The Wolf of Wall Street

Jordan Belfort

 

THE WOLF OF WALL STREET                B         
USA  (180 mi)  2013  ‘Scope  d:  Martin Scorsese       Official site

Adapted from the memoirs of Jordan Belfort, a noted stock swindler from the 1990’s, eventually indicted in 1998 for securities fraud and money laundering, where he was ordered by the court to pay restitution in the amount of $110 million dollars to those he defrauded, where to date, after spending 22 months in prison, less than $12 million dollars has been recovered.  Reportedly sober since 1998, Belfort has written two memoirs, The Wolf of Wall Street and Catching the Wolf of Wall Street, modeled after the writings of Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities, both of which, along with the selling of the movie rights, generated about $2 million dollars in proceeds.  The film is largely a reconstruction of his personal life during the heyday of his notorious financial schemes, where at the height of his drug indulgence he was taking 22 different medications, including 20 Quaaludes a day, balanced by cocaine, morphine, Xanax, valium, and anything else he could get his hands on, where his skill, apparently, was being good at balancing them all out.  He flew his own helicopter while high on Quaaludes, sank his 167-foot yacht in the Mediterranean, and drove his unbuckled 3-year old daughter through a garage door while high.  In order to get a reduced sentence, Belfort ratted out his partner, Danny Porush (played by Jonah Hill) who hasn’t spoken to him since, as well as all of his associates.  Porush also went to prison and now runs a medical supply company out of Florida and lives in a $4 million dollar mansion and drives a Rolls-Royce convertible, while Belfort gives self-motivation speeches on the lecture circuit.  While in prison, Belfort was convinced to write his memoirs by his cellmate, none other than Tommy Chong (from Cheech and Chong), who was serving 9 months in jail for selling bongs over the Internet.  One of the embellishments of the film is that Belfort worked on Wall Street, an exaggerated claim to make him look bigger than he really was, where he and his associates come off as fools who made a lot of money without being very smart at all, where this portrayal is more a caricature of a delusional, doped up version of his ridiculous antics that made him an easy target for the FBI.  Despite writing hundreds of pages of self-serving revelations, what’s perhaps most revealing is there’s not an ounce of remorse for the people he swindled.   

While it should be said that once again the use of music in a Scorsese film is utterly sensational, especially the use of Chicago blues artists like Howlin’ Wolf, Bo Diddley, Elmore James, and Willie Dixon, as their hard driving music feels like a harshly realistic underbelly to the lavish comforts of this white Wall Street crime fantasia that is largely a three-hour exposé of a con artist.  Unfortunately the film has the brash feel of a con job itself, as from start to finish, Leonardo DiCaprio as Jordan Belfort, an obnoxious, utterly despicable, Wall Street broker wannabe whose only client of interest is serving himself, is continually selling the audience a bit of sleight of hand fakery, as it’s not a performance so much as a satiric mockery of a greedy and insatiable man who can never stop feeding/selling himself 24 hours a day, as this is simply how he presents himself to the world, so hopped up on uppers and downers that nothing about him is real.  While the first person narration has an immediate resemblance to Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) in Goodfellas (1990), where one of the taglines is “GOODFELLAS Meets Wall Street,” but any resemblance stops there, as this is more like “ANIMAL HOUSE (1978) Meets Wall Street,” as the main characters are continually stuck in a state of permanent adolescence.  Another film for an Attention Deficit Disorder American culture that thrives on narcissism, reflecting a kind of exaggerated self indulgence rarely seen on display, where much of it plays out like a Ken Russell fantasia, or even an extension of Leonardo DiCaprio as Gatsby in Baz Lurhmann’s extravagant 1920’s world of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (2013).  In each, the story is about the corrosive effects of wealth and the emptiness of the decadent lifestyle, where the world of luxurious wealth on display is a shell game that is eventually exposed as a sham, leaving behind little more than a man disgraced, destroyed by immorality and the continuing effects of drugs and alcohol.

