The Wolf of Wall Street (new Scorsese)

If you want to get to a really meta-level, scroll down and read about the guys who financed this movie.

Mr. Aziz’s film company, Red Granite Pictures, was largely unheard-of when it took over the financing of “The Wolf of Wall Street,” announcing its intentions with a party at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, complete with a fireworks extravaganza and concert by Kanye West. The Hollywood Reporter called it “an audacious hello to the movie industry.”

In the same way that Goodfellas feels like a string of mobster stories that are so close to being incredulous that you know they're true, this one feels like back-to-back stories of "You'll never believe it, this broad was standing there and..." or "...and I was so fucked up that I couldn't walk but somehow...."

and furthermore...

“Global investigators now believe much of the money to make [Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street] about a stock scam was diverted from a state fund 9,000 miles away in Malaysia, a fund that had been established to spur local economic development,” report Bradley Hope, John R. Emshwiller and Ben Fritz for the Wall Street Journal.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/malaysias-1mdb-the-secret-money-behind-the-wolf-of-wall-street-1459531987

All this stuff is reinforcing my feeling that the whole thing was just one big disgusting commercial for working on wall street.

Talk to some of the film's (younger, mostly) fans--it seems to have worked.

reminds me of a surprising convo i had years ago: people were talking about requiem for a dream (i think?) and a guy i didn't know came out as a recovering drug addict by saying "there's no such thing as an antidrug film. if you show someone doing drugs, it doesn't matter how shitty it is, it looks amazing to an addict"

similar to what Jarhead Swofford said about 'antiwar' films.

was thinking about this movie recently and its valorous (imo) lack of moralizing. i think one key narrative connection is with something like elmer gantry.

You might also enjoy a film genre known as hardcore porn -- similarly valorous lack of moralizing.

Lol Jesus. Cmon y'all. Condescending moralizing is the worst

Maybe it should have had a parental advisory

People still sweating Wall Street when every Yale grad is moving to Silicon Valley

All them gangster movies sent my little paulie to the shtreetss, sheee, and now you aintnevergonnatakehimalive, shee?

Harden up lads ffs.

started re-watching this last night and it really is incredibly funny. the first hour or so really matches the velocity and breakneck pace of Goodfellas and every scene has something funny going on it, constantly one-upping itself w the parade of buffoonish assholishness

otm

It's a masterpiece of assholery

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B8U6KQ_CAAAqUtM.jpg

yep the first hour is great then it goes in for 4 more hours

The wedding dance scene alone is worth the price of admission

I still think the quaalude fight is perfect physical comedy.

A lot of great moments that are unfortunately in a terrible movie.

What's the ratio?

I still think the quaalude fight is perfect physical comedy.

Many ppl who have never seen a Jerry Lewis film say this of this Lewis hommage

Was Jerry Lewis into crip jokes too?

Many ppl who have never seen a Jerry Lewis film say this of this Lewis hommage

There is plenty of room for both, Morbs. Jackie Chan does not negate Buster Keaton or Harold Lloyd, thank goodness.

this really is way too long and all the Goodfellas parallels are v obvious (luude freakout leading up to bust = coke + helicopter freakout). Goodfellas is taut and *short* though, makes me wonder if all the bloat in this was not in some ways v intentional, since the whole thing is about bloated excess.

That's sort of how I watch it. I mean, Wolf is 30 minutes longer than Fellas, which isn't radical. Tastes vary, obviously, but I can't think of 30 minutes I'd necessarily want cut from this, any more than I can think of 30 minutes Fellas should be longer. Different stories. Fellas is clearly superior, but I'm not sure I can understand why someone would like that one and outright hate this one, even if it is just more of the same but less.

started re-watching this last night

otm tbh

"the sides cured cancer, that's why they were so expensive"

WoWS and Silence back-to-back is a pretty impressive directorial achievement, not sure of another director who would be capable of making two films of imo near-equal quality (i lean more towards Silence, maybe) that completely different in almost every respect.

A pretty clean guilt-transcendence pivot.

Silence is def the better film

but yeah it is a p interesting 1-2 punch

havent seen silence just want to say this movie rules

wouldn't cut a second of it

Its ~drunk on power, full bore live for today~ nihilism is genuinely electric and frightening. Walked out of it in a daze. I think it's a great film and a fitting end to the Goodfellas, Casino unintentional trilogy.

I think when Leo casually watched the plane crash and thought about what it meant to him personally was when I knew it was special.

haha that plane crash was like the Departed's "the rat symbolizes obviousness" redux

https://media.giphy.com/media/5VIjIJ9YO5lyU/giphy.gif

The Wolf of Wall Street (1929) started out as a silent movie, but was reworked to include sound. It was released in February, eight months before the Wall Street Crash of 1929. The plot involves a trader who corners the market in copper pic.twitter.com/43nmY0oa5E

— Silent Movie GIFs (@silentmoviegifs) April 5, 2019

The Wolf of Wall Street (1929) is today believed to be a lost film. The only part of the movie known to still exist is this brief montage sequence created by Slavko Vorkapić pic.twitter.com/W5pzqDvDWX

— Silent Movie GIFs (@silentmoviegifs) April 5, 2019

I like the zeppelin.

Very Terry Gilliam.

The fact that WOLF OF WALL STREET’s financing continues to lead to active prosecution is pretty perfect pic.twitter.com/zUMzN4lmfM

— Vadim Rizov (@vrizov) July 7, 2019

Goodfellas is taut and *short* though, makes me wonder if all the bloat in this was not in some ways v intentional, since the whole thing is about bloated excess.

there were some fairly comical things in the second half but tonally they didn't make me laugh much, which i think was an intentional function of the length and bloat - like they had to be made pathetic/ridiculous enough that you could see them as comical without finding them funny, because the funniness of the first half was part of the enticement of the audience but it needs a moral corrective that follows the plot.

surprising amount of slow motion in this - it's been a while since i've seen his older movies so i forget but he is fond of it, right? which seems caught up with the tone. all the scenes of office debauchery sliding into slow-mo or seeming sped-up like hints of benny hill, seemed like it voided all those scenes of their potential titillation.

I probably said this up thread but I think Scorsese’s moral seriousness is the reason he doesn’t shortchange the allure of “bad” behavior. Like they say about war movies, you kinda can’t help but make this stuff look fun/exciting...but he sees that the only way out is through, which is why on rewatching a 2nd or 3rd time the desperation and sadness that seems to drive everything/everyone seems downright obvious. I’d be willing to bet that on some level Scorsese sees making films itself as morally dubious...at least movies like this (though Silence has similar overtones)...and so they operate as confessions, and they keep that charge of titillation that all good confession surely has.

lord make me chaste, but not yet

this is a great thread, one day i will maybe watch this movie and discover who is right and who is wrong

it really says something about the audience that wants characters wrapped in immoral excess

every broke american is a temporarily disenfranchised millionaire, who would totally be the good millionaire if they actually made it. and if they weren't, then we should grant them some leeway, because they meant to be the good millionaire.

the audience is embodied in the movie by the two security guards who watch margot robbie's character taunt her husband sexually through the nanny cam

incredible movie

otm

Brad otm nelson