The Wolf of Wall Street (new Scorsese)

I've had a few people complain they don't have the time to watch this movie. They do, however, seem to find the time to tweet about game of thrones every week.

Tweeting takes less time than watching a really long film

It's not that long, come on.

i think you mean FUN, cuz that's what a ripoff artist's druggy life is, altho a lesson for us all.

― images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), Monday, April 14, 2014 3:18 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you remind of the censors who insisted on sticking a moralizing title card on the end of the public enemy

yeah, no

it's a fucking numbing boring movie

this movie was pure delight!

I tend to agree with Morbs. The problem is that the movie wasn't fun enough in ways I tend to respond to. They should've forced that woman to cut her hair off with a chainsaw.

this movie was pure delight!

― christmas candy bar (al leong), Tuesday, April 15, 2014 11:32 AM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"5 rolled up dollar bills! it's a blast!"

I've had a few people complain they don't have the time to watch this movie. They do, however, seem to find the time to tweet about game of thrones every week.

― Popture, Monday, April 14, 2014 7:19 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Tweeting takes less time than watching a really long film

― forum enthusiast (wins), Tuesday, April 15, 2014 7:27 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, but when you figure in the time also eaten up by: (A) Watching (and re-watching the show); (B) Reading blogs, recaps & think pieces about the show; (C) Posting to Facebook about the show; (D) Bitching on Facebook about spoilers on Facebook...

I just find it a bit rich when friends complain about movies being too long, and then on to the next topic bragging about binge-watching G.O.T., Breaking Bad, Homeland, Mad Men etc.

I've tried not to say much on this thread, as I'm so far away from the people who like it, there's not much chance of bridging the divide. I am surprised that anyone would think my problems with the film (or any fan of Scorsese's previous work who hates it) have anything to do with morality--like maybe we think Travis Bickle and Johnny Boy and Jake LaMotta are fine upstanding citizens? My problems are 100% aesthetic. Completely. Absolutely.

can you expand on that a bit? is the film aesthetically rote or turgid?

just an honest question: what makes this less aesthetically successful than, say, Goodfellas? because the latter is more entertaining, possibly more fun?

Sorry, posting at work...There are so many ways Wolf of Wall Street is a feeble, embarrassing echo of Scorsese's earlier work. Really basic stuff--the performances, the way music is used, the sharpness of the dialogue, the humour, the seriousness, everything. I continue to be amazed that I seem to be in a minority here. I'd say it's closer to turgid than rote, I guess. It hammers home one simplistic point for three hours. If I'm really, really objective, I'll concede that Goodfellas could also be reduced to one or two basic themes: Being a gangster is actually a lot of fun, until it catches up to you, but even then, it might be more fun than not being a gangster--something like that. So I don't love Goodfellas because I think it has something really important to say. It's just done with so much more style, inventiveness, originality, etc., etc.

The problems of the film are CERTAINLY to do with morality in part, just not in the way simpletons (pro and con) think.

this movie was really boring

seemed pretty middlebrow

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

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.

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

You can scrub the floors while watching it, Morbs.

scrub? mop? wha?

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

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

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

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.)

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.

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

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.

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?

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

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

xp

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.

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?

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.

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.

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).

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."

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.