The Wolf of Wall Street (new Scorsese)

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.