The Wolf of Wall Street (new Scorsese)

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I liked the movie, but I don't like the movie. Goodfellas I love with all my heart.

make flowers on me (rip van wanko), Tuesday, 15 April 2014 19:21 (ten years ago) link

Can't think of a recent film that succeeds as straight up entertainment the way this does. Lot of opinions ITT don't even compute for me.

circa1916, Tuesday, 15 April 2014 19:32 (ten years ago) link

I can agree if you see "straight-up entertainment" as its filling of The Hangover Part IV niche.

images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 15 April 2014 19:36 (ten years ago) link

You can scrub the floors while watching it, Morbs.

guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 15 April 2014 19:38 (ten years ago) link

scrub? mop? wha?

images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 15 April 2014 19:45 (ten years ago) link

there are so many amazing scenes in this movie, so much incredible and incredibly weird montage, it really looks and feels like nothing else, it makes me sad that some of y'all can't see that, it just seems so obvious to me what an achievement it is

socki (s1ocki), Wednesday, 16 April 2014 21:32 (ten years ago) link

Those scenes would have stood out in an 80-min film.

guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 16 April 2014 21:34 (ten years ago) link

the best part about this movie is that after 80 minutes in you realize you've got another 99 joy-inducing minutes to view.

christmas candy bar (al leong), Wednesday, 16 April 2014 21:36 (ten years ago) link

i think someone mentioned upthread that scorsese wasn't good at comedy, which i thought was amazingly wrong. the funny bits in his films are some of the best bits and funnier than you find in most comedies (albeit in different ways.)

christmas candy bar (al leong), Wednesday, 16 April 2014 21:38 (ten years ago) link

there are so many amazing scenes in this movie, so much incredible and incredibly weird montage, it really looks and feels like nothing else, it makes me sad that some of y'all can't see that, it just seems so obvious to me what an achievement it is

― socki (s1ocki), Wednesday, April 16, 2014 4:32 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

really? maybe i should see it again, but it seemed very much of a piece with late (that is, post-goodfellas) scorsese to me. (hugo was a big, dreary exception to the rule.)

scorsese is great at comedy! or at least can be. in fact I like his more broadly comic films best of all. i wouldn't say I like his very self-serious ones LEAST, but I don't hold raging bull in as high regard as many.

espring (amateurist), Wednesday, 16 April 2014 21:42 (ten years ago) link

I would've been cool with Scrunchy Face's 20-minute country club contortions in an 80-min film.

guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 16 April 2014 21:44 (ten years ago) link

i also found the tone and directorial approach of this film somewhat hectoring by about an hour in. eventually it became pretty wearying. i spent most of the last 45 minutes wanting it to end.

i think i've said it elsewhere, but the most impressive scenes in this film for me were some of the quieter, less showy ones.

espring (amateurist), Wednesday, 16 April 2014 21:44 (ten years ago) link

i think this movie's moral force comes in large part from its relentlessness. it just... keeps going, and at every moment seems to be asking, so, you still like these guys, huh? still having a good time?

goole, Wednesday, 16 April 2014 21:50 (ten years ago) link

one of my favorite scenes/moments that has been stuck in my head for the last few days is when Leo's first wife finds him in the limo with the duchess chick, when they're standing on the sidewalk in front of the hotel/casino and there's that repeated shot of them from across the street where it's just this huge wall of reflective brass and windows and lights and him looking defeated and her with her hands on her hips

I love it

set the controls for the heart of the sun (VegemiteGrrl), Wednesday, 16 April 2014 21:53 (ten years ago) link

it also doesn't give you the moral get-out clause of having them not enjoy their lives. or learn anything.

xp

goole, Wednesday, 16 April 2014 21:54 (ten years ago) link

i think this movie's moral force comes in large part from its relentlessness. it just... keeps going, and at every moment seems to be asking, so, you still like these guys, huh? still having a good time?

