Wuthering Heights (4/5 Stars)

I “read” Wuthering Heights in high school, and I make sure to put that in quotations because my lasting impression of the book was incomprehensibility. I have an idea of what made it so. I vaguely remember my teacher (forget which one) remarking that there was an original Welsh version (or something like that, maybe English still but a lot of Welsh words) and it was easier to read the translation to modern English version. But I never got around to reading the newer version, and indeed never got all the way through the incomprehensible version I had started reading. Not many books in my life have defeated me, but I was young, and this one did.

I wonder if I would have more luck giving it a try today. I also recall trying to read “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen in high school and not getting past five pages, the dense and high falutin language intimidating my pubescent mind. But ten years later (more or less), after much practice in reading, I was able to manage with pleasure what had frustrated me before.

So, could I read “Wuthering Heights” now? Maybe. It isn’t high on my list though. And having seen this movie, I’m not more inclined to read it than before. You see, I know this movie is way different than the book, it has to be given the way it has been approached. And part of me, well, I kind of like the idea of thinking that the book is more or less like the movie I just watched. Because that would be kind of awesome.

We can make a list of what is different from the book and by the end of this list, we will have to conclude that it is not fair to judge the movie by its faithfulness. The writer/director Emerald Fennel has clearly committed to her own vision, drawing inspiration from the novel, and nothing further.

We can first posit on our basic understanding of romantic literature of the 19th century that the book contained depictions of the English moors as they were and the people who inhabited them at the time. That these people acted within the typical bounds of typical people and when they acted eccentrically, they acted within what was deemed eccentric for eccentric people. That they had at their disposal those materials, costumes, and furnishings that one could purchase around that time. In other words, the book confined itself to the bounds of realism.

Where to start with the movie. Let’s start with the casting. In the role of Nelly, a female companion to the daughter of the Lord of Wuthering Heights, is Hong Chau, who is Chinese. The character is Nelly is not Chinese in the book. This movie uses color blind casting in two main roles (The other role is Edgar, one of the lesser angles in the Love Square, is the Actor Shazad Latif, who is mixed race English/Pakistani). These choices continue to prove the rule of color-blind casting, which is, in a story where race/ethnicity does not matter to the plot (usually because in the world of the story, everyone is of the same race, Wuthering Heights being no exception) it doesn’t matter what what race/ethnicity the actors are. Hong Chau, the actress, is well cast as Nelly. So is Shazad Latif.

Then there is Margot Robbie who would be the ideal choice for Cathy (one of the greater angles in the Love Square) fifteen years ago. She, at 36, is I believe playing a 20-year-old or something like that. It is a bit like Audrey Hepburn, at 32, playing Holly-Go–Lightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s who was 18 or something like that. Then there is Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff (another of the greater angles in the Love Square), who does not look like he belongs in the 19th Century at all. He is a male model from the 21st century. If you don't know what he looks like, take my word that he was perfectly cast as Elvis in Sofia Coppola's Priscilla.

I mentioned a Love Square. My basic understanding of the plot in both the book and movie is that Heathcliff and Cathy fell in love as children, but since Heathcliff was poor, Cathy married the rich guy next door, Edgar, but then Heathcliff leaves and comes back rich, and to torment Cathy and/or make her jealous, he becomes engaged with Edgar’s ward Isabella, played here excitedly by Allison Oliver, who is nearer to the correct age, race, and level of beauty than anyone else. Because these people are gorgeous, and adaptations can do what they want, Emerald Fennel has them engage in the very act of adultery (dare I say, the sex itself), which I’m pretty sure wasn’t in the book because I think I would have noticed that in high school. So the brooding, yearning, and unrequited love of the book is now brooding, yearning, and very requited, though still tragic. I bet that this is a more entertaining way to tell the story.

