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    #26
    The Wolf of Wall Street

    The terrible thing is that DiCaprio is nominated for an Oscar (his fourth), but has no chance of winning. He's been the best actor on the planet for 15 years, but the poor lad makes the same mistake time and again: he is seen to enjoy the company and, on the odd occasion, bed of the occasional supermodel.

    Doesn't he know this is the 2014?

    A serious artist of the Academy cannot do important work and still rut with Brazilian hard-bodies in the surf off Acapulco. Won't someone think of the craft. The legacy?

    His film choices have been mostly superb too.

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      #27
      The Wolf of Wall Street

      It's jack Nicholson's fault. Too much fun.They can't abide it.

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        #28
        The Wolf of Wall Street

        There's no denying Wolf of Wall Street is a superbly-produced and acted movie, but I tend to go along with the camp that's a little irked by the 'fun' tone of the film. By contrast, Goodfellas tended to veer into admiring the indulgences of Henry Hill, but by the end, it gave payback and found Hill a nameless, broke schmuck, condemned to live a life he'd strived to avoid, ending the chapters of his criminal life on a bitter, worthless note. Wolf of Wall Street's coda of anything approaching remorse or regret seems throwaway and even Belfort's time in prison is 'you know what? It ain't that bad.'

        I can appreciate that the characters are there to be laughed at rather than with, but the comedy seemed bright and warm in its own scuzzy way without being the black humour that was probably demanded of it. Nearly three hours of rich money-makers screaming with happiness as they made dicks of everybody prepared to give them their money tends to rub against the nerves a little, even if you're accepting and giving yourself over to such a cinematic world.

        I think it's because most of us are still living a life where wheeler-dealer city folk pretty much fucked it up for everybody else to monumental degrees and are still being rewarded for it in some way has made it perhaps a tad uncomfortable to sit through three hours of a twat's colourful and over-indulgent financial existence and watch him getting a slap on the wrist. I'm wondering if we'd queue for a whacky comedy based on the life of that colourful, lovable, immensely-likeable old rogue Fred Goodwin as he presides over a culture full of ruthless, money-hunting scumlords prepared to go all out to add another extension to their country estates.

        I liked Wolf of Wall Street a lot, and it was indeed very funny - Scorcese's first earnestly comedic film - but the laughs kind of dried up when Belfort punched his wife in the stomach. It leaves a bitter taste in the mouth somewhat (even more so when it turns out he never did such an act - it was chucked in for effect). That aside, it's an enjoyable epic of man's greed made fun.

        Right. Now let's see a film about Madoff. No tits. No drugs. Just a cold, hard movie about a small, homely and avuncular man who managed for most of his life to make astonishing amounts of money on the foundation of absolutely nothing except trust of the gullible and the willingness of an entire financial community that was so impressed by the amounts he made that they never questioned how he came to amass so much until it was too late, leaving, ironically, the financial crash of 2008 to bring him down.

        Come on Hollywood. It's a story that wants to be told so much it's practically waving at you.

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          #29
          The Wolf of Wall Street

          They were normally between the main film and it's supporting feature though, no?

          There's a fifteen minute interval in laurence of arabia, or there certainly was on the video I watched. I watched it through to just listen to the soundtrack.

          Wasn't there an interval in the first lord of the rings movie?

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            #30
            The Wolf of Wall Street

            Wasn't there an interval in the first lord of the rings movie?

            No, there wasn't. I was watching Patton with the commentary by Francis Ford Coppola who bemoaned through the intermission that was left in the Blu-Ray edition that it was a pity it wasn't brought back so the old, traditional joys of popping out for more popcorn and other treats so you could prepare for the rest of the movie (especially if it was a time-consuming arse-number) could return.

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              #31
              The Wolf of Wall Street

              ian.64 wrote: Scorcese's first earnestly comedic film -
              Not really sure what you're meaning with earnestly comedic, but King Of Comedy and even After Hours were comedies. KoC is a 10/10 too, imo.