― goole, Wednesday, April 16, 2014 4:50 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i don't get it. films have proven again and again and again that we'll enjoy the company of/sympathize with all kinds of sickos if the film broadly aligns us with them. i recall one such film, i think it was called "the man who drove a taxi" or something. there's also really no big moral conundrum to finding the leisure activities of a bunch of assholes compelling to watch and thinking they should really be in prison.

i guess i don't think the film is any kind of great achievement in manipulating the audience into an uncomfortable moral position.

espring (amateurist), Wednesday, 16 April 2014 21:58 (ten years ago) link

also the film has its usual comeuppance reel (which felt especially overfamiliar and tired, I felt like I was watching a remake of Goodfellas frankly).

did I mention that I basically liked this film?

espring (amateurist), Wednesday, 16 April 2014 22:00 (ten years ago) link

Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and Goodfellas are such wholly realized works of art, Scorsese's viewpoint on the morality of his characters doesn't much interest me (which is what I think people mean when they discuss the morality of Wolf of Wall Street--not the characters, but the director's attitude towards those characters). It's superfluous; the works are complete.

Wolf of Wall Street struck me as such as shrill, repetitive, obvious, and self-imitative mess, Scorsese's viewpoint on the morality of his characters doesn't much interest me--whatever he thinks, it's not going to save the film, or make it any worse.

clemenza, Wednesday, 16 April 2014 22:24 (ten years ago) link

im with goole on this. i think the movie is in a pretty venerable american tradition as well: the inverted horatio alger via elmer gantry story. at the risk of being pedantic: it's a movie about the desiring underbelly of ideology. that's why the relentlessness is key, the repetition compulsion which defines the movie for me. it's like that simpsons rake joke: it goes from funny and diverting to "ok we get it" to blunt and repetitious and then into a whole new sad/desperate weird and profound place which seems to mix compassion for its villains along with an almost calvinist disgust for them. it's like when tarkovsky or someone holds a shot so long you go past boredom into somewhere new with it. i mean, as slocki points out, the tonal shifts within scenes (the tonal shifts within tonal shifts!) are just amazing.

ryan, Wednesday, 16 April 2014 22:32 (ten years ago) link

i may go too far here but Goodfellas almost seems staid and classical compared to the madness of this movie. it's pleasures are rather straightfoward, its "moralism" easily digestible (of the having and eating cake variety).

ryan, Wednesday, 16 April 2014 22:36 (ten years ago) link

shrill, repetitive, obvious, and self-imitative mess

i guess my point is not that the movie isn't this these (though we could quibble) but they are not contrary to it being a "wholly realized work of art."

ryan, Wednesday, 16 April 2014 22:38 (ten years ago) link

scorsese says he modeled this a bit more on casino iirc, which has the same sort of OTT decadence and unhinged behavior (and a literal wild west setting for all intents and purposes) and the more insane scenes of domestic turmoil.

christmas candy bar (al leong), Wednesday, 16 April 2014 22:39 (ten years ago) link

i dont think ive seen many movies where not only is it hard for me to identify the feeling im having, but that i am possibly having several feelings which cannot reconciled.

ryan, Wednesday, 16 April 2014 22:39 (ten years ago) link

I dunno -- that's the case with most good movies, I think.

guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 16 April 2014 22:42 (ten years ago) link

If you really want a minority opinion, i feel about goodfellas the way the recent detractors feel about this

recommend me a new bagman (darraghmac), Wednesday, 16 April 2014 22:42 (ten years ago) link

a literal wild west setting for all intents and purposes

Casino has always struck me as being about what happens when you remove family and ethnicity and ethnic neighborhoods from American life, and this feels a bit the same way. Post-neighborhood.

That's So (Eazy), Wednesday, 16 April 2014 23:05 (ten years ago) link

i may go too far here but Goodfellas almost seems staid and classical compared to the madness of this movie. it's pleasures are rather straightfoward, its "moralism" easily digestible (of the having and eating cake variety).