Then there is the cinematography, makeup, costumes, and the production value. It would seem that at every possible opportunity, Emerald Fennel told her team to just go for it and give her the most indulgent, sumptuous, and opulent option available. I mean, this movie is scrumptious. Look at Heathcliff riding his horse over the moors at golden hour. See Cathy’s RED DRESS make its way through a thick moorish fog. Edgar has a room in his house that has a fireplace made out of plaster hands. There are several scenes where the characters just happen to be doing and saying dramatic things while getting drenched in pouring rain. And on and on.

Forget accuracy. What I want from a writer/director is an idea that is committed too. You can say what you want about this movie being anachronistic or unfaithful, but it is clear that the deviations from realism are features, not bugs, as they say. Emerald Fennel had a vision that was over the top and she has delivered on that vision. To enjoy this movie, you must meet her on her terms. And enjoy this movie I did. As with any good B-movie or guilty pleasure (I could compare this with Road House, sure), the movie cannot be deemed “good” in the standard sense. You can’t be drawn into it like a “good” dramatic movie because so many of the choices that have been made are not serious. But it is Not Boring. And, if you are in the mood to curl up on the couch with a pint of Super-Fudge Chocolate Ice Cream and a full-bodied glass of Cabernet Sauvignon to observe the hot acts of gorgeous people on cold moor nights for a couple of hours, well, I recommend it.

Barbie (4/5 Stars)

“There is only one thing worse in life than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”

- Oscar Wilde

Barbie is a movie that is full of ideas. Don’t be distracted by all the pink, Ryan Gosling’s biceps, or Margot Robbie’s plastic smile. A definite feature of the movie is an exploration of what the doll means, to society, to consumerism, to the little girls that play with the dolls. Barbie’s baggage is as extensive as her wardrobe. And the creators, writer/director Greta Gerwig and co-writer Noah Baumbach are dealing with it head-on and with great comedic effect.

There is money to be made in taking an existing trademark and making a movie out of it. The Transformers movies are the most profitable example I guess. But, the gold standard, for me at least, is The Lego Movie, which was action packed and funny but also had a clear sense of what made playing with the toy a worthwhile experience. This was beautifully articulated in a perfect ending scene by the boy’s father (played by Will Ferrell) who had lost the original point of the toy by supergluing his perfect creations so that they could never again be taken apart. 

Barbie doesn’t have such a clear vision of what makes the toy work, but then again, Barbie is means many things to many people. The movie, with cleverness and humor, presents both sides: that Barbie is an icon of feminism, out there in the workforce doing very smart and prestigious jobs like President and Scientist. And then the other side: that Barbie is an icon of tyranny, that she has an unattainable physical beauty that depresses the young girls who play with her and make them feel terrible about themselves. Many think pieces have been penned about this. I remember seeing a Simpsons episode about it when I was very young.

What is missing from all these philosophical musings is what is closer to the actual truth. That Barbie doesn’t have much of an effect either way and for that reason it shouldn’t be controversial. However, this is the last argument the Mattel corporation would ever use in its defense. Like Hollywood’s weird obsequiousness to critics of diversity representation, they would rather be a bad guy than admit that they are unimportant. And the same goes for the big speech about society’s expectations for women in this movie. The only thing worse about society having unrealistic expectations is the awful truth: that no one really cares. The thing that makes Barbie such a hot topic is its interaction with women’s vanity. Women can complain all they want about having to do so much to keep up appearances, but so much of why they are so high in the first place is because women are competing with each other. In other words, it is women that are setting such high expectations. All one has to do from letting Barbie get one down is to be less shallow. 

I’m skipping much of the plot which for the most part doesn’t make much sense. Actually, this movie is quite good at doing just enough to keep the plot going and not worrying too much about whether it is doing enough. Sometimes, the lack of a coherent explanation forms the basis of a knowing joke. I mean, how much does it matter how one gets from Barbieland to the Santa Monica boardwalk? This movie would prove that it doesn’t matter all that much at all and makes a pretty good joke out of how illogical it is. In any event, the plot is this: Everything is perfect in Barbieland until the girl playing with Barbie in the real world starts making her doll go about doing depressing things. This provokes an existential crisis to Barbie, who then takes a trip to the real world and delves into philosophical musings about her purpose and yada yada yada. At the same time, Ken also takes a trip to the real world and, in doing so, he discovers patriarchy (power and horses) and a purpose other than beach. He brings it back to Barbieland and transforms Barbie's Dreamhouse into the Mojo Dojo Casa House (coming soon to a fraternity near you).