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                #32
                The Wolf of Wall Street

                I meant in a wild belly-laugh kind of way. It's almost Martin Scorcese doing John Landis, really, verging on the outlandish. King of Comedy and After Hours had a touch of bleakness to them, an underlying dark core to them both. Wolf of Wall Street is, given its ravenously greedy protagonist, a bright affair with a fiery energy moving it.

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                  #33
                  The Wolf of Wall Street

                  Yeah, I didn't find King of Comedy funny at all. I don't think it was supposed to be. It's grim, difficult viewing. His routine when he finally gets to do it is quite harrowing, I thought.

                  It's a fantastic film. The bit where Jerry Lee Lewis walks round the block of his office just so people will stop and admire him is genius.

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                    #34
                    The Wolf of Wall Street

                    King Of Comedy is very funny in that black-cringey type way. De Niro & Bernhard are definitely intentionally hilarious.

                    * It certainly works on many levels though. I think it's probably his best work. Goodfellas probably being his only other 10/10.

                    Wolf is funny ha ha in places, yes, but there aren't that many belly laughs in it ( The ludes one's really). So, as a three hour straight comedy it sort of fails. It's a curio really. I did enjoy it, but it's quite a messy, odd film.

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                      #35
                      The Wolf of Wall Street

                      I suppose the word 'lively' would suit it, but 'odd' suits it better. Yes, it is an odd film, lively, yet it doesn't know what it wants to be.

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                        #36
                        The Wolf of Wall Street

                        Cinema near me still has intermissions. And it still uses Pearl & Dean for its advertising. And tickets are not much more than a fiver. http://www.regent-marple.co.uk/

                        As luck would have it the Wolf of Wall Street is on this week.

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                          #37
                          The Wolf of Wall Street

                          It was slightly over-long at three hours, but had it moments. Jonah Hill's quaalude sketch was nearly as good as his drug scenes in '21 Jump Street'.

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                            #38
                            The Wolf of Wall Street

                            The one thing I didn't really like was the music (compiled by Scorsese's old crony Robbie Robertson). Five seconds of a song, then immediately on to something else, then another, then another. That's a ludicrous way to put together a soundtrack.

                            The music was odd. In fact I woke up the night before last thinking about it two weeks after seeing the movie. I'm still trying to figure it out, but some 4:00am thoughts:

                            There was a heavy emphasis on black music: Bo Diddley, Elmore James, Howlin' Wolf, John Lee Hooker, Ahmad Jamal, Cannonball Adderly, Cypress Hill, Mingus etc. But there was barely a black person in the film (I remember one guy on the selling floor.) In fact there really was an awful lot of "white." The sellers, all the hookers — underlined by their nakedness, the lines of coke, even the colour of the Lambo.

                            Scorsese being Scorsese I doubt this was unintentional, but I'm still not sure how to read it. Counterpoint for the sake of it? Social commentary, the white folk got the money but the black folk make the art? Audio/visual contrast of economic realities?

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                              #39
                              The Wolf of Wall Street

                              I didn't think I'd bother with this one, but I caught the beginning the other day and figured I needed to watch the whole thing.

                              I think (at the moment at least) that I've finally decided that it's a fantastic bit of film-making, with some really great performances (Kyle Chandler makes the most of his time too), and I think it really it deserves to be seen...

                              and I don't think I've seen a better personification of the USA on screen.

                              And, to be honest, I'm not even sure if I liked it. It is... just.... so... much.

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                                #40
                                The Wolf of Wall Street

                                Daze wrote: But Marlo is a psychopathic murdering drug-dealer and that is knocked over your head over and over again. You see over and over again how his horrible actions affect those around him and his community regardless of intent.

