've watched the trailer three or four times, and yeah, some of it works. McConaughey thumping his chest is great--but it's great in the way it plays off the Kanye West song. How well it'll work in the film, especially after you've seen it already, who knows.

The obvious problem, which I'm sure someone's mentioned already, is that every square inch of the immorality/excess/fantasyland of this world has been covered already, starting with Wall Street and especially the past few years in a bunch of documentaries. Scorsese's so late on this. I guess no one's done it as broad comedy yet, but not sure if he's the guy to pull that off.

you guys do know you just watched a 2-minute trailer, and not the actual film, right?

no

Marty's like the Da Vinci code--we look for clues, and hope...Trailer or no trailer, the recent spate of films covering the same general territory is surely a problem. DiCaprio's opening line about 49 million falls so flat--are we supposed to think "That kind of greed is unimaginable!" after Gordon Gekko and the Enron film and Inside Job and all the rest?

you never know when scorsese's gonna surprise you, but honestly this feels like the most overdone and unexciting subject in the world right now

a cross between Charlie Wilson's War and The Boiler Room -- how delicious.

0 stars, worst movie ever. Too short, too clippy

NEXT

I don't think this is any different than the threads for The Tree of Life or The Master, where lots of can't-waits and this-looks-awfuls were posted based on early trailers. Or different than hundreds of such threads. That's what we do here, right?

http://i.imgur.com/n23Kp7P.gif

Wow, didn't know you could dance like that to "Gimme Shelter."

this is the first trailer I've seen in months!

usually I walk in late to movies to miss'em

wow what a rebel

Not to change the subject, but did you see this trailer for a film about a voice-over artist for trailers?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiCwrjV06fI

Looks a little precious, possibly funny anyway.

Lou Gossett Jr. on lead vocals in that gif

DiC looks like Joey Buttafuoco in the gif

every subject has been done to death, i mean, this one has been covered a bit, but compared to... what

it's not really the "subject" so much as the treatment of it. Does anyone do wall street movies that aren't in this exact coke-fueled, shiny with a dark underbelly mode?

this one has been covered a bit, but compared to... what

Les McCann biopics?

and marty really should have done one of his famous cameos for the dwarf-tossing scene.

just once i want to see a wall street movie where everyone just sits around working in cubicles and having awkward coffee breaks

it's not really the "subject" so much as the treatment of it. Does anyone do wall street movies that aren't in this exact coke-fueled, shiny with a dark underbelly mode?

― i don't even have an internet (Hurting 2), Monday, June 17, 2013 11:54 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well, there was margin call.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cot5rEGcDek

It seems he has to get it to Paramount by 11/25 for Christmas release. (So the critics group I belong to certainly will not see it before our increasingly ridiculous annual awards deadline.)

http://blogs.indiewire.com/thompsononhollywood/will-scorsese-be-able-to-make-wolf-of-wall-street-deadline

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pabEtIERlic

It's a wahzy it's a woozy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEJza1-4zRk

hoping this gets darker than the trailers let on

does everything hafta be "dark"? I can only laugh at these monsters now, and he does/did pitchblack comedy well (TKoC, Goodfellas).

both of those films get sufficiently dark

yeah

that trailer makes this look a lot more fun than the first one did. I still don't buy him as the queens boy turned wall street shark. I don't really buy him as anything ever tbh.

Just realized that's Windows on the World up there.

Lotta yelling in that trailer.

Running time: 2hrs 59mins.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/02/business/media/scorseses-wolf-of-wall-street-gets-in-under-the-oscar-wire.html?_r=0

still looks like only the big critics groups see it before deadline

Nobody's mentioned who wrote the script, which is kinda important, maybe? Terence Winter, a writer-producer on Boardwalk Empire and The Sopranos, and writer of the 50 Cent vehicle Get Rich or Die Tryin' (which I don't remember existing, and Jim Sheridan directed it).

Saw that one on VH1. This one looks a little more Starz.

It's ominous that someone said "Let's make Jonah Hill look grotesque with prosthetics."

gonna see this tonight

Oh boy! Three hours long and Jonah Hill wearing SNL-level makeup? Sold!

martin scorsese has done so many great things for film culture, so for his sake I hope this makes a gazillion dollars

looks awful though. i suppose i could welcome a return to this kind of scorsese film after the soporific hugo but, nah.

Three hours? More like the bear of box office.

im not gonna sweat 3 hours if its marty. tbh lately im feeling like i respect any major release that hits that mark, you almost never see it anymore

??

this film is amazingly good imo

a super swift 3 hrs, totally debauched as per the advance word, hilarious, great performances. probably dicaprio's best performance too.

certainly dicap's best performance in a Scorsese movie, though that's not partic surprising. He just cuts totally loose, all of his other marty roles have been mind of constricted in some way.

better than anything scorsese's done in the 21st century.

I really hope that's true, though I do actually (sorry!) like Hugo.

"better than anything scorsese's done in the 21st century" is not high praise IMO, but i'll take your word for it

initial "reviews" says it's his best film since GoodFellas
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0993846/board/nest/222806576?p=1

It's his best movie since "Blood on the Tracks."

I would have to see it again to get a conformation of how it good it actually is but "best since goodfellas" may be otm

Seeing a bunch of excitement on Letterboxd, too. Expectations adjusted.

(Bearing in mind that there are about 4 Scorsese movies post-Goodfellas that I like better than Goodfellas.)

it's better than The Age of Innocence?

("Confirmation" I should have said)

It's better than Cape Fear?

more debauched than Kundun

you'd think theyd rush to show it to more ppl given poll deadlines and the NYFCC whiff.

any major release that hits that mark

Any this fall besides All Is Lost?

so pumped for this. scorsese's most at home with the unpleasant and inarticulate.

Any this fall besides All Is Lost?

― eclectic husbandry (Dr Morbius), Thursday, December 5, 2013 12:16 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

all is lost is like 100 minutes dude

that's in its favor!

clearly but im just settin the record straight

oh I see, you're a length man.

i wanted to add that pretty much every performance in this is impressive. dicaprio is incredible as i mentioned, mcconaughey has just a couple of scenes but sets the tone for the whole film, hill is surprisingly good (surprising bc i'd only seen him in some of his comic roles and i thought he was fine if nothing special, not that this isn't a comic role bc it really is). i didn't know who margot robbie was before i saw this but "she's a STAH!" imo. also liked shea wigham's small role as dicaprio's yacht captain.

probably gonna get lost in the discussion, but jon bernthal is A++.

such a bizarre movie. which is in its favor.

pumped now

man i really wanna see this

I'm still making the fictive leap necessary to regard Scrunchy Face as incredible

He was really good in the Great Gatsby

Sounds like he's even better in this

Will see

imo his recent (and all of his scorsese) roles have been very serious minded. i love 'the departed' but damon, wahlberg, baldwin, winstone & nicholson have the fun roles while he's the pill-popping stressed out drama center. he's good in the aviator but he's ruled by disorder demons. in GONY he's supposed to be neeson's son but he never works up anything resembling his compelling charisma, and in shutter island (which is p fun i think) he's just playing a bit of a blank slate crazypants detective. he's cutting loose here and i get the sense he was having a blast while making the film. i mean this whole movie must have been amazing to film.

at this point eagerly expecting a new scorsese movie is kind of like getting really excited over a new springsteen album. i mean, it might be better than the last one, or even the last two, but...

He confided that during the filming of two pics over the last 10 years he wanted to abandon the projects, but refrained from naming them....