For most of this I was wishing Greta Gerwig had expended her considerable talents on a more personal type of movie like her first exceptional ones, Lady Bird and Little Women. I was at least comforted by the fact that she was getting paid and perhaps, like Christopher Nolan and other directors, would have more of an opportunity to make personal movies because she was a good sport that did some big budget movies as well. (In this scenario, Barbie is Greta’s Batman). That is, until I witnessed the Great Ken Beach Battle and Musical Number. That sequence won me over and is one of the best things I’ve seen in the movies in 2023. Ryan Gosling has been nominated for an Oscar for his performance in this movie. That is no mistake. The man is committed.

Overall, Barbie is a lot of fun, which is the right attitude to have towards the doll in general. I mean, come on, it’s a toy. Noone is actually asking women to look like her. Certainly not Ruth Handler, the creator of Barbie, who is portrayed here by Rhea Perlman, a very not-barbie like woman. Sometimes it’s just nice to have an excuse to wear bright pink. 

The Suicide Squad (4/5 Stars)

 

This one is for all us losers.

The conceit of “The Suicide Squad” is a classic stock plot. I couldn’t tell you where it first was used, I expect B-movies have done something like it many times over since the early days of cinema, but one of the best examples is the 1967 movie “The Dirty Dozen”. The idea is that there is this important military objective that needs to be accomplished, but the chances of successful mission are minimal, so a bunch of guys with no future, like criminals serving life sentences, are given the opportunity to take a shot at it. They will probably die in the attempt, but they were going to rot in prison anyway, so what do they have to lose?

“The Suicide Squad” updates this premise with a modern comic book movie twist by making all of the criminals super-heroes. But you wouldn’t send Batman on a suicide mission. He’s a billionaire that works for himself. You need some more expendable product, super-heroes that wouldn’t be too much of a loss if they were going to die. Turns out, D.C. Comics has plenty of them. So much so that within the first fifteen of the minutes of the movie, at least half the squad is dispatched, and I don’t think anyone is going to miss the Swedish guy with the javelin known as (...looking it up by IMDB…) “Javelin”.

The remaining squad are as follows:

Colonel Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) superpower: competence, moral compass, leadership

Bloodsport (Idris Elba), superpower – good at weapons, killing people

Peacemaker (John Cena), superpower – good at weapons, killing people

Ratcatcher 2 (Daniela Melchio) superpower – can control rats

King Shark (voiced by Sylvester Stallone) superpower – indestructible sharkman

Polka-Dot Man (David Dasmalchian) superpower – throws polka dots at people

Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) superpower – likely insane, innovative with melee weapons

Writer/Director James Gunn has a long storied history of juggling misfits in a group setting. He is the writer/director of the Guardians of the Galaxy movies after all. Now, you are not supposed to switch between rivals like Marvel and D.C. Comics like he is doing here, but then again Marvel fired him for uncouth Twitter jokes (before waiting a year while the cultures vultures attention went elsewhere and then hired him back) so I figure he doesn’t owe anybody anything. He does a very good James Gunn here. I especially liked the fact that Bloodsport and Peacemaker have essentially the same superpower which sets up a childish competition between them; how King Shark is so big and dumb; and how Polka-Dot Man, who shoots polka dots at people, is as sad, crazy, and pathetic as he sounds. (It is revealed that his motion injected him with radioactive stuff because she wanted superhero children which gave him polka dot powers but also daily polka dot rashes and he has to puke rainbows each day or die of polka dot exposure.) He fits right in. Rounding out the suicide squad is the only half-way well known superhero and the only one that also starred in the original and lessor “Suicide Squad” movie from a few years back, Harley Quinn. Harley gets the full James Gunn treatment in a scene where she dispatches plenty of nameless bad guys to the tune of Louie Prima singing Just a Gigolo.