                                You never see that in The Wolf of Wall Street because it`s not the point. The movie is a comedy, not a serious dramatization of wall street or a commentary on greed. It`s saying "Hey! look at these hilarious douchebags being rich assholes! come watch actors you love engage in ridiculous acts of debauchery! This whole movie reminds you of the time you did all of the drugs!" What's not to love? not to mention It's incredibly well directed and is the best performance DiCaprio has ever given.
                                This.

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                                  #41
                                  The Wolf of Wall Street

                                  Isn't Jordan Belfort making a killing as a 'motivational speaker' on the back of the Wolf of Wall Street success? Some morality tale that one...

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                                    #42
                                    The Wolf of Wall Street

                                    He is, though he is paying a significant portion of his earnings back to his victims in the form of court-mandated restitution, so there is some social benefit to his continued existence.

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                                      #43
                                      Watched this for the first time last night, as a mate who was hosting the Fury Wilder fight seemed to think it was one of his favourite films of all time. As I expect the rest of what he watches is a mixture of the Fast and the Furious and softcore porn, he's probably right. But DiCaprio and especially Scorsese should really have sat down and had a word with themselves before unleashing this on the public.

                                      Unless, ah-ha, that's part of the film's hidden message? I'm selling you shit, because you think it's great, but it's all a con, and look at me, I'm on a fuck off great yacht spending your money! If so, very clever.

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                                        #44
                                        it is a bad film

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                                          #45
                                          I went to see it at the cinema and remember it as unpleasant and boring. Characters whose world view is left unchanged by experience are not uncommon in Scorsese's work but it is hard to think of any quite matching Belfort for one note assholery.

                                          It is depressing to think that the film has fans who think that it is in any way cool. There was an immersive theatre production based upon it in London recently that had problems with members of the audience assaulting the performers.

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                                            #46
                                            I've said this before (perhaps even on this thread), but it is genuinely terrifying how many yoof here are "inspired" to pursue careers in finance by the film.

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                                              #47
                                              Where are the next generation of maverick cops going to come from if young heads are being turned by that sort of thing?

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                                                #48
                                                It has a few great performances and cool cinematography, but I watched it again recently and didn’t like it as much as I thought I had the first time.

                                                As with Goodfellas or Casino*, Scorsese assumes his audience will understand that these people are not admirable and see how badly it ends for them. But many people just don’t. They only see the money.

                                                Scorsese could have avoided some of that by not allowing Belfort himself to be in the film. He also could have shown some of the real damage his crime did to real people, although I can see how it would be hard to fit that into the narrative as he had set it up.

                                                At least the narrators in Goodfellas and Casino are aware of how lucky they are to still be alive and do admit to some of their mistakes. And those films end with the narrators telling us that the mob’s power has been greatly diminished.

                                                But Belfort doesn’t seem to have learned much and the power of people like him has not diminished much, as far as I can tell. The scams have changed, perhaps.

                                                Perhaps Scorsese took this criticism on board with The Irishman. It’s hard to see how anyone watching that could want to be like those guys. The narrator, played by Robert De Niro, doesn’t make much attempt to justify his actions - perhaps because much of the story is a lie. And he uses captions to show that almost everyone involved died violently.



                                                * Or The Godfather or Breaking Bad or even in a lot of more straightforward good vs evil stories like Star Wars or Batman - a lot of people always seem to think the bad guys are more interesting or admirable.


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                                                  #49
                                                  And, in case you haven’t read, this film about a giant scam was financed by a much bigger scam.

                                                  https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/...real-life-scam

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                                                    #50
                                                    Originally posted by Hot Pepsi View Post
                                                    Perhaps Scorsese took this criticism on board with The Irishman. It’s hard to see how anyone watching that could want to be like those guys. The narrator, played by Robert De Niro, doesn’t make much attempt to justify his actions - perhaps because much of the story is a lie.
                                                    Arguably Scorsese lays it on a bit too thick with the ending, where he's talking to the priest and asking if he can be forgiven if he doesn't feel sorry. And the earlier phone call with Hoffa's wife, for that matter.

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