Scorsese recalled how they had laughed when the New York Times wrote an article about “Raging Bull,” entitled “What’s happened to language in the cinema?”, but suggested that the language in his latest pic, “The Wolf of Wall Street” is far worse – “They’re making money, you know.”

http://variety.com/2013/film/international/martin-scorsese-i-miss-the-time-when-i-had-the-desire-to-experiment-1200930180/

I hated the movie, but "Django Unchained" certainly showed Leo "cutting loose."

yeah I guess it would have. I never saw it for some reason, probably should at some point.

re: the two he'd wanted to abandon, I'd be shocked if one of them wasn't Shutter Island.

otm

while i have no desire to see "silence" i wish they'd just let him make the damn thing already

You're probably right. That's probably my favorite of his since Y2K.

xp

at this point you can promote Silence as everyone's favorite grandpa fulfilling his bucket list

Silence the book is p rad, highly doubtful a Scorsese movie would be any good but hey

(and re: the 2 movies: Shutter Island and Gangs of New York, it's gotta be)

But I thought that Gangs was one of his pet projects for awhile?

there's already a p gd movie of Silence by Shinoda

thx guys I had erased Shutter Island from my memory

@Elvis, that's true. I was mostly thinking that because of the Weinstein meddling, but from what I'm aware most of that happened after filming anyway. Probably The Departed, then. (Can't see it being The Aviator or Hugo, just because they were big "love letter to cinema" type things and I know that's all he really wants)

Yeah, he really regrets winning an Oscar.

Meanwhile ... this movie ...

Pretty sure the chimp was also in charge of continuity.

I used to go to Scorsese films with unrealistically high expectations, then with no expectations, then I avoided a couple, and now I'm not even sure what I'm approaching this one with, except I will see it, so I've at least reversed course. But I don't know if I'm capable of seeing a film of his for what it is anymore--lots of clutter in there.

I'll put it this way. Do you like Goodfellas? You might want to just watch Goodfellas. Take it from someone who doesn't even like Goodfellas.

Goodfellas was during my unreasonably-high-expectations phase--I remember my first response, writing to a friend at the time, was to dwell on the couple of things that bothered me. (Now, of course, very typical, love it--though I wore it out.) Soon after, Cape Fear helped pave the way for the next phase in a big way.

this movie is kind of a mess but i loved it nonetheless. it's not as amazing as goodfellas (what is???) but it's tremendo.

Even golden-era Scorsese never cared about continuity... tons of mismatched shots all over the place.

Yeah, he really regrets winning an Oscar.

Now that you mention it, I'm sure I overheard some gossip that for that film, HE DID!

Goodfellas is lousy with continuity errors.

So this was pretty much a giant waste of time.

High five!!

The best thing I can say about it is that all involved (all of the men, anyway) clearly had a blast making it.

Now that you mention it, I'm sure I overheard some gossip that for that film, HE DID!

― eclectic husbandry (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, December 11, 2013 1:57 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

there's been rumblings of this for a bit, yeah. Who knows how true they are.

tell me more

i kinda felt like the oscar win for scorsese was orchestrated in such a way that it came off as condescending (kinda like bigelow's win.)

some funny semi-flaming over this on my FB

I find the trailer at the top of this thread exquisitely charmless and unfunny. It gives me the same feeling I always got from watching John Lithgow and 3rd Rock From the Sun, like hey we're all just letting it all hang out and having a blast, and me I wanna put my foot through the screen.

otm, but an al leong endorsement bears more weight than a trailer

part of me feels this movie has as much in common with a jody hill movie as a scorsese/"wall street"/"boiler room" type movie in some ways

i believe in my boy al leong

Tossing in some chips for fellow azn al leong as well

It says something that, barely half a day after watching it, the only bits that stand out in my brain involve Jon Bernthal and Kyle Chandler, who get about 20 minutes' screentime between them.

Chandler's scene on the yacht is the best in the movie.

Chandler was super in The Spectacular Now. This guy needs a better press agent.

Glenn Kenny just listed this as his 3rd-fave of the year. I'll be curious to read his (eventual) take.

Richard Brody put it at #1, which is really the only place on a top 10 list it makes sense to slot it; it's an all-in kind of movie.

Are you two related

“I’m very happy with this. Leo DiCaprio, we kind of see things the same way. We have similar sensibilities and we want to make a certain kind of statement, hence the projects we choose. I chose Gangs of New York and Shutter Island. He wanted to do The Aviator. I chose The Departed. He wanted to do this new film.”

“That’s one of the reasons we made The Wolf of Wall Street, not to show the greed, but to be in the greed, to be part of it, part of the exaltation of it, part of the excitement of it and part of the destruction it causes.”

“After the war, I remember America in the 1950s, yes it was more innocent, more quote/ unquote repressed, no doubt, culturally, to a certain extent. I don’t remember, honestly, and we weren’t taught a great deal in certain schools, in certain specific things about American history, but I don’t remember them saying that the country was formed only so that everybody could get rich, I just don’t believe it. That feels, for me right now, that is what it feels like.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/martin-scorsese-in-conversation-guilt-trips-of-the-great-director-9000873.html

Well, "flatulent black comedy" sounds better than Jesse & Celine.

http://www.fandor.com/blog/daily-martin-scorseses-the-wolf-of-wall-street

My holiday gift to myself is going to be avoiding the comments on that one.

Make every day a holiday!

Calum has pretty much the same read on it, but was far less mixed ...

http://www.littlewhitelies.co.uk/theatrical-reviews/the-wolf-of-wall-street-25600

floozie from The Apartment reads the riot act to Marty & Leo

http://www.hollywood-elsewhere.com/2013/12/holiday-vs-scorsese/

according to Rene Rodriguez it's clear what side of the class war Marty's on:

The director even lands his closing shot, something he hasn’t always done well, leaving no doubt how he feels about Jordan, abandoning him in a perpetual hell of his own making. The Wolf of Wall Street isn’t a celebration of bad behavior: It’s a condemnation. Scorsese just allows you to share in the fun young millionaires can afford to have and lets you get drunk with them. Eventually, though, the party must end, as they always do, and most will leave the theater exhilarated and relieved at being part of the 99 percent.

The director even lands his closing shot,something he hasn’t always done well,

what did she not like the rat

exhilarated and relieved at being part of the 99 percent.

phew!

99% of film critics are completely useless

all art is quite useless

art is totally useful, not so sure about art criticism

The scene before the final scene is much more pointed (and avoids implicating the audience in the good-bad times ... which maybe was what Scorsese was trying to do in the first place).

http://www.film.com/movies/the-wolf-of-wall-street-morals

That's been Scorsese's weakness as a director, no? He's aware of The Audience as a shadowy thing, out there, and he's rarely sure about implicating them.

doesn't Pesci fire a gun at the audience at the end of GoodFellas? (presumably it's Liotta's dream/vision, but still)

Pesci's dead well before the end of Goodfellas...?

It's a vision, yeah

I don't even remember what the last shot of this movie is, and I'd like to think I'm usually pretty good at remembering those.

It was kinda the same as the last shot of A Touch of Sin.

I never took that final Pesci shot as a dream or vision of Liotta's, just a device thrown in there by Scorsese--a middle-finger representing the attitudes of all those guys, meant to sync up with the Sid Vicious song.

Is Frank Vincent anywhere in The Wolf of Wall Street? Chuck Low? I can see Chuck Low as some low-level brokerage guy hanging on by his fingernails.

Frank Vincent is not in this, will you settle for Fran Lebowitz?

There's a Frank Vincent-related joke I want to make, but I can't make it because she's a woman. My internal censor has come through (it doesn't always).

As picked up by TheWrap, 75-year-old actress Hope Holiday posted to her Facebook page that Scorsese was heckled by an unnamed screenwriter following a weekend screening of "The Wolf of Wall Street" for Academy Awards voters.

last night was torture at the Academy--"The Wolf Of Wall Street"---three hours of torture--same disgusting crap over and over again---after the film they had a discussion which a lot of us did not stay for--the elevator doors opened and Leonardo D. Martin S. and a few others got out then a screen writer ran over to them and started screaming--shame on you --disgusting--

In the comments section of her Facebook post, Holiday, who starred for Billy Wilder in "The Apartment" and "Irma la Douce," revealed that she also admonished the director, but then removed herself from the situation before a fight broke out. ("I ran down the stairs.")

christ this movie owns

nobody that old runs anywher

it was more of a power walk

Thelma:

I do think that everyone is rushing headlong into this complicated technology now to the point where interfacing with somebody else, or some other system, become so complicated, sometimes you just wish you could go to your flat-bed editing machine and just flick a switch and it would come on. But now my assistants spend a great deal of time, they understand this computer stuff better than I do, I edit on a computer but I don’t understand half of what we go through, editing the film and screening it… you have no idea how complicated all these have become, and I worry because it makes us so vulnerable, doesn’t it? All you need is for all the cell towers to down in some disaster and –

– Poof, all the movies are gone.