While the film can be highly entertaining, it also never stops being ridiculous, where the biggest problem is the monotonous repetition of tone, which literally repeats itself for three hours, where the entire world is a façade, and no one for a single moment is ever believable, so while there is exaggerated character on display in Belfort and his associates, there is no character development, as they remain in the same self-centered mode throughout the film.  Unlike Mel Brooks’s THE PRODUCERS (1967) which is a hilarious musical farce about two greedy men that can’t help themselves, even after they’re imprisoned, this one stops being funny after awhile when the audience grows tired of the same profanity-laden shtick, where guys are continually yelling and swearing at one another, where their idea of living the good life in the 90’s is over-consumption of Quaaludes and cocaine mixed with heavy doses of alcohol, while also having non-stop sex with strippers, often several women at the same time.  There is never any intimacy, any growing relationship, or even a hint of love, as it’s all a grotesque display of lies, betrayal, and overindulgence.  While Belfort wasn’t born rich, he did learn how to steal by generating a continual stream of new commissions on otherwise worthless stocks from one of the best brokerage houses on Wall Street, tutored by none other than Matthew McConaughey, an off-the-wall broker that mixes cocaine, martini’s, and masturbation to reach the perfect state of relaxation for such a high pressure job.  His approach is replicated throughout the film, as new hires are little more than cheerleaders for this foolproof system where everybody gets rich except the investing customers.  When the FBI gets wind of what they’re doing, Belfort is hounded throughout by special agent Denham, Kyle Chandler, where Belfort flaunts his money in their face in a gesture of invincibility, but he becomes so consumed with making money that it literally becomes his way of life, where scamming others is what he does for a living, so why not flaunt it?    

This fantasia of wealth includes all the usual suspects, an immense mansion in the most prized real estate area on Long Island’s Gold Coast, a luxury yacht, a Lamborghini sports car (in real life it was a Mercedes), Swiss bank accounts, and all the amenities, including a nonstop array of strippers, recreational drugs, and sex, where he literally trades in his wife for a newer model, much as one does for a newer model car, marrying the supermodel of his dreams, Naomi (Margot Robbie), a blond bombshell trophy wife with a similar appetite for kinkiness and the finer things in life.  They are the model party animal couple of ultimate extravagance, sailing the seven seas on an immense yacht, where often the tone of the film will revert into a satiric mode, where the lifestyle of the rich and famous is flaunted into the face of the audience, where the fantasy is often indistinguishable from the reality, as it’s one and the same.  The playful use of music is the most original aspect of the film, where out of control cultural overindulgence is often expressed by punk covers of earlier pop songs, like the Lemonheads - Mrs Robinson YouTube (3:27), or Devo’s own Devo - Uncontrollable Urge - From Urgh! A Music War HQ YouTube (3:06).  There seem to be plenty of badly improvised moments, especially between DiCaprio and his sidekick Jonah Hill, much of it expressing the surreal effects of drug use, using way over the top physical comedy, but it’s all layered in a tone of silly lightheartedness, as if there’s little or no comprehension of moral consequences, where the lifestyles of conniving, overprivileged businessmen are maintained by paying the right people off to look the other way, including the police, all so they can continue their delusions about needing to be the center of attention without ever having to deal with any moral accountability.  In many ways, this film is strangely reminiscent of Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers (2012), especially the mocking tone and the use of a surreal dream landscape to reflect a netherworld where all moral boundaries have been crossed.  The problem with both films is the bombastic style of filmmaking, both anthems to cultural narcissism and self-indulgence, where the exhilarating rush of excess through grandiose artificial stylization is just as obscene and hyperinflated as the depraved subject matter depicted onscreen, where a two-bit con artist becomes a legendary cultural figurehead for a day, a kind of rebellious Ferris Bueller anti-hero who bucks the establishment, where the film so completely identifies with the soulless lifestyle that it’s eventually as spiritually void and heartless as the culture it rails against.    

The Sitter

THE SITTER               C                    

USA  (81 mi)  2011  d:  David Gordon Green

One way to approach David Gordon Green’s descent away from art films and into the more lucrative Hollywood industry is to think of this movie as little more than an extended short, as basically this is a one idea film, all the things that could go wrong with a completely inept and unqualified babysitter, using a variation on WC Field’s contemptuous view of children theme and then attacking the audience with anarchistic set pieces that will either leave you laughing at the derisive nature of the beast or bolting from the theater in disgust.  If the idea is simply to provoke a reaction, then Green has likely succeeded, though this was probably more fun on the set than the finished product onscreen, likely the case in far too many comedies.  What’s missing here is a cohesive whole, as instead it’s something of a sprawling mess of various likely improvised ideas that never really come together.   

Rather than a just missed comedy, this may be a huge quasi experimental misstep that is amusing by just how far away from comedy this movie occasionally travels, reminiscent of the Macaulay Caulkin HOME ALONE (1990, 1992) series which was one extended misadventure filled with ludicrous set ups and sight gags that in themselves became ridiculous after awhile.  What this mostly resembles, however, are the Doctor Seuss children stories, where kids are left pretty much on their own with no discernable adult presence where they run amok creating havoc and mischief for a brief period before everything returns back to normal by the time their parents get home.  That’s pretty much the film, which includes the random screw ups of the adult sitter in charge, the man-child Jonah Hill as the clueless Noah.  It always helps if the kids can have mature moments when they act much older than their ages, allowing each, by the end, to benefit from the time spent with one other. 