This movie is frequently funny and has plenty of good action set pieces. And the final battle, which involves an especially B-movie type boss monster is big and ridiculous in a good way. There is also real pathos here (via certain cameos by fellow director and character actor Taika Waititi). In particular, James Gunn is decidedly for the underdogs, a very sympathetic note to take. However, his glorification of the underappreciated is a little belied by the many many gratuitous deaths of unknown extras. Let me ask you this: when was the last time you saw a SWAT team head into a combat zone in any movie vaguely like this one and thought that a single one would leave alive. These guys have all the body armor and automatic weapons yet they never don’t stand a chance. You want an underdog, make a movie about a SWAT team that fights superheroes.

What is left is the politics of this movie. It isn’t meant to be front and center, but it is interesting to talk about as, like many comic book movies, the message it contains is meant for a very large mainstream movie, and therefore kind of needs to be safe.

The mission is as follows: A fictional South American banana republic has recently suffered a military coup. The previous government was corrupt and so is this new one, but the previous government was tolerated by the United States because, it is revealed, it was willing to serve as a base for the United States to develop alien technology, which involves the experimentation and torture of political dissidents. This would not be the first time it was revealed in a movie that the American led team found out that the United States was really the bad guy, and like everything in this movie, it is a trope competently recycled. But what does this trope mean? Why do American movies so often reveal that America is the ultimate bad guy?

First of all, we should point out that the reveal of America being the bad guy leads to conflicts between the members of the Suicide Squad, which is a diverse group of people and at least one fish. How will this mainstream movie sidestep awkward political battles that may double as racial conflicts. Easy, the conflicts will be mano a mano between members of the same race. For instance Colonel Rick Flag (white) has his major conflict with Peacemaker (white) while Bloodsport (black) has his main conflict with Amanda Waller who is played by Viola Davis (black). Whew, dodged a bullet there.\

But why is the mainstream movie so hesitant to sidestep racial conflict but it still quite comfortable with laying an evil fictional plot at the feet of the United States government. There are a few possibilities to explore.

The most obvious is the movie industry’s leftist tilt. It is an urban industry, mainly centered in two very blue cities Los Angeles and New York City and, like seemingly all businesses within the realm of the arts and humanities, it draws a certain type of person with blindspots. For example, Oliver Stone who can brilliantly articulate all the bad things America has done in Latin America in the past one hundred years and in the next breath make a puff piece documentaries about autocrats like Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez.

Second, it may have something to do with corporate cowardice. The movie business is well acquainted with its free speech rights and is not fearful of retaliation from the American government. In contrast, a hint of any criticism towards the Chinese government may result in an American movie being completely banned from China’s gigantic market. Because of this, America’s government gets routinely trashed while China’s government, which is presently disappearing its citizens into gulags, is never criticized.

But there may also be something else at work here. I recently read Charlie Kaufman’s latest book Antkind which was about a ficitional movie critic B. Rosenberg Rosenberg, an insufferably woke white man who rails against white privilege and toxic masculinity (and expects credit for it), uses non-binary verbs (that he invented and only he uses), and calls himself an ally of every last victim on Earth (without asking whether or not they want his help). Half-way through this hilarious book it dawns on the reader that this character’s obsequiousness masks in even deeper pretentiousness. After all, in order to feel like you need to apologize for everything, one must first believe they are responsible for everything, which, if you think about it, is an extraordinarily egotistical view of the world. B. Rosenberg Rosenberg inflates his own importance by constantly apologizing for the terrible influence people like him have on the world. Perhaps the trope of America being the ultimate bad guy is but an exercise in vanity. Ultimately, it matters less whether or not we are the good or bad guy, what matters is that we matter. Think about it.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (5/5 Stars)

