Tag Archives: leonardo dicaprio

Howling to infamy – The Wolf of Wall Street

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The Wolf of Wall Street - Official Poster - from IMDB.com

The Wolf of Wall Street – Official Poster – from IMDB.com

The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

Director: Martin Scorsese
Writers: Terence Winter (Screenplay), Jordan Belfort (book)
Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie

Oh Leo, my love, why can’t you pick films like this all the time?

Warning: this film is fantastic but if you are sensitive to nudity, drug use, or swearing, you probably won’t want to go see it. There is a lot of all of that stuff, and it is not shy about it.

The Wolf of Wall Street is one of those rare gems where a mix of things that could make a film bad makes it brilliant. It is too long, there is too much sex and swearing and drug abuse, the main characters aren’t all that likeable when you really think about it, and yet it is still a great film.

Set in the 80s and 90s, it follows the “based on a true story” tale of Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio), a broker who whilst the rest of Wall Street crashed, was hooking people onto the idea of investing in companies that wouldn’t make a profit. Charming, driven, and intelligent, this man is the kind of man that will do anything to make as much money as possible, and isn’t afraid of crossing those moral lines that guide most of us. DiCaprio brings that air of sophisticated charm to a role that in another’s hand could have made this film a flop. He is both a despicable human being and a criminal, as well as being inspiring and wonderful to those who work for him. DiCaprio makes greed look both good and undesirable at the same time. This film creates so many conflicts and juxtapositions that it is hard to know whether you want Belfort to succeed or be taken down by the FBI.

(I could rant about how great Leonardo DiCaprio is in this film until the end of time. Seriously, it’s What’s Eating Gilbert Grape good. He should do more physical humour. He is fantastic at it. His timing is impeccable. Oh and that scene in the country club foyer… ok, ranting now controlled…)

With a stellar cast including Jonah Hill, Kyle Chandler, and Margot Robbie, Scorsese has out done himself. Martin Scorsese has never been afraid of pushing boundaries and he does so in almost every scene in this film. It is obscene and opulent and yet I still love it.

I recommend this film to those of you who won’t mind the R+18 rating because you’ll probably love it for all the right reasons. I recommend this film to all those who do mind the R+18 rating because it is one of those films in a million that will make you appreciate your sensibility and your morality all that more.

4.5/5

The wonder of opulence, the sadness of greed. – The Great Gatsby

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The Great Gatsby - Official Poster - from IMDB.com

The Great Gatsby – Official Poster – from IMDB.com

The Great Gatsby (2013)

Director: Baz Luhrmann
Writers: Baz Luhrmann (screenplay) and Craig Pearce (screenplay), F. Scott Fitzgerald (based of the novel by)
Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan, Tobey Maguire, Joel Edgerton, Elizabeth Debicki, Isla Fisher, and Jason Clarke.

Who is Gatsby? The question that haunts and taunts throughout the novel and throughout Luhrmann’s film. Firstly, I have to admit that I love Fitzgerald’s writing but hate the story of Gatsby. It took me a long time to pick it back up after reading the first chapter and I struggled to get through it because I despised the characters, even Nick Carraway. Their selfishness, opulence, disregard for life and love, and use and abuse of the people around them made me sick. But that is what Fitzgerald intended to some degree. He slowly reveals our darkest secrets and shows us our reflection in each of the characters features and flaws. I was anxious going into the film. With Baz Luhrmann’s reputation for over the top theatrics and in your face metaphors it was hard not to be really, especially after watching the trailer for the film. And yet, from the moment the lights dimmed in the cinema and that title sequence began I knew it would all be okay.

The Great Gatsby is a film that transports you back to the mid-20s whilst keeping your feet firmly planted in 2013. The atmosphere, the light, the music, the sounds, everything screams at you with a haunting whisper of our reality. Gatsby (DiCaprio) is the ever hopeful and Carraway (Maguire) is the witness to the demise of hope and innocence. DiCaprio is brilliant. He shines so brightly and broods so grotesquely that there is rarely a moment that you can not believe that he is Gatsby. He is the lost soul who is trying to grasp something he never had a chance of possessing. Carey Mulligan is teamed with DiCaprio like the second side of his coin as the foolish Daisy Buchanan. Her flittering eyes, constantly on the verge of tears, and vacant looks convey the truth of Daisy.

But the man who really steals the film is Joel Edgerton as Tom Buchanan, Daisy’s racist, bigoted, cheating husband. The slow brewing act of Tom is built throughout the film until the moment he takes Gatsby down in a small room of a hotel in New York. Edgerton’s performance is stunning. You are both repulsed by and drawn towards him like Daisy. You want to hate him but you know that in some small way that he is right about Gatsby, and you can’t fault him for that. Everything else, sure, he is a douchebag 100%, but he is right about Gatsby, and Joel Edgerton plays the balance remarkably.

The trailer to this film shows the opulence, the extravaganza, the pomp and ceremony of Gatsby, but what it fails to show is the great moments in between which make this film fantastic. It is the moments of slowness, the moments of Carraway’s reflections, the glimpses of Gatsby’s past, the brokenness of life in the world, and the calm before the storm that make this film great. Baz Luhrmann has managed to give life to Gatsby and Carraway’s friendship and to provide a film that shows both the wonder of opulence and the sadness of greed.

4/5