It’s very true, there is something scary about this rush. And you know digital isn’t stable. It has to be migrated every five years or else it just vanishes.

Yeah, it’s not even as good an archival medium as film.

That’s right. Film, if properly cared for, will last almost 100 years, but digital will not. You’re right, it’s a little scary....

I never thought of (this film) as a companion piece to “Goodfellas”, and I don’t think that Mr. Scorsese did either. I think he wanted it to have the rush quality of “Goodfellas” at points, but I don’t think of it as “Goodfellas” at all, I think that’s a whole different thing. These people are doing much more damage than the guys from “Goodfellas” were doing, that was somewhat limited to a few murders here and there, but the damage these people did was enormous, and you’re quite right that it’s very similar to “After Hours”, which by the way was also heavily improvised, and a tremendous amount of fun to cut. It was pretty wild, and this was pretty wild.

http://www.film.com/movies/thelma-schoonmaker-editor-interview-the-wolf-of-wall-street

holy shit, this movie

best since casino for sure. its grotesque and surprisingly maybe his ugliest/bleakest movie to date. really knocked me on my ass... also probably the funniest movie ive seen this year

can't remember if this are pts I've made before and I'm too lazy to scroll up but I think it's a movie that won't win over huge fans and I could see this coming up emptyhanded come Oscar time even wrt nominations because it is so unapologetic and has zero preachiness and no character who represents the victims, both of which are important. I think it's helpful to see how people like this operate in a cocoon in a world where their victims are just voices on a phone. and the debauchery reaches this surreal level and is so absurd, this movie really is hilarious. "Smoke crack with me, bro!!"

the debauchery reaches this surreal level and is so absurd, this movie really is hilarious. "Smoke crack with me, bro!!"

That movie's been playing here for months.

can't remember if this are pts I've made before and I'm too lazy to scroll up but I think it's a movie that won't win over huge fans and I could see this coming up emptyhanded come Oscar time even wrt nominations because it is so unapologetic and has zero preachiness and no character who represents the victims, both of which are important. I think it's helpful to see how people like this operate in a cocoon in a world where their victims are just voices on a phone. and the debauchery reaches this surreal level and is so absurd, this movie really is hilarious. "Smoke crack with me, bro!!"

― christmas candy bar (al leong), Thursday, December 26, 2013 3:43 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

yeah the lack of overt moralizing is pretty key, i mean you can tell scorsese has a lot of contempt for these reptiles but he knows there's no need to overplay it - he just gives em enough rope

also you're otm about it being a breakout performance for margot robbie. where'd she come from??

AO Scott was mixed-to-positive, used the M-word

This brings me back to the question I started with, which perhaps should be posed another way: Is this movie satire or propaganda? Its treatment of women is the strongest evidence for the second option. On his way up, Jordan trades in his first wife, a sweet hometown girl named Teresa (Cristin Milioti), for a blonder, bustier new model named Naomi (Margot Robbie), whose nakedness is offered to the audience as a special bonus. (Mr. DiCaprio never shows as much as she does.) The movie’s misogyny is not the sole property of its characters, nor is the humiliation and objectification of women — an insistent, almost compulsive motif — something it merely depicts. Mr. Scorsese, never an especially objective sociologist, is at least a participant-observer.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/25/movies/dicaprio-stars-in-scorseses-the-wolf-of-wall-street.html

the part where jonah hill appears out of nowhere jerking his dick *kisses fingers like italian chef* he makes a great joe pesci

glenn kenny otm:

Underneath all of the fast-paced "fun" and entertainment value of the movie that so many critics have been made ecstatic by, or made alienated by, there lies, ever present, in the fact of the way the frames are composed, a distance. And within that distance there is a steely anger, that Swiftina rage I mentioned. The rage only explicitly shows its hand a couple of times. There's a bit in one of the narrated fast-forward interstices in which Belfort details the sexual escapades of a female employee, and recounts the fact that one of the male employess at Stratton Oakmont married her anyway; there's a couple of shots from their wedding album, and then Belfort says blithely, "Then he got depressed and killed himself," and the image that accompanies this, in its framing and grading, is distinctly unlike anything else in the film. Then there's an interlude into the world that most of us observe Belfort's world from, a few quiet, poetic (in the T.S. Eliot rather than William Wordworth sense) shots of Kyle Chandler's F.B.I. agent character on the subway. It's in these brief shots that the genuine nerve endings of the movie are located, and these shots are No Fun at all.

some of the shots of the brokers reacting to jordan's speeches reminded me of the reaction shots of guys lusting over maria in Metropolis

idk about the misogyny thing, I mean clearly in the end naomi seems to be a pretty brave character and a far better person than jordan. I think the movie's contempt is reserved for the men in power. Also:

Somehow wall street movies rarely capture the fact that these guys are not as awesome irl as they are in their minds.

― i don't even have an internet (Hurting 2), Monday, 17 June 2013 19:38 (6 months ago) Permalink

This is the first one that does so imo! jordan is clearly a buffoon, he's not some slick expert, he's a vulgar POS who is basically shameless and psychotic enough to rise to the top on the backs of people he doesn't care about. his co-boiler roomers are all pretty pathetic. even everyone's favorite bro mcconaughey is kind of a deluded clown.

yeah otm, they never seem like anything other than scumbags from queens, the closest belfort gets to a moment of competence is when he impresses a roomful of schnooks by selling those penny stocks

surprisingly great performance in this: shane from the walking dead

jordan is clearly a buffoon, he's not some slick expert, he's a vulgar POS who is basically shameless and psychotic

underscored nicely when chandler Columbo's him on the yacht

will watch it but ugh three hours

it flies by, a la blue is the warmest color

^otm

Enjoyed the shit out of it, it didn't have the forced frivolity vibe that I got from the trailer. Funny, gonzo, but maintains a reasonable verisimilitude, so much t&a and drugz I'm surprised the MPAA let it slide with an 'R'.

the M-word

Don't know whether it's because I'm jaded or because I'm forever under the influence of Kael that I thought the M-word meant "middlebrow."

I thought it meant "merde."

All I could think was: God, a whole industry based on calling strangers on the phone.

Edelstein:

http://www.vulture.com/2013/12/movie-review-the-wolf-of-wall-street.html

I figured Leo must have been sitting in the editing room saying, “No, no, don’t cut here — my favorite line is coming up — 30 more seconds — okay, a minute — wait, let it run! It’s my Oscars scene!” But no, this was Scorsese’s design. Overkill is the ruling aesthetic.

Overkill is the ruling aesthetic

No shit.

This was pretty fantastic.

"I'll never at fuckin' Benihana again."

*Never eat*

http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2013/12/wolf_of_wall_street_prousalis.php?page=2

heh

So here's what I'm going to do first. I'm going to hand you my shame. Right now, in this very moment. The shame that I've been carrying for far too long as a result of being collateral damage. Because each of you should feel ashamed. And then I'm going to go pre-order my tickets to August: Osage County in support of Julia and Meryl -- because at least, as screwed up as that family is, they talk about the truth.

lmao

See also: 10 Reasons the Real-Life Wolf of Street Is a Schmuck Who Shouldn't Be Trusted

I forget sometimes how terrible most people are at watching movies

Totally^

this thread has convinced me that I need to see this movie

al leong's recs hold a lot of water imo

I think it's pale and I'm Norwegian. But, hey, divergence is the spice of life. But not too spicy plz, because I'm Norwegian.

lol <3

i have the feeling this is my equivalent of a popcorn movie

I great the feeling it's someone else's idea of a hookers-and-blow movie.

you say tomato

The way the humor changed from gross-out to very dark in the same sentence was disturbing. A lot of this was OTT, but some of the characters and more reasonable scenes mirrored those in documentaries like Floored and Startup.com. I liked it, but I feel pretty sleazy for taking my 17-year-old brother-in-law to see this. Afterward, he hugged our kitten until his faith in humanity was restored. I should have read this thread first ;_;

a imagine this movie as Casino again , only on Wall Street

Weirdly more like Anchorman-with-millions than Goodfellas, as far as the buffonery of guys' entitlement...

yeah i was telling someone the other day i know if i can trust someone's reccomendation of a scorsese flick based on whether they say 'best since goodfellas' or 'best since casino'.

