the wolf of wall street

[Os Cangaceiros]

From just the little bit I've seen on TV w/ regards to previews for this, and some of what I've read about it, it looks like something I'd be interested in seeing. I've always been a fan of Martin Scorsese. I have a somewhat favorable view of Leonardo DiCaprio as an actor...I don't think he's great or anything, but I think he's fairly capable. And I like white collar crime/degenerate rich people movies, so...

Anyone else?

[tachosomoza]

I'm definitely seeing it. Love pictures like this.

[Prometeo liberado]

Will sit this one out and watch Lawrence of Arabia at home. Now that's goddamn acting!

[Brandon's Impotent Rage]

I've been hearing comparisons between this movie and Caligula....

Considering I've actually seen Caligula (uncensored), I highly doubt it.

[Os Cangaceiros]

I guess they're probably just referring to general debauchery/hedonism

[theghostofnestor]

This film is ok, compared to 'transformers' and 'dude where's my car?' That's the best thing I could say. It shocked me at how damn poor it is considering its scorsese and how much could have been done with the subject matter. It had a few funny one liners that I forgot as soon as I finished watching. Bloody awful film.

It's not even worth downloading.

[tallguy]

It's okay, as far as any Hollywood movie can be okay. It simply plays up and glorifies the hedonism and, if it has anything moral to say, it is about the morality of the individual rather than any kind of contextualising of individual behaviour within the larger cultural stage of a corrupt system that facilitates and rewards such behaviour.

In other words, this film merely makes, at best, an implicit moral argument about capitalism being run badly and steers predictably clear of anything even approaching a critique of capitalism itself.

I'm not necessarily even criticising Scorsese. He is probably constrained by the studio and went as far as he could with it.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Yeah it's a sort of wall street Caligula - it's excessive hedonism but not glorified at all. I've read criticisms of the movie as "glorifying" misogyny and greed but I don't know how anyone could see that movie and not feel as though rather than pixels/celluloid, the film was imprinted on a long strip of pure moral indignation. It glorifies wall street as much as Caligula glorifies the Roman Empire or Dangerous Liaisons glorifies the French nobility.

It's true that no one they conned is shown in the film, their "moral toll" is not gone into and in fact Spolier:everyone get's away without major consequence... except that they can't make money in the same way - which is actually realistic. But since when does Goodfellas spend lots of time showing heroin addicts or people who've been robbed or grieving family? That's not the point of these kinds of movies. Like most of his movies it's basically saying there's something (morally) wrong with "the american dream" because it's build on competition and bloodying people around you.

[Jimmie Higgins]

It probably goes without saying, but don't see this expecting a real left wing subtext or critique of capitalism.

It's interesting to me that two of the most prominent baby-boom era directors made films kinda about the crisis this year and both seem to be about self-deluded rich people who use others. Not really our generation's grapes of wrath. Even when culture is down on the rich, it still focuses on them and keeps regular people invisible. Another reason for class movements... Pop Culture will rediscover that regular people have feelings and aspirations and agency too.:lol:

[Delenda Carthago]

I loved it. Awesome movie.

[Diirez]

I thought it was fantastic. The movie was written well, the acting was amazing and the character development was extremely well done.

At first the movie glorifies being rich but towards the end and especially at the end, it shows you how broken all the characters are and how they use money to hide that.

[Os Cangaceiros]

I saw this tonight and it was everything I thought it'd be. SEE IT.

[Nakidana]

Yeah I'm definitely going to watch it too. When I first saw the trailer it didn't seem like anything special, but the IMDB rating is through the roof.

[Os Cangaceiros]

One thing that I disagree about re: the reviews on the film is that the film's central character is totally unlikable and without any redeeming characteristics. Even though he was basically a depraved, self-obsessed con artist with extremely questionable views on, well, a bunch of different subjects, there were also some flickers of humanity in him, IMO...for example, early in his career as an up-and-comer he didn't come across as a total scumbag, plus he was apparently very generous even to strangers, like that one woman who he gave 25,000 dollars to in order for her to support her son. He seemed pretty loyal to his friends too, trying to tip off Jonah Hill's character that he was wearing a wire in that one scene. He just got wrapped up pretty tight in the fast life he was living and it almost destroyed him.

[Stalin Baratheon]

I felt a bit of "working class pride" when the FBI agent returns to his house in metro after refusing a bribe from the "Wolf", it was like "we are poor but we have more dignity than these motherfuckers from Wall Street".

[Jimmie Higgins]

One thing that I disagree about re: the reviews on the film is that the film's central character is totally unlikable and without any redeeming characteristics. Even though he was basically a depraved, self-obsessed con artist with extremely questionable views on, well, a bunch of different subjects, there were also some flickers of humanity in him, IMO...for example, early in his career as an up-and-comer he didn't come across as a total scumbag, plus he was apparently very generous even to strangers, like that one woman who he gave 25,000 dollars to in order for her to support her son. He seemed pretty loyal to his friends too, trying to tip off Jonah Hill's character that he was wearing a wire in that one scene. He just got wrapped up pretty tight in the fast life he was living and it almost destroyed him.

