The Wolf Of Wall Street

3.5 Stars (out of four)

Martin Scorsese's most recent film, The Wolf of Wall Street, is an undeniable classic.  But just about everybody should be appalled by it and hate themselves for loving it.  Like Seinfeld, the characters depicted in this film are the lowest, basest, most reprehensible and repugnant human beings ever committed to celluloid this side of Hitler.  But, God help me, they are some of the most interesting and entertaining figures I have seen in years.

The only synopsis of the film I can muster is men behaving badly.  And getting incredibly rich in the process.

That's really all you need to know about the plot.  Even Leo breaks the fourth wall several times during the film (his character is narrating the story) and says directly to the audience when explaining complicated stock deals that you don't really care about what's happening, let's just move onto the next super-charged scene of bacchanalian excess.  And that really sums the film up. Energy and excess.  The poster is not hyperbolic of its depictions of the events therein.  Just about every vice is on display here, but it is presented with such verve, such aplomb, that you want to be directly in the middle of it.  It is Wall Street on a steroids, meth and cocaine mixer.

Like most of Scorsese's character studies, it is about evil men in evil situations.  Scorsese has often been a grotesquely distorted funhouse mirror of Aesop, telling twisted morality tales with over-the-top characters in almost every one of his films from The Departed, Goodfellas, Mean Streets, Casino, Raging Bull to even Cape Fear. But there is a key difference between all those great films and this one.  In the case of The Wolf of Wall Street, there are no consequences, no judgement in the movie's denouement.  In every other film, Scorsese has fearlessly showed that a criminal lifestyle is exciting.  It is glamorous.  It is fast-paced and never boring, and yes, it does pay at first.  But in all the aforementioned movies, he has also been very pointed in saying that the lifestyle has a cost and punishment, and his characters usually meet a bad end, whether they be good guys or bad guys.  Scorsese's worlds are very dog-eat-dog, and not great to inhabit.  They injure and scar everyone they touch.  But usually the bad guys get what's coming to them in the end.  In The Wolf of Wall Street, this doesn't happen.  It is an amoral movie about amoral characters, who don't really suffer in the end.  Despite Leo's character going to prison, he makes the point that he's rich in a place where everything is for sale.  The end is the same as Seinfeld's:  that despite their going to prison for being the most selfish and self-absorbed people on Earth, it really isn't a big deal.  This is satire in its blackest of black hearts and will be off-putting to many, but my God, it is a finely and entertainingly-told tale.  It is not for everyone.  If you have delicate sensibilities about anything, this is not the movie for you.  But if you can stomach it, it is well-worth your time.  A truly adult film made for adults.  I wish there were more of them.

Frozen (2013-Disney)

3.5 stars (out of four)

I have to make an apology to most people who saw this before me and I was dismissive of their opinions.  But in my defense, this movie has been horribly marketed because I thought it would be similar to the animated crapfest, Happy Feet.  But Frozen is truly a very good animated film.  It is not quite like anything Disney has done before.  It is very similar in tone and theme to the many films from Disney, but also vastly different.

The story is based on Hans Christian Anderson's The Snow Queen.  The main story focuses on two  Norwegian sisters Elsa and Anna.  They are the heirs of a kingdom on a fjord and are inseparable as little girls.  It turns out the elder, Elsa, is born with an ability to create snow and ice.  She and Anna play together in Elsa's worlds of ice and snow until she accidentally injures Anna.  Their parents take them into the woods where trolls revive Anna but warn their parents that Elsa's ability will only get more powerful as she ages and she could easily kill her sister if she were to cast ice into Anna's heart.  Her parents immediately separate the two sisters from each other and close their castle walls to protect everyone until Elsa can learn to control her power.  Soon after, her parents are killed in a sea voyage, leaving the girls to grow up isolated from each other and the world until Elsa's official coronation.  When the big day comes, during an argument, Elsa plunges the kingdom into permanent winter.  When the people are terrified by this, Elsa exiles herself.  Anna tries to go after her to convince her to stay.  In another argument, Elsa accidentally injures Anna again, this time in the heart.  In order to save Anna, only an act of true love will heal her.  The rest, I will not reveal to avoid a spoiler, but it is great and unexpected.

At first glance, this appears to be another Disney princess-theme film, with princes included.  But this is a film under Disney's newest head of animation, John Lassiter, one-time head of Pixar.  He was one of the creative forces behind Toy Story, Monsters, Inc., A Bug's Life, Up, Cars, Wall-E, Ratatouille, and others.  Anyone even remotely familiar with these will also realize that Pixar never approached their material and subjects in a orthodox fashion.  They were always fresh, original and unexpected.  Since he has taken over Disney's animated department, Lassiter has helmed Tangled (which I haven't seen yet) and Wreck-It Ralph (see review).   Now Wreck-It Ralph was fun, but not too inspired.  I will be watching Tangled soon.  But Frozen was fun AND inspiring, but from an unexpected source.  Rather than romantic love, the movie focuses on the bond of familial love, in this case, two sisters.  Also, it focuses on the necessity being happy with yourself before you can be happy in anything else.  Both of these themes are much more positive roles for our sisters, nieces and daughters to live by.  What I loved so much was that the movie was not what I expected.  I am usually pretty good at picking movies, but this is one that slipped through the cracks.  This is why I love movies.  They always have the capability to surprise me, and Frozen is a prime example.  I recommend it to anyone at any age.  It is really good.

