The Wolf of Wall Street (new Scorsese)

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.