Yeah, good point. It's pretty clear imo that he is not supposed to be a "Con-man" in an inherent/personality sense -- but that in order to be good at doing that job, you must be a con-man. In one of the first scenes when he gets a job with a firm he even says, "Well isn't the point to make the clients money so that we both benefit" and he's told that this view is naive and just a line to hook "suckers" for investments.

It's also interesting the way the main character evokes class in order to gain support/justify what they are doing. His character is Itallian-american (?), him and Johna Hill are presented as white-ethnic New Jersey guyse, and their firm takes some made-up WASPY name and the main character's motivation to his salesmen is that they are going to go after rich investors, not nickle and dime middle class people looking for extra income. So he presents his graft as a sort of Robin Hood and even the press calls him "a reverse Robin Hood", stealing from investors to give to himself and his salespeople. I think it's all a lie, the skewed "redistribution" line, and I think the movie also thinks it's a lie. Really I think like the characters in Goodfellas, their "class warfare" really amounts to: all these WASPS and businessmen are getting rich by any means possible, so should we because it's better than being a working class sucker, working all the time just to maintain the same life.

In terms of if there was any humanity left in him at the end of the movie. I don't know, I sort of doubt it. Movie ending spoilers:He had a chance for a kind of redemption by not ratting out his partners - which would have vindicated his stated motivations of "all for one, one for all - against the rich investing suckers". He half-tries to bring up his moral dilemma but his wife dosn't even really consider it. But from then on he doesn't really acknowledge it and the narrative of the movie conspicuously ignores it in favor of a "happy ending" of sorts. I think this is connected to what I saw as one of the main threads of the movie: getting rich (the American dream) is about throwing everyone else under the bus, everything else we tell ourselves and others are just lines we give - sales pitches. As long as the money keeps flowing, nobody gives a shit. This is how Mathew McConehey (sp?) starts out telling us and I think the rest of the movie is a sales pitch line. He never has real consequences and the film ignores how he ratted everyone out to get off easy so I think that the attitude of the film is that, no, he "got through" he didn't grow or recover humanity. Considering the context of a movie about Wall Street being a big con based on ripping people off, it would have been a lie if, like a lot of bad mainstream reviews demanded, he had learned anything or been redeemed or faced any legal or moral consequences - American capital hasn't had to.

[Creative Destruction]

it was technically well done, the acting was great, but it wasn't a story i particularly cared about. i started just getting completely fucking bored after the first hour and a half and it never redeemed itself. it's just continuous, unmitigated dickheadedness. the characters themselves weren't interesting, there was no good drama and tension. i guess if anyone could have made this movie, it would've been Scorcese, and since he didn't write the story, he can't be blamed for it.

compared to Goodfellas and Casino, it's a pretty terrible movie. those characters and settings were interesting, the music was good, there was good tension, the story held my attention throughout and there was some sort of moral reckoning for a lot of the characters, either in being snuffed out by their organizations or having all of their shit taken from them. with Wolf of Wall Street, there was no reckoning for anyone. the other side for him was to show up at fancy seminars, get paid and now (in real life) the dude goes on lecture circuits selling his shit story.

and i don't really care if this is "a slice of how much crap the american dream is." there are plenty of other movies that made that point and so much better and more effectively. the problem is that this movie apparently didn't make its moral point so well, about the american dream and all that, since there are wall streeters who saw the movie and thought it was some kind of celebration of their lifestyles.

it's not clear yet to a large part of the population who the "bad guys" really are. there's still a substantial amount of people who think that the people who took out loans they "couldn't afford" are the bad ones for "living beyond their means" and that the wall streeters who enabled all that shit are just the ones who enabled them to do that. and in a society that still does value, to a great extent, stepping on a lot of people to get to the top or to, frankly, just carve out an existence, the message imparted by the film isn't the best one to have at this point in time. pretty goddamn irresponsible, in fact.

[Jimmie Higgins]

and i don't really care if this is "a slice of how much crap the american dream is." there are plenty of other movies that made that point and so much better and more effectively. the problem is that this movie apparently didn't make its moral point so well, about the american dream and all that, since there are wall streeters who saw the movie and thought it was some kind of celebration of their lifestyles.Well I don't think we can blame the movie for Wall Street people being dense. In fact, the movie predicts this responce as well: when the economic newspaper writes a hit-piece on the firm and morally condemns them only to result in the firm becoming the hottest go-to place for up and coming stocksters. It shouldn't be so surprising that people on Wall Street have a different interpretation... the film "Wall Street" is much more of a liberal moralizing bleh version of this kind of story (imo) and yet the ironic "Greed is good" speech is championed as an un-ironic mantra.