Somehow wall street movies rarely capture the fact that these guys are not as awesome irl as they are in their minds.

― i don't even have an internet (Hurting 2), Monday, June 17, 2013 7:38 PM (6 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/prousalis-plane.jpg

"best since Bringing Out the Dead" vs. "best since After Hours" vs. "he hasn't made a great movie since Taxi Driver wtf is wrong with you people?!"

reminded me some of bad lieutenant: pocno, but it's not quite that good

leo was incred in this tho

Herzog has a way better feel for comedy than Scorsese.

its def a fascinating bibliography that terence winter has written (at least?) two scenes talking abt women's shaved vaginas and they contain robert loggia & rob reiner, kudos

Can't wait for his next gig showrunning the reboot of Leave it to Beaver.

Herzog has a way better feel for comedy than Scorsese.

― Simon H., Friday, December 27, 2013 9:28 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

now this is what i call comedy.

this was at least an hour too long and i totally get edelstein's point about some of the scenes lingering a minute or two past what was necessary but i fucking loved it. easily the best performance i've seen dicaprio give. the drug stuff was too much but i wonder if that was the only aspect of these assholes scorsese could relate to. it's impossible to show this much wealth and not glamorize it in some way but i thought it did a pretty good job of making it clear these guys were losers and sociopaths. audience gasped twice, both times involving margot robbie, first time the men, second time the women. liked seeing all the boardwalk empire ppl pop up (including steve buscemi lol).

http://www.closermag.fr/beaute/conseil-maquillage/je-veux-le-smoky-eye-marron-de-margot-robbie-250549

this movie had some amazing shit in it but the characters didnt really click for me they didnt seem like people which made it kinda hard to get into

maybe they were supposed to be like that cause they were psychos idk

some of the scenes tho whoa when they were fighting over the telephone

great movie only misstep being the pop punk covers of sloop john b and simon & garfunkel

jonah hill describing his plan to release his retarded child into the wild lmao

followed by the but seriously we'll put him in an institution

ha yes

jonah hill jackin his dick at the party was a great moment in cinema

http://www.mrwillwong.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Margot-Robbie-Leonardo-DiCaprio-and-Martin-Scorsese-on-set-of-The-Wolf-of-Wall-Street-1024x482.jpg

http://nypost.com/2013/12/23/my-orgy-with-leonardo-dicaprio/

about some of the scenes lingering a minute or two past what was necessary but i fucking loved it

i hope this isn't the same thing that afflicted the elphantine hugo. just tons of air hanging around every line reading, a certain solemnity that screamed "prestige picture" to me while boring me half to fucking death.

i really hated hugo in case you were wondering

this thing is solemn as hell, you should probably avoid it

ha! it looks the opposite, of course. sounds like maybe it's just indulgent of its actors rather than slow-paced.

It's indulgent of everything but propriety. Am seriously questioning why I didn't enjoy it more.

It's possible I've seen to many movies this year and know nothing.

easily the best performance i've seen dicaprio give

i love that he threw in everything from his nicholson impression to gilbert grape

his reaction on the boat when naomi returns with that one bit of bad news killed me.

just tons of air hanging around every line reading, a certain solemnity that screamed "prestige picture"

Worry not.

One thing I keep thinking about is that Jonah Hill, in his first couple of scenes, was mesmerizing imo. I was anticipating a movie's worth of bravura performance, but then once he signs on with the firm his character loses a dimension and it's just the usual ol' Jonah Hill. IDK.

best scorsese since the departed def

joanna lumley!

really loved this, wasn't annoyed by the running time at all.

i can't be the only person on earth to notice that this had the exact same plot as goodfellas. like, exact.

yeah though the ways its different from goodfellas are instructive - scorsese has some affection for/a complicated fascination with wiseguys, whereas i think he just finds belfort & co straight up revolting

disagree, u could practically see scorsese smiling along approvingly as leo blew coke up up a hooker's ass

read a review that twice referred to him snorting coke out of a hookers ass smh

great part when leo's expressing his doubts over hiring jonah hill before he asks him about being married to his cousin: "and he wore those clear thick rimmed sunglasses just to look more waspy" then cuts to him wearing that scarf and polo

disagree, u could practically see scorsese smiling along approvingly as leo blew coke up up a hooker's ass

― flopson, Saturday, December 28, 2013 1:31 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark

agree w/balls that the drug stuff is prob the only way he could relate to these guys

"and he wore those clear thick rimmed sunglasses just to look more waspy" then cuts to him wearing that scarf and polo

― flopson, Saturday, December 28, 2013 1:42 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ha nice catch

you know 30 years from now there will be a Marty biopic where he and Robbie Robertson are doing blow off a hooker's ass

I've gotta see this again ASAP.

same

argh all right i know this is going to sound very vague and bullshitty, but there was a moment that really stuck out to me as ~meta~, as in, one character had a line reading or aside that really seemed like it was a ref to something else, either what that actor is otherwise famous for. or maybe earlier scorsese? ha this sounds so dumb. but i wasn't the only one pick up on it at the time, a couple people laughed unexpectedly. jonah hill sounding like the kid from superbad or something? fuck

sorry, that's all i can remember. it was 3 hrs u kno.

i was trying to remember earlier what someone says right before "I'd let her give me fuckin AIDS" because it made me laugh too, but then the AIDS line overwhelmed it in my memory

man the grim physical comedy of jordan being too messed up to handle himself (at the country club) was really something else, amazingly funny and increasingly nauseating: one of the scenes that made me really appreciate this thing's length, the sustained attention on the dipshit minutae of his life, how it all added up to ruin

otm

firefighters, teachers, fbi agents

searing indictment of american capitalism, heartfelt and bittersweet love-letter to 'ludes

lol

not really related to gooles meta question but was it martys voice on the other end of phone when jonah hill calls to quit his job? sounded like it to me

I liked the 'lude scene, some of the sharp cuts and editing tricks, otherwise this felt like Goodfellas II: My Life as a Schmuck. I wasn't bored exactly but this had one motivational speech and lol drug scene too many.

i can't be the only person on earth to notice that this had the exact same plot as goodfellas. like, exact.

― napgenius (goole),

same problems too

Jordan Belfort is far more interesting on drugs than Henry Hill though!

jordan belfort is not interesting tho?

felt like this was maybe a lil more casino in that it went on forever forever rather than goodfellas that just went on forever

btw those stupid kiwis really sucked at selling pens

The movie should have ended after cops pick him up after country club scene.

Those New Zealanders were a sincere lot, weren't they?

did anyone else sit through the end credits? can anyone explain that weird spoken word matthew mcconaughey song that played over them... im amazed nobody mentioned that yet

xp if you mean when he got arrested filming his infomercial i agree

should've ended w/ fbi agent on the subway

leo's dance moves were sweet

wow the subway seemed so sad

she is a porno

should've ended w/ fbi agent on the subway

― balls, Saturday, December 28, 2013 3:31 PM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark

thats where i was expecting it to end

Kyle Chanlder on subway while Alec Baldwin voice-over says "A family man? FUCK YOU go home and play with your kids!"

then a rat wolf crawls out

sit thru the credits? my poor bladder

said the old man to his nurse two rows behind me

This was...exhausting and insane.

any good things to say though?