From the outset, using his familiar cinematographer Tim Orr, Green loves to use inventive camera shots, from double to triple screen, superimposed imagery, slow mo and fast action sequences, and even a sideways cam, all a bit offsetting and disruptive from the comfort zone of the viewer, but also offering a taste of the world being viewed from a slightly different vantage point that has tilted askew.  While some may find stereotypes offensive, they are fairly prevalent in comedy sketches, and this film has a field day exuding the pleasures of exploitation flicks which are in the wheelhouse of this director who grew up with 70’s and 80's films.  Taking a riff on the American mainstream family portrayal, Green takes a look at living in the posh neighborhoods of the lily white suburbs with overly pampered and alienated kids, clueless parents who have their own sexual repressive and adulterous issues, where one parent routinely has to look away in order to maintain the high quality of life to which they’ve become accustomed, where morality is a smokescreen, something you purchase in order to impress others with instead of upholding any personal convictions. 

This is the backdrop of the story, where Noah, an aimless, overweight and unemployed twenty something who has amounted to nothing in life is still living at home with his single mother, where they both commiserate over the evils of his absent dad who has left them high and dry, now running a highly successful business yet still lags woefully behind on his alimony payments.  Noah routinely degrades himself for female companionship, where self-absorbed Marisa (Air Gaynor) allows him to pleasure her while keeping all other sexual contact off the table.  When his mom finally has a chance to go out and have an evening of her own, it’s nearly spoiled when the couple she’s going to a social event with loses their babysitter at the last moment, allowing Noah to fill in, where he’s interestingly introduced to three misfits, Slater (Max Records), the overmedicated kid who's pretty much afraid of all human contact, Rodrigo (Kevin Hernandez), the adopted Central American child with a penchant for explosives and wearing cowboy boots with pajamas, and Blithe (Landry Bender), the reincarnation of Jonbenet Ramsey, an adorable young child with an eye on becoming a celebrity with a flair for gossip and the excessive use of sparkle make up. 

When Marisa calls from a party offering full sexual contact if he’ll score some coke and come pick her up, all bets are off on conventional babysitting as Noah stashes the kids in the back of the family minivan for a rollicking escapade on the town, where he has a few stops to make along the way, all of which explode in his face with things going wrong, including a hilarious trip to a warehouse filled with scantily clad male bodybuilders where a gay escort on roller skates (Sean Patrick Doyle) leads them inside to see Karl (Sam Rockwell), the coked up, out of control drug dealer (with his portrait on the wall) who wants everybody to be his friend, actually ranking them by number, where he’s continually challenged to make on the spot readjustments with each new person he meets.  Karl believes in manly hugs, loyalty and likeability, pointing guns at anyone who falls out of line, which is Noah when Rodrigo makes off with Karl’s personal stash.  Turning into something of a spirited, free wheeling romp, where blacksploitation action, gangsta rap, and a gorgeous black girl friend Roxanne (Kylie Bunbury) literally drop out of the sky offering him a reprieve from the mediocrity of life in the suburbs.  A lighthearted story about being true to yourself, it’s a minor riff on middle class complacency, much of which feels generic and is not so much about anything as expressing a message of creating your own unique style of living, where it’s best not to take anyone or anything for granted. While enjoyable at times, it’s also completely forgettable.  

Moneyball

MONEYBALL            B                     

USA  (133 mi)  2011  d:  Bennett Miller

The problem we’re trying to solve is that there are rich teams, and there are poor teams. Then there’s 50 feet of crap. And then there’s us. It’s an unfair game.         
—Billy Beane (Brad Pitt)

Something of a sleight of hand movie, as it focuses all its attention on Brad Pitt as the star, playing Billy Beane, still the current General Manager of the Oakland Athletics since the late 1990’s, where we see him early in his tenure on the field, in the locker room, the weight room, staff offices, on the phone, alone at home or in his car, as the camera follows him around throughout the entire film, where he’s the more flamboyant character, but he’s not what the movie is about.  Not really.  He’s the star, however, so the movie makes it all about him.  His role, however, is rather insignificant, as history has shown, as he barely makes a dent in baseball history, certainly not as this movie suggests.  Instead the real star is so carefully concealed that his name was changed in the movie, where Jonah Hill plays Peter Brand, who was in real life Paul DePodesta, a shy, nerdy guy who sits in front of computers all day compiling statistics, which doesn’t exactly make for good cinema, but he’s the hero.  In a sport that’s all about speed, physical prowess and brute strength, he’s the odd man out, the guy who doesn’t exactly command respect on the field by people who have been part of the game for decades, so they take swipes at him, ridiculing his influence, decrying his baseball knowledge, as he’s never played the game.  Based on Michael Lewis’s book The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, published in 2003, the verdict is still out on what impact these statisticians have had on the game.  For the record, while not shown in the movie, the A's had a sterling pitching staff in the year shown, 2002, including a Cy Young Award winner in Barry Zito with a 23-5 record and the American League MVP in Miguel Tejada, while DePodesta at the tender age of 31 eventually became the General Manager for the storied Los Angeles Dodgers in 2004, the same seat inhabited by baseball legend Branch Rickey who signed Jackie Robinson, but his less than superlative results, trading some of the most popular players while compiling the worst team results in over a decade, eventually got him fired at the end of the 2005 season.  So much for Field of Dreams.      