Cleopatra (1963)

2 Stars (out of four)

50 years ago, 20th Century Fox made the sensational flop, Cleopatra with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.  Much has been made of the making of this movie, that even though it was the highest grossing film of 1963, it ran at a loss since it did not make up its cost.  It was the most expensive movie ever made (adjusted for inflation), very diva-ish behavior from Liz Taylor, and most notoriously, that Liz Taylor and Richard Burton started a sexual relationship on the set, even though they were married.  It is one of the movies that suffered from toxic press, which many assumed had a huge effect on box office.  But the critical element that I never knew was whether the movie was any good.  So I set out to see if the movie was any good, and I have to say...sort of.

To start with, the movie is like a Doors song.  I think that The Doors never made a 3-minute song that they could perfectly do in 7 minutes.  This movie is way too long.  At FOUR hours, eleven minutes running time, this is the butt buster of butt busters.  It is almost as if they tried to use every piece of footage shot in the film.  There are so many superfluous scenes which draw it out way much longer than it needs to be.  Antony and her death scenes are almost fifteen minutes alone.  The other problem I have with the movie is something that dates the film.  It was obviously made in 1963.  It was taking a very puritanical look of the Cleopatra story.  It shows some very unpleasant material, but because of the morals of the day, they could not show graphic violence or sex, yet they insinuate a lot of it.  There are some almost nude scenes with Liz, probably very shocking in its day.  HBO's superior Rome miniseries is so much better as it delved into the backstory so much more deeply than this movie did.  This is the most dynamic and interesting period in Roman history, and the story is very dramatic.  This particular movie is obviously a showpiece to flatter its stars, and because of that, there are long, lingering scenes that could have been easily truncated.  However, there are some good aspects as well.  The acting is top notch by Taylor, Burton and Rex Harrison.  There really aren't too many duds in the cast.  The production design is also fantastic.  The costuming and sets are beautiful and lush.  It easy to see where most of the money went.  Every scene is beautiful.  There are even some exciting battle scenes.  So all told, the goods offset the bads, so that's why I gave it essentially a 50%.  It is not great, it is not horrible.  The incredibly long running time and drawn out scenes make it a tad boring.  It is worth at least one watch.

Lone Survivor

3 Stars (out of four)

Lone Survivor is being advertised as one of the best war movies since Saving Private Ryan.  I think that's overselling it a bit, but it is good.  Wahlberg is pretty adept at picking decent films, and this one is no exception.  It is the true story of Operation Rec Wings, where SEAL Team 10 was sent on a mission to capture/kill Ahmad Shahd, a notorious Taliban commander who killed several US servicemen as well as several Afghan civilians he thought we collaborating with the Americans.  All but one of the team was killed when they were discovered, as the title suggests.

SPOILER ALERT!  If you don't want to know what happens, don't read the following paragraph.  Sorry about the spoilers, but I have to give them to talk about the aspect of the movie that I find interesting.  The movie opens with shots of SEAL BUD/S training and then propels us into Afghanistan cerca 2005 at Bagram Aitfield.  Our group of guys are introduced and quickly get a mission to kill a notorious Taliban commander in an operation code-named Red Wings. Four of them are flown out into a remote area in Kunar Province and they quickly discover that this commander is surrounded by several hundred fighters.  The SEALs abort the mission, but run into an old man and two boys who are goat herders.  They detain them and briefly argue about whether to kill them or not to avoid being compromised.  The SEALs let them go, and quickly find themselves in a horrific firefight.  All but Wahlberg are killed within the first day (not the spoiler, it's in the title).  The second day, Wahlberg runs into another afghan who takes him to his village and gets word to the nearest American base that Wahlberg is in the village.  The Taliban find him later in the day and are about to behead him until the afghan stops them and tells them Wahlberg is his guest.  The Taliban commander threatens and then later comes back to kill everyone in the village.  The village fights back, and then the Americans show up and take Wahlberg back to safety.

What the movie was showcasing besides the bond of these soldiers, was the 2000-year-old Afghan code of Pashtunwali, which obligates an Afghan to protect a guest in his house no matter the consequences, among other things.  It also makes a very important point that is lost in many war movies like this that many, if not most Afghans, are not the Taliban, and in fact, hate the Taliban, but they are stuck in the middle of a conflict that was not their making.  This code of conduct helps makes sense of a brutal world, as many traditions do.  It is refreshing to see a war movie that does not totally demonize the other side through gross stereotypes.  However, while the movie rightly lauds Pashtunwali, it conveniently forgets that this code is indirectly responsible for bringing the U.S. there in the first place.  The Taliban originally invoked the same code to defend al-Qaida when they sheltered bin Laden, Zawahiri, and senior al-Qaida fighters and leaders after 9/11.  Tradition can sometimes work both ways, but what is important to note is that Afghans take Pashtunwali very seriously and are fiercely honest in their application of it.  The other curious omission was any information about posthumous Medal of Honor recipient Lt. Michael Murphy who died in this mission.  At the end of the movie, pictures of the real members of Operation Red Wings are shown.  It mentions their names and ranks, but nothing else.  Lt. Murphy was the first Medal of Honor recipient in Afghanistan, as well as the first naval recipient since Vietnam.  I am not criticizing, but it is a very notable oversight.  My only other real complaint is that while the movie is good, it doesn't really have a lot of depth like Saving Private Ryan or Platoon has.  The movie is essentially one long action film.  It is exciting and tense, but in the end, is not overly thought-provoking as other, more superior war movies have been.  It is pretty violent, but not exceedingly so, but my tolerance for that is pretty high, so many may disagree with me on that.  All in all, it was good, but not great, but is worth seeing.