I have to think about the movie for a while, a lot to process, but Matthew M's scene was A+++

And this felt VERY goodfellas while being very different

I remember wanting to kick Jonah Hill's character in the nuts throughout

Ending was way on the nose, not sure if the audience I saw it with "got it"

Also - and it could have been because I'd done a lot of driving and was tired and my back hurt - I sorta kept wanting it to just fucking end somehow

Like there were stretches that were brilliant but this was late a 180-minute long latter day Eminem album with some self awareness

I remember wanting to kick Jonah Hill's character in the nuts throughout

he reminded me of vince vaughn in Made

repeating my love for bernthal in this. Also funny how his pen joke had the same comic timing as ledger's pencil gag in 'the dark knight'

introduction of bernthal's character on the weight bench was great

Yeah, I dug that scene too

i did a brief stint in my life working with a bunch of salesmen, and i think despite all the nastiness scorsese does try to give some shine to that life, the promise of it anyway. there's a lot in the early learning and teaching scenes that rang true to me, not least of which the contempt for the mark. i don't think we're meant to laugh at the broke single mom who 'made it' or to the new zealanders who are looking for something

was thinking it wouldve been nice to have a little bit more about the craft of selling

cause he was supposed to be this master salesman idk, maybe he just had the criminal versatility

was thinking it wouldve been nice to have a little bit more about the craft of selling

― lag∞n, Saturday, December 28, 2013 10:42 PM (34 minutes ago) Bookmark

idk i liked that there were almost no procedural elements

yeah i guess it wasnt really about that

yeah kids my reaction too, like it seems to me that the selling skill set here was more blunt instrument pummeling than crafty cons, w the difference between these guys and people who could also do this is the diff between being a sociopath and not being one.

Kinda my reaction

it seems like youd have to be pretty crafty to just cold call someone and sell them bullshit stocks but maybe not idk

I think it was implied that jordan was vv crafty and had the script that worked that everyone followed, so after awhile it was just volume rather than an endless series of small skillful cons if you know what I mean.

I mean I'm sure there was slightly more to it than that but I think scorsese was more interested in this sealed off bubble that allowed people like this to become like this, I think.

yeah its just there wasnt much evidence of the actual craftiness or seemingly any understanding by the movie of it, but there was jonah hill jerking it in public so who am i to really complain i guess

There's the first long call when he goes into the office in Long Island, takes about a minute to get the guy on the other end of the line to invest more than he planned and to hang up with a smile knowing DiCap was going to make him rich. And from there it's like--why don't I put this to work talking to rich people instead. And it makes sense that pot dealers would be better at it than econ majors.

was thinking it wouldve been nice to have a little bit more about the craft of selling

cause he was supposed to be this master salesman idk, maybe he just had the criminal versatility

Last scene underlines that the point isn't that anyone's good at selling, but rather that the American set-up makes everyone else all too willing to buy. Except I guess the guy who rides the subway home every day.

I usually fault movies for omitting process because I love to watch characters at work, and I resented how Scorsese yielded to the most cynical interpretation of what audiences want by letting Scrunchy Face acknowledge that any chatter about IPOs would bore us.

Anyone notice the mention of collaterized debt obligations?

Sent too soon. I was gonna say: in this movie to complain about how penny stocks work is beside the point.

did anyone else sit through the end credits? can anyone explain that weird spoken word matthew mcconaughey song that played over them... im amazed nobody mentioned that yet

According to the soundtrack, "The Money Chant" - Performed by Robbie Robertson featuring Matthew McConaughey

yeah its just there wasnt much evidence of the actual craftiness or seemingly any understanding by the movie of it, but there was jonah hill jerking it in public so who am i to really complain i guess

― lag∞n, samedi 28 décembre 2013 23:28 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

movie seemed to make the point that there is not really any craft to it, aside from run of the mill ruthless salesmanship. like the mcconaghey speech when he's like "no one knows whether the stock's gonna go up or down just boldly be an asshole on the phone to people and you make money"

was the guy that he cold called actually a former client of his or was he just bullshitting?

Yes, dug this. Though far from perfect it's my favorite Scorsese in many years. And the freaky editing (mismatched/jump cuts galore, ...) worked well here. Exhausting, though.

flopson
Posted: December 29, 2013 at 9:28:35 PM

movie seemed to make the point that there is not really any craft to it, aside from run of the mill ruthless salesmanship. like the mcconaghey speech when he's like "no one knows whether the stock's gonna go up or down just boldly be an asshole on the phone to people and you make money"

well i think the stock predicting and the sales are two different skills, you can have no idea what a stocks gonna do but you still have to be able to convince someone that you do, and i dont think the movie had much idea what that looked like, in general it didnt seem like it had much insight into the whole scene, it didnt feel lived in or consequential or like it really had much internal logic, scorsese maybe gets gangsters more than he does wall st douches

or maybe the goodfellas book is just better than this one

sprawling mess but i still enjoyed it

introduction of bernthal's character on the weight bench was great

otm and worth the price of admission

I thought this movie was absolutely riveting. Excluding the excellent experiments/chamber/period pieces of "Age of Innocence" and "Kundun," I have no problem calling this his best since "GoodFellas." Definitely a director at the top of his game, all the more impressive coming this far down the line. I also thought it was without question the best of his Leo movies, and the first Leo movie where star and director seemed perfectly matched. Even better. Leo was the best I've ever seen him, and considering he's in every single scene, talking non-stop, I was impressed at how well he meshed in the film, never overwhelming the movie, perhaps because everything/everyone else in the movie was ramped up as well. A few of the scenes/sequences were the best I've seen from anyone in recent years, including the bravura Quaalude to coke fueled meltdown/slo mo phone fight, and the pretty much any scene with Kyle Chandler, who is subtle in the best way against Leo.

Twice the movie did the same sort of hypnotic nice to mean flip: the first on the boat with the FBI agents, that almost invisibly shifts from genial to aggressive, the second the final scene with Leo and his wife where it goes from his silver lining stuff to a borderline rape and child abduction with incredible, yet plausible, ease.

The soundtrack, too, was captivating for once, not the usual novelty signifiers, but this weird mix of period stuff (top 40 hip-hop), late '70s post-punk (Devo, Plastic Bertrand), and a couple of covers by '90s bands doing the '60s, "Sloop John B" and the Lemonheads "Mrs. Robinson," the second just one of a few blatant nods to "The Graduate" throughout the film.

Another observation: this is Scorsese's first NYC movie in a while, but NY played such a passive role. A lot of this goes for the sort of manic OTT energy that "Bringing Out the Dead" aimed for but didn't quite pull off.

Anyway, just loved this more than I thought I would ever love a Leo/Marty collab.

Also, this flew by for me.

Oh, and Jimmy Castor Bunch!

or maybe the goodfellas book is just better than this one

― lag∞n

this is decidedly the case fwiw. there's been plenty of what it takes to be a salesman type movies/books/plays so i didn't mind this not really going into that, 'it takes a certain sociopathic persistance' was enough for me. been thinking more about the deliberate echoes to decline of empire, the echoes of rome w/ the bacchanalia and repeated references to incest. there's been alot of talk on twitter on whether it glamorizes belfort and though i think to an extent it's impossible to show anything that achieved this level of success w/o glamorizing it somewhat, i think this does about as good a job as could be imaginable - even w/ goodfellas (which didn't glamorize gangsters nearly as much as say the godfather) you had some some sense of 'honor' (even if it was bullshit) and tradition and nice suits and paulie slicing up the garlic w/ a razor. here these schmucks dress horribly, the sex is bad, the only thing to envy is just the money, these ppl are generally so uncool that jonah hill is the second coolest guy in the bunch and so un'honor'able that a drug dealer is used as a contrast as a stand up guy. even w/ wall street and gekko's 'greed is good' speech there was a certain third man swiss cuckoo clock monologue cold logic to it, here leo's speeches are pure 'fuck them, fuck everyone, and if we can take their money it was never their's to begin with', just an uncharismatic crook. even the never grow up frat boy dude i'm so wasted hijinks are shown to be tedious after three hours.

Wonder what goes through actors minds after they've lived lives more or less like the lives they are recreating.

still think the definitive wall st movie hasn't been made yet and that margin call came closer than this, seemed to be more aware and concerned of systemic issues instead of case studies like belfort. margin call was still ultimately too blunt and way too simplified but it's probably as nuanced and smart a take as you can hope for from a hollywood movie. definitive wall st movie may be impossible anyway, maybe ppl will just have to live w/ reading liar's poker or whatever.