Channeling his Robert Redford, Pitt looks every bit the part of a man possessed with winning, a guy who spits tobacco with the coaches and has a head for the game, but realizes he plays for a team in a small market that can’t compete with the giant-sized pocketbooks of the New York Yankees or the Boston Red Sox, as they can’t afford to pay a decent salary, so any player that’s any good will eventually be lured by the smell of money.  The Athletics ($30 million dollar payroll) were actually being described as a farm team for the Yankees ($140 million dollar payroll), as New York annually lifted their best players by offering lucrative salaries.  This leaves Beane in a dilemma, as this is not a problem that needs to be addressed by rebuilding their team every year with affordable new players, each one hand selected by their team of knowledgeable scouts, but with a different concept about their approach to the game.  Beane was particularly impressed with how the Cleveland GM actually listened to this bespectacled and nerdy looking fat guy in the corner, a guy that would look uncomfortable in any room, who quietly thwarted his attempts when he entered their stadium to make a deal.  So he hired this guy as an Assistant General Manager and put his mathematical theories of statistics to the test, which took a blasting by baseball people completely upset with the idea of a computer doing their jobs.  As baseball is such a traditional sport, where players are always being compared to the legends of old, like Ruth or DiMaggio, Mantle or Mays, where blacks couldn’t play in the majors until the late 40’s, the idea of change does not exactly come easily or naturally.  Instead the baseball traditionalists, including his own manager Art Howe (Philip Seymour Hoffman) greeted DePodesta with a volley or criticism, where he initially felt like a ruse, or a sick, twisted joke being foisted upon the team, undermined by their own General Manager, as they were seen as a team of collectable spare parts. 

Beane is projected as a tragic hero, the little guy whose situation in life is in constant turmoil, made even worse by his own divorce, where he lives in some closeted apartment setting while his wife (Robin Wright Penn) is living in a lavish estate with a spectacular view overlooking the ocean, where they have a young 12-year old daughter in common (Kerris Dorsey) who has obviously been hurt by the separation.  When Dorsey sings this heartfelt autobiographical song (which turns out to be Lenka - The Show (New Version) - YouTube, a 2008 song covered in the movie by Dorsey:  Kerris Dorsey performs "The Show" by Lenka acoustic song from ...) about being torn apart in that whimsical manner of JUNO (2007), it’s easily the best scene in the film and becomes the driving force in Beane’s life, where he is obsessed with overcoming all possible odds to make things work.  This movie has something of a storied past as well, ironically having to overcome a radical overhaul of its own, as initially Steven Soderbergh was scheduled to direct the film, altering the existing screenplay by developing documentary style interviews to advance the story, which led to his ousting in favor of a more conventional style of movie.  Soderbergh has a spotty history and has been hit or miss in the last decade, but his more varied approach to filmmaking lends itself more closely to the DePodesta method, approaching things from a new or unique angle, instead of the more traditional star driven technique used in this film, which of course, doesn’t tell the whole truth, which is a major shortcoming.  The movie version belies the terrific talent on this team, which is actually the best in the past decade, while giving the impression they're instead a bunch of misfits and nobodies.  Many will flock to this film based on Brad Pitt alone, who is one of the executive producers of the film, but this movie just offers a feel good, tunnel vision, behind-the-scenes sports story that makes Hollywood feel good about itself.  There are some moments of candor, scripted by Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zaillan who worked separately, apparently re-worked dozens of times before the final product, but there is nothing revelatory here.  All sports are more scrutinized by statistics than ever before because of the easy facility of computers, where scoreboards can update batting averages or a pitcher’s E.R.A. as the game progresses and there are hired hands that routinely crunch the numbers.  But sports at all levels are played by athletes who determine their own outcome, where much like the Olympics, there are occasional surprises, but the best players usually win.