Whenever some crazy person does some horrible thing in the world, deranged manifestos from the extremes of society are festooned upon us by a media exploiting our collective morbid curiosity. The dead are victimized twice. First they are robbed of their live, then their lives are forever connected and largely overshadowed by the attention spent on the perpetrators. Sharon Tate is a perfect example. This utterly blameless young woman was horrifically murdered by the Manson cult. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood uses this real event from 1969 Hollywood as its reason for being. However, upon exiting the theater, you may notice that during the course of the movie, you have learned far more about Sharon Tate then Charles Manson. Writer/Director Quentin Tarantino to his great credit has flipped the murders on their head. He showers attention on the victims and treats the perpetrator dismissively. This is too my great relief. I was very worried coming into this movie about what Tarantino would do with the material given that Roman Polanski was still alive. Coming out of the movie theater, I can marvel at the deft way Tarantino handled it all.

Reappearing in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood from Inglorious Basterds and Django Unchained are Leonardo Dicaprio and Brad Pitt respectively. Tarantino writes them some tailor-made roles. Leonardo Dicarprio plays Rick Dalton, former star of Bounty Law, on the downward trajectory of his show business career (in an early scene, he gets presented the ‘opportunity’ to move to Italy and star in westerns over there). Brad Pitt plays Rick Dalton’s former stunt double, Cliff Booth. Cliff may or may not have been involved in the tragic death of his wife in the style of Natalie Wood’s mysterious fate. Nobody can prove whether or not Cliff did what and Tarantino makes it purposefully ambiguous. Enough people think Cliff might have to the point where he no longer is a working man (he also got into a fist fight with Bruce Lee). He spends his days doing odd jobs for Rick and feeding his bulldog.

Rick Dalton and Cliff Booth are completely fictional. It is a testament to the movie that we become highly invested in them while waiting for the real occurrences to occur in the last half hour of an almost three hour movie. It must be noted that Brad Pitt at 55 years old still has a six-pack of abs. It’s absurd. While Leo plays worn and tragic, a type of role he has become very good at.

As a very present character is Hollywood itself. The 1969 production value, the neon details, the cars, the Playboy mansion, the year round sun. Most of all, that feel of innocence before those dirty hippies ruined the party and gave the sixties their hangover.

I very much don’t want to ruin this movie for you. If you don’t know anything about it, I think you should do some historical homework and then listen to nothing else. You should know something about the Manson murdes. Read the Wikipedia article. Then watch this movie. You will not be disappointed.

Would you believe me if I told you that this is Tarantino least vulgar and arguably least violent movie. It is on the same violence level of pre-Kill Bill. As far as cursing is concerning, not that much at all really. It’s kind of refreshing. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is top-tier Tarantino. Put it up there with Pulp Fiction and Django Unchained. Highly recommended.

The WOLF of WALL STREET (5/5 Stars)

Jordan Belfort and the Obscene Destruction of Wealth. 

It seems to have been completely forgotten by now but when Gordon Gekko made his ‘Greed is Good’ speech in Oliver Stone’s landmark 1987 film ‘Wall Street’ he was not waxing philosophically in a theoretical sense. He was speaking as a major stockholder of a company at a shareholders meeting. Specifically the company was Tarbell Paper and Gekko had bought up a large share of stock in order to streamline the company (sell off assets and fire unnecessary personel) and use the proceeds towards a large dividend payment. As a major stockholder he would certainly profit from such an action, but that was not the only reason Gekko put forth to justify his actions. Here is the complete speech:

[at the Teldar Paper stockholder's meeting] Well, I appreciate the opportunity you're giving me Mr. Cromwell as the single largest shareholder in Teldar Paper, to speak. Well, ladies and gentlemen we're not here to indulge in fantasy but in political and economic reality. America, America has become a second-rate power. Its trade deficit and its fiscal deficit are at nightmare proportions. Now, in the days of the free market when our country was a top industrial power, there was accountability to the stockholder. The Carnegies, the Mellons, the men that built this great industrial empire, made sure of it because it was their money at stake. Today, management has no stake in the company! All together, these men sitting up here own less than three percent of the company. And where does Mr. Cromwell put his million-dollar salary? Not in Teldar stock; he owns less than one percent. You own the company. That's right, you, the stockholder. And you are all being royally screwed over by these, these bureaucrats, with their luncheons, their hunting and fishing trips, their corporate jets and golden parachutes. Teldar Paper, Mr. Cromwell, Teldar Paper has 33 different vice presidents each earning over 200 thousand dollars a year. Now, I have spent the last two months analyzing what all these guys do, and I still can't figure it out. One thing I do know is that our paper company lost 110 million dollars last year, and I'll bet that half of that was spent in all the paperwork going back and forth between all these vice presidents. The new law of evolution in corporate America seems to be survival of the unfittest. Well, in my book you either do it right or you get eliminated. In the last seven deals that I've been involved with, there were 2.5 million stockholders who have made a pretax profit of 12 billion dollars. Thank you. I am not a destroyer of companies. I am a liberator of them! The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA. Thank you very much.

That’s right, the company was badly run. It had thirty-three vice presidents all being paid exhorbitant amounts of money for no particular reasona at all.  In other words, the company was ripping off its investors and should have been broken up, streamlined, and made more efficient. Does anybody remember this detail? I bring it up because this speech and this movie, to the horror I bet of its fire breathing liberal writer/director, has been credited as a main inspiration for the Wall Street we have today. There is an incredible speech in the Wolf of Wall Street that I’m going to put down in its entirety. It is given by Jordan Belfort, played by Leonardo Dicaprio, the founder of a brokerage firm named Stratton Oakmont. He is inspiring his traders to misrepresent to their clients that a bad shoe company, for which Stratton Oakmont owns 80% of the shares, is a must buy. The idea is to use their clients to drive up the price and then to sell their own shares at the peak. This will of course devalue the stock that Stratton Oakmont does not own but their clients do. This is dishonest and illegal and here is the speech:

Besides the “Greed is Good” mantra I would submit that there is very little similar in these two speeches. Our culture nonetheless does not make that distinction. Either you are against Greed and against both actions or you are for it and endorse both. 

The confusion can be directly traced to Adam Smith’s landmark treatise on capitalism “The Wealth of Nations” published in 1776. It is an extraordinary book in many ways but it also contains several errors. (Errors in groudbreaking masterpieces are not such an extraordinary thing. Read any tome of Aristotle and Plato and you will notice antiquated and mistaken arguments sandwiched between the words of wisdom on a regular basis.) One of the biggest errors concerns Adam Smith’s theory on the division of labor. He compares the winter coat of a poor worker in London with the loincloth of an African King. Why, he asks, can this poor man afford better clothes than a king? The answer is that London has a developed economy that uses division of labor. The African king made his own loincloth all by himself and did not have the time or capacity to make it any better. The poor man’s coat however had been touched by thousands of men. The herders of the sheep, the shearers of the wool, the transporters of the wool, the weavers, the salespeople, et cetera et cetera. The insight is that a man can do one simple task for one job far faster than he can do all the tasks for one job. If you build a network of all these different people doing their own respective simple tasks you will be able to produce far more than you could if one person did everything by himself or herself. The vast supply of goods that this network creates drives down prices for the goods themselves, which is why the poor man in a developed economy can afford better clothes than the African king in an undeveloped economy. Adam Smith than states that rational self-interest is what made the network possible. Each participant in the network was acting in his or her own self-interest not a sense of altruism.

And here is where Smith after pages of brilliant insights makes his error. Altruism is not the foil Adam Smith should have drawn for capitalism. After all not all rational self-interest is capitalism. An arms length transaction between two parties is in the rational self-interest of both parties. But if a man beats another man up and steals his lunch money that too is in the rational self-interest of the first man. Both men are being greedy. But one of them is trading. The other is stealing. That is a huge difference. In essence, it is the difference between capitalism and piracy/communism/fascism/etc and the fact that we as a society cannot tell the difference is a huge problem. The traders in ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ take this corrupted thinking to its most logical and extreme end. They think they are capitalists and point to all the money they have gained as proof that they are. But they are not capitalists and this story is not a story of capitalism. It’s about thugs and thieves and the obscene destruction of wealth implicitly approved by a society that does not yet understand certain fundamental basics of economics.