I'm not even sure how much I consider this a Wall Street movie, as such. More like Caligula or something (a la the aforementioned Rome reference).

also i'm sure everyone knows this but that was the real jordan belfort introducing leo at the end

Also cf Tom Wolfe's piece about how the quants made testosterone a less valuable attribute in the WS world.

Margin Call was tackier, more gauche but this was the better movie as far as eliminating scenes in which good actors mourn dogs.

I still think this fucking thing was too long and we've seen this shit already. Margot Robbie was Karen Hill.

margin call was a cool movie, fwiw i dont really mean i needed lots of financial exposition or w/e just that the wolf of ws just didnt feel like it really existed anywhere there was not much revealing detail of any sort character wise or environment or w/e
it was just kinda spinning around in this wacky ass limbo, which admittedly was hilarious and fun but something about it just felt like it wouldve been more engaging w a lil more irl or something

first person to say that was the whole point i disagree and furthermore i dont like you

no way karen hill pulls a move like robbie standing in that doorway. which btw if anyone has a screencap of that to help me illustrate my point it would be much appreciated.

Robbie Robertson?

In the end credits but not in the scene, I'm guessing. Between this and "Ladies of Tampa", Matthew McC's fit to tour.

Karen Hill has moments of complexity, like when she takes the gun from Henry after he pistol-whips her neighbor, or the look in her eye as she tries to take in the immensity of her wedding. If Naomi had a second dimension beyond blonde bombshell, I missed it.

You're right. Jonah Hill played Karen Hill.

key to understanding naomi is after the first and the last time leo fucks her

jonah hill was tommy but ultimately no where near as charismatic. i mean at least tommy was funny, the way he'd tell a story.

lol

i think the film should have spent at least a few minutes explaining/depicting how a pump and dump works, there was only one reference to brokers ignoring clients' calls iirc

Another great moment: the elation/horror of watching that woman shave her head. You can watch her pitiful emotions shifting from humiliation to humor and back to humiliation ... until they hand her $10,000K and she forgets all about her hair.

the low angle shot of her sitting in the chair while the men act like animals was a crushing moment

And yeah, we've seen this movie before, but not in the way we'd seen "Casino" before. One thing I appreciated about this movie is the same stuff others might complain about, that Leo's character is so selfish, and self-interested, that everything else falls by the wayside. So the FBI investigation proceeds, but on deep background. We get glimmers of what Naomi is like, but not much, because Leo's character barely acknowledges her himself when she's not in the same room.

Some more cool stuff: the occasional mind-reading gags, the aspect ratio/film type changes, the way it just cuts to the chase with the sex and drugs and rise to power. The flash horrific cut of that guy's suicide midway through. Oh, and yeah, again, the Jimmy Castor Bunch.

I thought the relationship between Leo and Jonah reminded me of the twisted relationship between Greg Kinnear and Willem Dafoe in "Auto Focus."

Oh, and the double punchlines of Leo strapped to the chair and also the FBI bust mid-infomercial.

One thing I didn't quite get was the near absence of AIDS from the picture. Lots of hookers (of all stripes) and references to penicillin shots, but given the time period you would have thought the threat of AIDS would have been a real consideration.

Other than the "Mrs. Robinson" cover (which I've always liked), what Graduate references were there, Josh? I guess I was so disheartened by the film they went past me. (When I think about it now, I guess there was a shot of Naomi meant to echo the famous shot of Bancroft with her legs crossed.)

Definitely that shot, but also (implied/echoed) with the (non) seduction of his wife's Aunt (who, of course, "lived through the '60s"). Maybe there's more. Little things.

some testimonials

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYXB8crww0I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPU08GnSjx4

Good viewing : http://www.charlierose.com/watch/60318162

oops. Sorry. That's an hour long intvw with Scorsese and DiCaprio on the film.

Worth a read in light of the movie:

http://nymag.com/nymetro/movies/features/2793/

thats great ty

Amazing movie

Spiritual companion to Casino. Best Wahlberg performance of the decade

Well I don't remember Casino too clearly except for the part about stealing hotel toiletries

But the shot at the end of Jordan giving a PUA seminar for Kiwis ======== Shot at end of casino of senior citizens overwhelming Las Vegas

still think the definitive wall st movie hasn't been made yet and that margin call came closer than this

i rescreened 'margin call' a couple of days ago before seeing 'wolf of wall street' and i kinda agree - 'margin call' felt a lot more true to 'what its like to work in finance now', it had a lot of subtle details that i appreciated: the way characters would shift btw using first name and surnames to address other characters, 'how much do you think x makes', the mentalist guy telling demi moore's character 'i'm not sure i do know that' &c &c. not sure all those details added up though in the big picture, i liked margin call a lot but its not a 'good movie' in the same way 'wolf of wall street' is? ego vs id or w/e

anyway i thought this was entertaining but hard to have any thoughts about, really. music was rad though

^ Yeah the part at the beginning with the dwarves, I was like, there's no way Wall St is like this now and then I realized it was a period piece, then I thought I'm glad somebody made a movie about Liar's Poker

Movie about today's wall street is a bunch of quants sitting in a room staring intently at Black Scholes models on three widescreen monitors

Like I was thinking that man, Marty is maybe finally senile, it doesn't work like this anymore

Then I realized it was 1987, and then there was a shot of the strip mall and it was so beautiful

Loved all the period detials in this, those floppy double breasted suits and Bill Blass abstract geometric ties

they still drop 20 gs at dinner tho

Oh sorry just reading the thread through now and raelizing those points have been covered up thread

margin call was a cool movie, fwiw i dont really mean i needed lots of financial exposition or w/e just that the wolf of ws just didnt feel like it really existed anywhere there was not much revealing detail of any sort character wise or environment or w/e
it was just kinda spinning around in this wacky ass limbo, which admittedly was hilarious and fun but something about it just felt like it wouldve been more engaging w a lil more irl or something

first person to say that was the whole point i disagree and furthermore i dont like you

― lag∞n, Sunday, December 29, 2013 9:34 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

Haha not gonna say that was the whole point but it's a nice sleight of hand to name it The Wolf of Wall Street where the Wall Street part is more like, idk, the hardwood upon which the real performers are tap dancing

The movie's also pretty explicit about setting up these boiler room guys as not having a street number on the proper white shoe Wall Street, they keep on trying to barge onto the scene with the GS and Lehmans but never quite get there

The other part where I thought Marty lost it was when he kept on playing all these Me First & The Gimme Gimme & that cottage industry of pop punk covers of all the songs he would have used if he hadn't already used them all before

i've actually developed a soft spot for marty having lil clue or curiosity about music post-1981 or so beyond shit that reminds him of the clash maybe, when 'everlong' came in i actually chuckled. can actually imagine him cornering jonah hill and playing the lemonheads' 'mrs robinson' and going 'now do you know who originally had a hit w/ this?', not realizing jonah's too young to likely even know who the fuck the lemonheads were.

'heres to you, mrs. robinson'

I always had a soft spot too for Marty's use of "what's the frequency kenneth" and "these are days" as key music cues in bringing out the dead.

Could've been worse; he could have used Ned's Atomic Dustbin and Brad.