― ryan, Wednesday, April 16, 2014 5:36 PM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well, after almost 25 years of tributes, homages, and ripoffs, it's absorbed enough in our minds that it kind of <is> classical if not staid now.

Damnit Janet Weiss & The Riot Grrriel (C. Grisso/McCain), Wednesday, 16 April 2014 23:08 (ten years ago) link

i don't think you can really characterize goodfellas as "staid"

espring (amateurist), Wednesday, 16 April 2014 23:27 (ten years ago) link

I wasn't, but I'm phone posting and could have phrased better.

Damnit Janet Weiss & The Riot Grrriel (C. Grisso/McCain), Wednesday, 16 April 2014 23:29 (ten years ago) link

both this and american hustle seemed to be actors having a good time play-acting wearing funny facial hair and costumes, with only louie c.k. actually embedded into the movie world.
american psycho was like that too, except with chloe sevigny as the only real inhabitant.

Philip Nunez, Wednesday, 16 April 2014 23:36 (ten years ago) link

"staid" or not, it's always struck me as one of the more ingratiating of scorcese's films.

ryan, Wednesday, 16 April 2014 23:37 (ten years ago) link

(i should add that i love it anyway, of course)

ryan, Wednesday, 16 April 2014 23:38 (ten years ago) link

i keep reading goodfellas was supposed to be a comedy, but even the joe pesci clown scene isn't played like one. every scene in wolf feels played like I should watch out for danny mcbride to pop out of the corner.

Philip Nunez, Wednesday, 16 April 2014 23:40 (ten years ago) link

it's a comedy AND a drama

beat that!

espring (amateurist), Thursday, 17 April 2014 00:03 (ten years ago) link

you mean like Noah?

Philip Nunez, Thursday, 17 April 2014 00:46 (ten years ago) link

That's why I stayed off this thread for the most part--saying how much you hate something over and over becomes shrill and tiresome itself very quickly. I'd much rather be on the other side, defending something I love.

clemenza, Thursday, 17 April 2014 01:13 (ten years ago) link

man, when it goes from them in the storm-tossed ship, cuts to the ladies dancing with the italian rescuers, and then leo sees the rescue plane blow up and doesn't say anything... it's moments like that just won my heart

also the scene with coach taylor is definitely the best movie convo of the year

socki (s1ocki), Thursday, 17 April 2014 03:28 (ten years ago) link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-Md3sFW4AM

, Wednesday, 23 April 2014 02:47 (ten years ago) link

def. fewer bikini models in the real thing.

also the scene with coach taylor is definitely the best movie convo of the year

who is coach taylor?

espring (amateurist), Wednesday, 23 April 2014 04:08 (ten years ago) link

friday night lights

cmon mayne

set the controls for the heart of the sun (VegemiteGrrl), Wednesday, 23 April 2014 04:09 (ten years ago) link

never seen it

espring (amateurist), Wednesday, 23 April 2014 05:20 (ten years ago) link

but oh yeah, that was the best scene for sure. where they meet on belfort's yacht?

espring (amateurist), Wednesday, 23 April 2014 05:20 (ten years ago) link

ya

socki (s1ocki), Wednesday, 23 April 2014 13:55 (ten years ago) link

you should watch FNL ams

socki (s1ocki), Wednesday, 23 April 2014 13:56 (ten years ago) link

That scene is some script judo, just flipping it.

Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, 23 April 2014 14:14 (ten years ago) link

its all about coach's eyes in that scene

socki (s1ocki), Wednesday, 23 April 2014 14:21 (ten years ago) link

I wonder who Coach will play in the monk movie

images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 23 April 2014 14:22 (ten years ago) link

if it's the art monk movie, he should play "coach"

christmas candy bar (al leong), Wednesday, 23 April 2014 16:21 (ten years ago) link

Coach was wonderful in The Spectacular Now.

guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 23 April 2014 16:25 (ten years ago) link

otm

set the controls for the heart of the sun (VegemiteGrrl), Wednesday, 23 April 2014 16:36 (ten years ago) link


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