The Wolf of Wall Street is the fifth collaboration between Academy Award-winning director Martin Scorsese (Raging Bull, Taxi Driver) and leading Hollywood man Leonardo DiCaprio (Titanic, Revolutionary Road). With apologies to Gangs of New York, this is arguably their most daring work together. I would rank this as the third-best movie the duo has combined for. 2010’s Shutter Island is in my all-time top 15. This movie was magnificent in its storytelling and captivating ability to draw you in and keep you hooked for its duration. I think Shutter Island is Scorsese’s best work and, arguably, DiCaprio’s too. I know I am in the minority, and many people laugh at this notion, claiming that Shutter Island doesn’t even come close to cracking Scorsese’s all-time top five. I would rank The Wolf of Wall Street slightly below the departed and slightly above Gangs of New York. In my opinion, The Aviator is the worst of the bunch. Scorcese has eight Best Director Oscar nominations and one win (2006’s The Departed). The Wolf of Wall Street could earn him a ninth nomination, but it will not earn him a second win.
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Category Archives: 2013
All Is Lost (2013)
The trailer for J.C. Chandor’s (Margin Call, A Most Violent Year) All Is Lost was incredible. It shows a man Robert Redford (The Sting, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), sailing his yacht in the middle of the sea. He has a smile on his face. The sun is shining brightly. The wind is blowing lightly through his hair. The shots of him are broken up by black frame credits that say “Alone at Sea,” “A Man Has Only Himself,” and “His Will To Survive.” And then we go to a shot of him sleeping in his cabin. Seconds later, water comes gushing in, and it’s obvious he has crashed into something. Then we see all hell breaking loose, including high waves, heavy rain, his belongings hitting off the walls as a result of the yacht rocking back and forth, his yacht capsizing, him saying goodbye to his craft from a raft, unsuccessful attempts at making S.O.S. calls, and flare guns shot into the night sky. Critical praise is flashed on the screen, making it seem like this movie might be the most suspenseful movie ever made. Of course, it’s not, but the trailer makes it look that way.
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Her (2013)
I imagine some parts during the filming of Spike Jonze’s (Adaptation, Being John Malkovich) Her, where everybody on the set wondered What the heck are we doing with this movie? or something similar to this using much more profane words. The premise for this movie is weird. The trailer was strange. The film was odd. I remember seeing the trailer for the first time and thinking there was no way this movie could succeed. No conceivable way was that any right man would fall in love with his operating system. That is one of the most unbelievable things I have ever heard. But as I watched the trailer a few more times and started hearing some of the praise associated with the movie, I began to wonder if this could be one of those rare treasures you find at the end of the calendar year. The first reason was that it reminded me of the Ryan Gosling movie Lars And The Real Girl, a film that I had convinced myself beforehand that there was no way I would enjoy but ended up loving. The second reason was because of how Joaquin Phoenix (Walk The Line, Reservation Road) was portrayed in just the trailer alone. He has played so many serious/dark characters recently that seeing him flash that smile with that goofy mustache over and over in a two-minute trailer made me curious to see a side of him that we haven’t seen in a very long time. Phoenix was PERFECT for this character, as I will mention later in this review.
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12 Years A Slave (2013)
The typical moviegoer of America will soon be introduced to one of the next big names in feature film directing when the Academy Award nominations come out in a few weeks. Steve McQueen will undoubtedly earn a Best Director nomination for 12 Years A Slave, a movie that some say is the greatest movie about slavery ever told. While those who have seen the film have talked a lot about the acting (and rightfully so), this movie, like any great movie, needs a captain to steer the ship and bring the story together. McQueen does just that. In a few weeks, the typical moviegoer will ask what else McQueen directed. Well, this is just his third feature film. He has 23 “Shorts” that he is credited with directing, but only two feature-length films. But these two other films weren’t just any movies. Much like Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight, Memento), everything that McQueen has touched in his young career has had a purpose. He doesn’t have any “throw away” movies. The movies he has tackled thus far in his full-length directorial career have been on slavery, sex addiction (Shame), and the true story of an Irish Republican Army activist who, in 1981, protested the way British guards were treating him and fellow inmates by embarking on, perhaps, the most internationally recognized hunger strike since Gandhi (Hunger). While Shame and Hunger earned critical acclaim, many people didn’t see them. Shame is a brilliant movie about the taboo topic of sex addiction. As a result, I expected much more when I saw Hunger after this. While I appreciated many aspects of Hunger, I found it rather dull. So now, with 12 Years A Slave, McQueen has three movies I admire and two that I think are brilliant.
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The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013)
I suspended my beliefs at the door when I stepped into the theater to see Francis Lawrence’s (I Am Legend, Water For Elephants) sequel to The Hunger Games. I couldn’t do this for the first movie and was dissatisfied. I wanted the film to be more of a survival movie and less a fantasy/science fiction movie. When I wasn’t able to do that, I just started to question everything that was happening. I liked The Hunger Games but did not love it. I liked it enough to continue with the franchise, though. Every successful fantasy book franchise is being made into a movie these days. I have never read a word of a book or seen a second of the film in either the Harry Potter or Twilight series. I get the cult-like following to both of these movies, though. I do understand how you can be engrossed in a franchise like this. I have not read, nor will I read, any of The Hunger Game books, but I will continue to see the movies, even though I am upset about the franchise’s finale Mockingjay, split up into two movies. I am also lukewarm about the Insurgent franchise coming to the theaters. They showed a trailer for the first Insurgent movies before Catching Fire, and I was disappointed to see Kate Winslet on the screen. In these movies, you don’t need superstars outside the main character or two.
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