Haha I forgot about the Everlong part. That was great xp

About concerns of glamorization, that's a valid point of criticism for sure but narratively it's just being inside the head of that guy from high school who tried to sell you weed that was really oregano, as he tells his life story at your 20th reunion

Like the part in the beginning about the Ferrari being white, not red

Of course he did the most drugs had the biggest yacht had the biggest ragers

can't believe no one's

http://i.imgur.com/vc3zv6Z.jpg

Scorsese's not in love with Belfort's wealth but he's sure in love with dramatizing it.

i wonder if buscemi gets some kind of weird residual from that equalizer episode now

i thought there were mad quants in the 90's??

this movie kinda made me want to go into finance

well thats the thing they were quants but still very angry

-_-

black scholes was created in the 70's, prob used widely throughout 80's and 90's

Yeah I think the 90s saw the rise of the quant, corresponding with the rise of increasingly sophisticated and powerful computers

But it was the era leading up to the crash where quants really began to shine

This is all based on only reading about Wall Street via Michael Lewis

I think Black Sholes was theorized in the 70s but not really put into practice until the 90s

flopson have you ever read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Genius_Failed:_The_Rise_and_Fall_of_Long-Term_Capital_Management

i haven't! only thing i've read on this topic is justin fox myth of the rational market but it's told more from the academic side of things, super good though

You should, it's about Myron Scholes putting Black Scholes into practice and it worked splendidly until it didn't

i had to read 'when genius failed' for an undergraduate course in derivatives, its p good

this movie kinda made me want to go into finance

haha i felt the same thing but after watching 'margin call'. i think the difference btw then/now isnt about quants but like traders vs. brokers, how deregulation/securitization made it easier/more profitable for firms to trade on their accounts rather than for clients &c i mean clients are still basically getting fucked (lol two and twenty) but thats not really where the smart money is now ime

The movie's also pretty explicit about setting up these boiler room guys as not having a street number on the proper white shoe Wall Street, they keep on trying to barge onto the scene with the GS and Lehmans but never quite get there

― 乒乓, Monday, December 30, 2013 2:26 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

yeah i mean stratton oakmont never left long island. they were headquartered in lake success when they finally went under

乒乓 how did u feel about chester ming, felt to me like it was somehow progressive (for hwood) that him being a scumbag from long island was his primary trait

Yeah Chester Ming was alright by me

Felt that the movie drops the plot threads of all of the original crew ex Leo, Jonah, and Bernthal by the end but that's to be expected in a 3 hour movie

I liked that scene on the plane where jordan is horrified that he used the "n" word during his drug induced freakout

Walking around NYC you hear tons of azn dudes with thick Brooklyn and Queens accents, it's fun

http://i.imgur.com/tJVoFTR.png

Man I was ready to clown Leo for wearing lifts when he gets his mugshot taken

But I guess he really is 6 feet

Somehow he's a 6' irl guy who seems like he's 5'7 on screen

A small point, I suppose, but was anybody bothered by the cerebral palsy joke? I winced as I watched the film, then later on thought how one of the great things about Taxi Driver is that Schrader and Scorsese didn't censor themselves, so maybe the same thing was at work here. I don't think so, though. The racial bile in Taxi Driver is brutal, as is the way Harvey Keitel talks about Jodie Foster. But, for lack of a better word, all those words feel real. I don't question whether they should be there. They are, and they should be.

De Caprio's cerebral palsy line really does feel like the worst sort of cheap to me. I mean, they fit the character, but I think the intent is to get you to laugh along with him. I don't usually dwell on things like that. The tone of this film just loses me altogether.

My thoughts during that scene was a mental compare/contrast with how Apatow would have done it. I didn't mind the tone of this movie at all. The guy is so selfish, and shortsighted and, more than some other moral comeuppance flicks, more or less gets away with it, too, with relatively minor (for his corrupt, diseased perspective) collateral damage. Unlike, say, Scorsese's mob movies, where people get blown/chopped/shot up. He gets away with it all, and yet, he still loses, because he is a sleaze. And yet, the shot with Coach on the train pretty much underlines it: Leo "loses," but the good guy is still stuck riding the train.

xpost One of DiCaprio's secret weapons is his heft. He's apparently a pretty big, hulking dude. He was the wrong actor for "Gangs of New York," but the right size. His stature fit his menace in "Django," for sure.

De Caprio's cerebral palsy line really does feel like the worst sort of cheap to me. I mean, they fit the character, but I think the intent is to get you to laugh along with him. I don't usually dwell on things like that. The tone of this film just loses me altogether.

― clemenza, Monday, December 30, 2013 10:06 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

i mean its consistent with "dots not feathers" and the rest of his vapid asides... you notice that the whole movie is blanketed in his cool guy with tude explaining things 2 u voiceover and yet you never actualyl laugh at the things he says, doesnt seem accidental

I thought it crossed a line into mean-spiritedness, even for that character...or on Scorsese's part. But, like I say, the movie lost me well before that, so I'm seizing on something I probably wouldn't be if it hadn't. (Sort of like how John Simon seized on the line about selling pencils outside of Bloomingdale's in his Manhattan review.)

I've been racking my brain - what was the term for stockbrokers in the '80s, "Lords of" or "Princes of" something or something like that? It's completely slipped out of my brain.

http://images.fanpop.com/images/image_uploads/Masters-of-the-Universe-he-man-604211_1024_768.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/VuvUMKu.jpg

right, damn how did I forget

skeletors iirc

that was just tom wolfe and ppl copying tom wolfe

http://i.imgur.com/UZRv88N.gif

I thought it crossed a line into mean-spiritedness, even for that character

The character was nothing but mean-spirited

ha i love that guy to his right whos just around the whole movie yelling getting amped on speeches

The character was nothing but mean-spirited

And yet, as pointed out above, he's appalled by himself when told by Hill he used a racial epitaph during a drug binge--there does seem to be a line of sorts. And if not that, then the mean-spiritedness is Scorsese's.

I kept expecting the "and he wasn't even black" punchline to that scene.

Forgot what thread was which, but I posted on the Hustle thread: regarding Jordan's asshole behavior, I thought he and his crew, a la party frats, exemplified the axiom that the only people who think assholes are awesome are other assholes. This film was a closed ecosystem of nothing but assholes. Pretty much the only time in the film you get a perspective from anyone but one of the central assholes, iirc, is perhaps a sum total of 30 seconds or so from the perspective of the FBI guy.

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/12/19/investors-story-left-out-of-wall-st-wolf-movie/

the only people who think assholes are awesome are other assholes

But enough about the audience.

that not even true i think assholes are awesome and im the nicest guy youd ever want to meet just dont cross me

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BcdRFo5CcAAlOD3.jpg

Oh yes -- Colours by Alexander Julian.

So were those his real teeth, whitened, or just fake choppers?

josh in chicago everybody

balls nobody

shouldn't you be making cutesy rape jokes on ilm?

what a scamp!

Shouldn't you be endorsing financial rape?

Sup

http://www.myhungergames.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/caesar.png

I bet in the meadow he can build a snowman.

If you know what I'm saying.

Would have enjoyed this a lot more @ 2 hours instead of 3 - at a certain point I just got tired of being hit with repetitive drug debauchery and the office salesmanship. If he'd gotten deeper inside ratholes and juking the Steve Madden IPO and stuff, or Leo's friendship with Jonah Hill, it would have been closer to worth the extra time.

"Before long, he, too, has cocaine and hookers — at one point sucking the former from the ass of the latter. "

p. sure Leo was blowing the former into the ass of the latter, not sucking it from.

Shouldn't you be endorsing financial rape?

― Alfre, Lord Woodard (Eric H.)

where'd i do this? i mean i get yr just a dumber goofier morbs, the drake to his kanye, but really make an effort scamp

Bye.

Solid zing, tho, and that I prefer Drake to Kanye probably proves it true at every level.

Is Hustle the Drake to Wolf's Kanye too?

it's the jay z

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/all-the-songs-in-the-wolf-of-wall-street-including-devo-cypress-hill-foo-fighters-more-20131227

http://www.hitfix.com/in-contention/leonardo-dicaprio-says-wolf-of-wall-street-critics-missed-the-boat-entirely

it was weird hearing "Never Say Never" at a late eighties/early nineties pool party.

itt "FUN SHIRTS"

well I never thought there'd be a Scorsese film where Bo Dietl gave the best performance, but here we are...

A sprightly opening 30-40 minutes (his best work in 16 years) that makes all the obvious points fairly well, followed by numbing repetition -- call it a David O Russell hommage.

Nah, Fran Lebowitz killed.

If he'd gotten deeper inside ratholes and juking the Steve Madden IPO and stuff, or Leo's friendship with Jonah Hill, it would have been closer to worth the extra time.

i can get down w/ this

good thing ya didn't hafta sanitize "the N-word" in Taxi Driver & Raging Bull, eh Marty

Brad Pitt is nowhere NEAR 5'11"

balls stfu, Eric is not goofier than me

even the choices of sndtrk needledrops sucked in this film

hi im doctor morbius i hate all movies ever

no, mostly protracted pointless 3-hour comedies by a filmmaker who can't do comedy

(nb: The King of Comedy is satire)

tell us more about comedy gabbneb

http://urbanrethink.com/sites/default/files/sdm.jpg

even the choices of sndtrk needledrops sucked in this film

Jimmy Castor Bunch!!!

actually my definition of comedy this minute rests upon whether clemenza meant to type "racial epitaph"

(I don't think that was a joke in the film...?)