“The Wolf of Wall Street,” is the fifth collaboration between director Martin Scorsese and actor Leonardo Dicaprio. It is arguably their best. It is certainly the most outrageous, funniest, crassest, excessive, and balls to the wall crazy movie they have ever made. It might have broken the f-word record, but I know for certain that I haven’t seen so much nudity in a movie outside of pornography. And the drug use, well I don’t think there is a scene in this 3-hour movie where somebody isn’t on something. The story comes from the autobiography of Jordan Belfort, a consummate salesman in that he could sell almost anything to anyone. After a brief stint on the real Wall Street, where his boss played by Matthew McCounaghey openly snorts cocaine in an upscale restaurant and counsels him to steal from his clients and masturbate at least twice a day, Jordan opens up his own penny stock brokerage firm in Long Island. The companies he shills are almost completely worthless but Jordan has an unbeatable sales pitch. In essence what he is selling is something way too good to be true. Get rich quick with penny stocks. He tells his clients that they can make money hand over fist by sitting on the couch at home doing nothing. Give me your money and you will win the lottery essentially. Jordan drives home this point by advertising his own lifestyle as proof that he knows how to make you rich. Look at Jordan’s big house, his beautiful wife, his cars, his hookers and drugs. Don’t you want to be just like him?

This is almost as important as the sales pitch because in order to become as rich as Jordan gets, he can’t do it all by himself, he needs hundreds of sales associates with the same unscrupulous tactics he has. He says to them: scam the people on the bottom and you will become as rich and decadent as me on the top. And boy does Jordan ever lavish on the temptations on his employees and clients. Every month, they have huge parties in the office with nude marching bands and strippers. Hookers roam the office corriders on a regular basis. Cocaine and Quallude use is rampant. For Jordan’s bachelor party he flew 50 of his coworkers to Vegas, hired 100 prostitutes, and trashed an entire floor of an upscale hotel. They have an orgy on the 747 to Vegas. The entire thing cost two million dollars. A drop in the bucket for a man who brags about being upset because he only made 52 million dollars last year. You see he was three million shy of a million dollars a week. He’s that kind of rich.

Do we care that people are doing this with other people’s money? For anyone wondering why the movie is three hours long, the answers are intertwined. The movie goes on so long because nobody stops Jordan. People don’t care apparently, probably because we have this ‘Joe the Plumber’ mentality about this type of excess. In other words, we aren’t against it because one day we hope to be on top doing the same thing. It’s the American Dream we’ve seen so many times in movies this year whether it was Spring Breakers, Pain and Gain, The Great Gatsby, or American Hustle. It is amazing how much bad behavior Jordan Belfort gets away with because he is rich. Sexual Assault, Public Intoxication, and Reckless Driving Under the Influence are just a few of his crimes. At one point he idiotically pilots his 170-foot yacht into a major storm and it sinks. A plane that comes in to rescue them crashes and the three people inside die. Jordan happened to be violating a court order at the time that instructed him to stay in the country. There are no consequeces.

The performance by Leonardo Dicaprio and also by his sidekick here Donnie Azoff, played by Jonah Hill, is arguably the best of his career. It is notable in its sheer lack of vanity. One particular scene stands out. Jordan and Donnie take these very old Qualuddes that unbeknownst to them take a very long time to kick in. When they finally do Jordan is far away from home. He is paralyzed by the force of the drugs and has to crawl out of the country club, into his car, and get home. It is a tour de force comic scene and the Leonardo and Jonah’s respective Oscar nominations are duly deserved.

The directing by Martin Scorsese and editing by Thelma Schoomaker is as always especially brilliant. He uses all the tricks in his bag in this movie and then some. In plenty of ways this is the biggest movie he has ever made. Imagine that, at 77 years of age he is still making his best movies. Killer impressive.

Go see this movie and bring along a dark sense of humor.