You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
The Wolf of Wall Street.
180 minutes of film making that proves beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Wolf was great, and at times not so great.
Wolf was way too long, but at the end I wanted to know more.
The film was poignant and compelling. The film was also a tire spinning aimlessly in Arkansas mud.
Though the characters were flawed like burnt glass, I rooted for them, I cared about them.
The protagonist is worth tens of millions and dollars and he leads a life style that is morally and spiritually bankrupt.
This film is nothing if not spit in your face gratuitous.
Wolf is a raw nerve ending covered with gasoline and baked on high. It is the equivalent of viewing a fireworks show from the nose cone of a rocket.
Sometimes less is more. The Wolf of Wall Street’s philosophy is more is more and at times not enough.
This film is decadent like birthday cake in a champagne filled jacuzzi.
It’s sensual over load like a spoonful of sugar covered with honey coated in chocolate sauce.
This film is easily 45 minutes too long. I could have cut a minute out of every scene and made this film a one bathroom break experience.
Instead, Scorsese goes off the reservation. He explores these extra, non-essential scenes in-depth. By themselves, these scenes are interesting vignettes. But as part of a larger body of work, they detract from the natural flow of storytelling, often bogging the story down at multiple junctures.
If it were a submarine, there would be too many cracks to surface.
Once these non essential scene end, the story needs a jolt from a defibulator paddle to get back on track.
Scorsese is a master craftsman. I can only think he had a blank check creatively and he turned this interesting story into a self-indulgent opportunity to shove obscene excess down our throats.
It was a Grateful Dead show where everyone plays whatever they feel like for 20 minutes.
How self-indulgent is Wolf? How gratuitous are the scenes?
The film opens with a man blowing cocaine through a straw into a woman’s bottom.
I think the idea is to establish that this film is set in the drug crazed 80’s and everyone is getting high.
Well, cocaine, a straw, a bare butt, that’s certainly one way to illustrate it.
I’ve been to Tijuana where the elusive donkey show is rumored to live. I’ve looked down the hole of a Mexican toilet cut into the floor of my jail cell.
I have been to unsavory places where denizens, demons and degenerates have gathered. The opening minute of Wolf took me places I had never been.
Perhaps that is what film making is. I had never been to a Death Star and George Lucas got me there. He just didn’t have Obi Won pulling up Darth Vadar’s skirt to do it.
Good film making should take me places without insulting me, or offending me.
This scene made me cringe. I was embarrassed, watching it with a member of the opposite sex. My God, what must she think? I suggested this film. She will certainly think I am a creep.
I found myself apologizing for the moment, as if I was the film maker.
Thanks Scorsese. Way to go.
I am not saying I couldn’t handle the opening scene. I’m just not sure I should have to. I hadn’t settled the pop corn on my lap before I was watching a human act so unimaginable, I still am not sure what this couple was actually trying to accomplish.
And that’s my point. Scene after scene after scene that could have been left out and the film would have moved forward and made much more sense.
And nobody has to apologize to anyone, right?
The movie got an R rating. That alone makes me wonder. I think the people who gauge these type of things either fell asleep at the wheel or got paid off.
Saying this movie is R is like saying Debbie Does Dallas is an art film.
Wolf was at times absurd. And like the freak in the circus, you pay your money to stare.
Instead of the film maker using nuance and subtlety, this film stuck a lens inside a human orifice and filmed it from the inside out.
Truly, parts of this film were revolutionary. There were several times when I felt my mouth fall open and my mind say “holy crap”
This film was extraordinary one moment and labored the next.
Parts of this script were tremendous. The dialogue between characters reminiscent of a Quentin Tarrantino narrative. But from my perspective, there were also so many pages that could have been deleted and nobody would know the difference.
This film was nominated for 5 academy awards. It didn’t win any. That’s curious.
Jonah Hill did win a best supporting actor Oscar and he was, in a word; great. He told Howard Stern he was paid $60,000 for the role. In movie world? That’s like the wizard of Oz paying the scare crow in straw. It’s insulting. But the actor said he would have worked for free to be in a Scorsese film.
Leonardo DiCaprio is also brilliant. I have seen him grow as an actor. From the King of the World to the Wolf of Wall Street. I would say, and many others would as well, this was his finest moment. He was all colors of the acting spectrum. He became this character. He became evil and wild and outlandish, He showed his ass and dropped the F bomb so many times I lost count. He became a villain, a scum bag, a drug addict but also a father, a son and a friend.
DiCaprio didn’t win the Oscar. Martin Scorsese lost, too. The film lost on every academy level. It’s recondite to be sure since this film borders on special.
I think the academy shunned this film because of the controversial elements it depicts. It literally becomes raw debauchery and spectacle and celebrates avarice. Perhaps the uncomfortable length of time it took to wrap it up in a cinematic bow is what turned voters off.
If the film’s purpose is to immerse me in the all consuming life of a greedy, drug induced, whore chasing, womanizing, money stealing, wall street manipulator; it does that and some more.
New York stockbroker, Jordan Belfort is this man. If he is anything like DiCaprio’s portrayal, then he has lived a life I read about once on a bathroom wall.
Belfort’s story is a handbook for corruption and greed and excess. And it all comes at the expense of countless customers who were bilked out of millions.
When this film ends, there is so much to think about. It is good and bad and sad and unsettling.
The F bomb is more prevalent than mosquitoes around a boy scout latrine.
Some films have a scene that includes full frontal nudity. This movie has a dozen.
Nothing is left to the imagination.
This film captures the raw disgust and excess of the late 70’s and early 80’s.
It shows everything but live child birth and the slaughter of a cow.
After the 2nd hour, those scenes woven into the film might not have caused so much as a murmur.
It’s so much sex and drugs that it at times takes over the film. I wonder if scorsese was taking 7-14’s as he yelled action.
If this film was an aircraft, it was taken over by the Taliban and flown into an 80 story whore house.
Did I like the film? Very much.
Would I have cut out 45 minutes of excess that slowed down the story? You bet.
But I’m not a master film maker.
Martin Scorsese is that man.
And after this academy awards; we both have the same number of Oscars.
Hmmmm. Makes you wonder.
Life’s Crazy™