Ouch...I've been mixing up those two words for years, and spell-check didn't save me.

People who are complaining about the length don't get that the point of the film was to hit you on the head with its excess?

Oh well

A sprightly opening 30-40 minutes (his best work in 16 years) that makes all the obvious points fairly well, followed by numbing repetition

even the choices of sndtrk needledrops sucked in this film

Hearty co-sign on these.

I get that point... it just wasn't a good choice. There's a point of diminishing returns on "this guy does sooooooo many quaaludes" and that point came ~90 minutes in, except for Leo doing the worm to get to his Lambo. At that point it wasn't revealing anything about his character or the Stratton world, it was just watching a guy with pancake makeup on do lots of blow off perfect boobs.

in addition to above, it was kind of weird how divorced it seemed from any outside world and never sought to comment on Wall Street or brokers or penny stocks, etc. - the closest was Leo mentioning CDOs and Internet stocks, but the timeline would have put him circa 1993 for the latter.

Most disappointing: shot where the camera seems to freeze frame panning over the Stratton trading floor and an intro drops in like we're going to get some awesome hard soul but then the song itself was completely forgettable.

Probably the only thing worse than thinking this movie was misguided in being repetitive & intemperate is thinking that this movie was gonna reveal some hard truth about how con artists sleazeball really made their money when all you really needed to know is that these were fast talking guys from Queens calling up people in Alabama to sell them the Brooklyn Bridge

yeah I get that "point" too and I don't pay $8 (matinee) for cock and ball torture.

(Leo's DIRTY BIRDIE line as the hot wax is dripping on him was prob the last time I laughed at anything, mostly McConaughey before that)

I definitely got the point of the film's excessive excessiveness (both as it applied to the story, and at the second level of Scorsese trying to outdo himself), but that didn't make it any less numbing to sit through.

fast talking guys from Queens calling up people in Alabama to sell them the Brooklyn Bridge is not worth 180 minutes, QED.

Jonah Hill was basically a squashed Adam Sandler

I didn't ask for hard truths - the inside part of what was going on and how it related to the outside world can be funny! Definitely funnier than the 400th shot of Leo popping a 'lude.

I've thought about this film a lot today and i think i need to add that myself and balls and hungry4ass and gr80 are generally otm here. latebloomer too. a couple others who agree with me also.

Probably the only thing worse than thinking this movie was misguided in being repetitive & intemperate is thinking that this movie was gonna reveal some hard truth about how con artists sleazeball really made their money when all you really needed to know is that these were fast talking guys from Queens calling up people in Alabama to sell them the Brooklyn Bridge

― 乒乓, Tuesday, December 31, 2013 9:03 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

point is if the people making the movie actually had any insight into the people environment or culture they were depicting then you would learn something how they made their money even if it wasnt explicitly taught, the fact that the filmmakers thought "fast talking guy from queens" was a sufficient identity for a character is why even though it has many masterful aspects it is overall not really that great

There isn't any insight to be had. It really was that easy to make money in the early 90s

if that was true than many more people wouldve done just that, the world is not lacking in sociopaths

its a movie that villainizes its characters for ignoring the humanity of others while ignoring the humanity of its characters, i know this is just a huge opening for someone to be all dont you see thats the whole point meta commentary etc but no its just bad writing

I've thought about this film a lot today

ie compounding your original error

bye, off to naked gay butler party!

it such incredible loathing for its subjects that i really think it clouded its vision and obscured all the detail

you got to have some love, you have to at least be intersted

i mean i liked it it was funny it had some sick ass shit in it but it was very insubstantial

I agree that the movie is like being inside of a giant egg. There's nowhere to gain a foothold

That's why I loves the movie. I love eggs

i eat eggs almost every day, make of it what you will

The Egg of Wall Street

You could make the same criticism of taxi driver. Wow what a despicable character. Who could love or identify with such a guy

But that movie revealed that nearly all movie critics and movie watchers are actually lonely psychopathic murderous ragemen. They love that movie

In time movie watchers will realize they are also quaalude popping sleazy caligulan sexmen. Just give it a few years

obviously my criticism was not that its impossible to portray monstrous psychos on film

morbs come back, that party's just going to end with you getting dangled off a building anyway.

its a movie that villainizes its characters for ignoring the humanity of others while ignoring the humanity of its characters, i know this is just a huge opening for someone to be all dont you see thats the whole point meta commentary etc but no its just bad writing

― lag∞n, Tuesday, December 31, 2013 9:22 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

so u wanted a jason reitman movie, got it

eggs taste better than this movie, and are out of your system faster.

u fuckers who can't tell the diff btwn this and Taxi Driver deserve cable

it is the Year Zero

also Marty go play fucking bingo

Would rather have sucky needledrops than the incessant acoustic "theme" all throughout "The Departed" - shittiest Scorsese score by far,

unrelated but bc of discussions on this thread I am finally watching margin call

if that was true than many more people wouldve done just that, the world is not lacking in sociopaths

Wasn't that the point of the movie? Any idiot from the street can do it, but you have to be a depraved psycho with no soul or morals to do it right at such big levels. It could have certainly driven the point home harder that the rest of Wall Street was likely this bad, too, but I appreciated its extremely limited perspective. (The way this can dovetail with Hustle is that Bale's character *does* have morals, and also knows the self-preservation benefit of keeping his head down. Leo is a frat-boy nihilist who, at the other extreme, cynically knows that literal boatloads of money will ultimately ameliorate the human costs of his actions; he's *happy* in Club Fed because it finally forces a break from his permanent vacation.)

I keep thinking of scenes that could have easily been cut - gay butler stuff, dwarf tossing stuff, Leo S&M scene, discussion of non-alcoholic beer, etc. - but they're wacky enough that the movie is probably better with them in it.

so u wanted a jason reitman movie, got it

OTM. The fact that this movie didn't give a lot of people what they wanted is partly what makes it so much better than a Jason Reitman film. Also, I think this movie was immaculately made, regardless of subject, or excess, or whatever. It's the most impressed I've been with Scorsese as a director in years. Decades?

so u wanted a jason reitman movie, got it

― Hungry4Ass, Tuesday, December 31, 2013 11:30 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

omg i hope yr resolution was to not be like this

"The Departed" - shittiest Scorsese score by far,

That Dropkick Murphys, though.

departed owns, so much better than W.O.W.S.

Most disappointing: shot where the camera seems to freeze frame panning over the Stratton trading floor and an intro drops in like we're going to get some awesome hard soul but then the song itself was completely forgettable.

that song was joe cuba "bang bang" iirc, prob the song I was most stoked to hear turn up

Wow had no idea that "Bad Girls" sampled that!

"Bang Bang" is amazing. In the movie, it barely registered. Compare that with "El Watusi" in Who's That Knocking at My Door.

El Watuwho

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVIA1vqQfb8

Genius.

why would Marty play bingo when he could keep making financially successfully worthy pictures such as this and the departed? idgi!!!

the scene with the FBI guys on the yacht would work so much better if the actor playing Belfort conveyed a hint of roiling menace between the lines.

The point of the scene is that Belfort is a buffoon, not the Machiavellian schemer he thinks he's being.

I know, and that's just uninteresting and redundant.

Zacharek:

Scorsese doesn't pass judgment on his characters, which at first seems like a plus. But he can't get a fix on the tone; the movie has the intentionally sour spirit of Goodfellas, but none of its grim humor.

What, exactly, does he think of these people? His portrayal has no sharpness, no skepticism.... Scorsese is one of the few great old-guard filmmakers with the clout to make movies on this scale, and this picture — dreary, self-evident, too repetitive to be much fun even as satire — is what he comes up with?

http://www.villagevoice.com/2013-12-18/film/wolf-of-wall-street-movie-review/

omg i hope yr resolution was to not be like this