Movie Review: "The Wolf Of Wall Street"

"The Wolf Of Wall Street": A-.  After the first thirty minutes of The Wolf Of Wall Street, I made a mental note to yank all of the money out of my brokerage account and stuff it under a mattress.  The film offers a potpourri of white collar crime, including insider trading, stock price manipulation, bait and switch, securities fraud and conflict of interest. Our narrator, Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCapprio), was insanely driven to make tons of money from an early age, and was naturally attracted to Wall Street.  His first boss, Mark Hanna (Matthew McConaughey, in a brilliant but short appearance), teaches young Jordan the ropes, mainly never to put the clients' best interests ahead of your own.  He also demonstrates how to execute a multi-martini lunch.  By the time Belfort is twenty-six years old, he has made $49 million dollars for the year, leaving him disappointed in himself for being $3 million short of averaging a cool million per week.

When Black Monday hits in October 1987 and most brokers are out on the street, Belfort lowers himself to take a job with a small firm in a low-rent office where they push penny stocks, i.e., stocks in companies with such small capitalization that they don't qualify for NASDAQ.  The attraction here is a 50% commission, versus the 1% Belfort was earning on Wall Street for selling blue chips.  Belfort astonishes his new colleagues by using the same slick, high pressure sales pitch that he employed in his former post with the big boys. Considering the 50% commissions he's now earning, he is raking in the dough and soon sets up his own operation called Stratton Oakmont.

Donnie Azoff (Jonah Hill) is a goofball who, although unqualified, becomes Belfort's right hand man at Stratton.  Belfort's inner circle is comprised of his old chums, likewise unqualified.  To say the lads work hard and play hard would not be doing justice to their fun and games.  Their modus operandi, both in and out of the office, is totally hedonistic, decadent and depraved.  I am not sure what separates an R-rated movie from NC-17, but many of the scenes throughout this film certainly must edge within millimeters of the dividing line. On a related note, I wonder how many "takes" director Martin Scorsese insisted upon for those frequent scenes before the actors got Scorsese's vision for the story just right.

Kyle Chandler, who was Coach Taylor on TV's Friday Night Lights, plays FBI agent Patrick Denham. Denham comes aboard Belfort's 150 foot yacht to let the stock scoundrel know that the FBI smells a rat and won't rest until the agency brings down Stratton.  Belfort puts up a brave front, not wishing to give Denham the satisfaction of seeing that the young tycoon is worried.  Will Belfort pull in the reins before the feds comes calling again?

There is a lot more going on with the story other than the FBI threat.  Belfort is a sex and drug addict, with an alcohol problem to boot.  His first marriage disintegrates, and his second to Naomi (Australian bombshell Margot Robbie) is on shaky ground.  Some of his subordinates do stupid things, any one of which could land Belfort in prison.  Even the plan to hide money in Swiss bank accounts does not go off without a hitch.  The script soft-pedals the legal threat from the Securities & Exchange Commission, when of course in real life the SEC carries a powerful hammer in the world of illicit securities transactions.

In my August 31, 2013 review of Blue Jasmine, I wrote "Allow me to make this bold prediction right off the bat.  It will take a jaw-dropping performance for someone other than Cate Blanchett to win the Best Actress Award at next year's Oscars ceremony."  That was five months before the Oscar nominations were revealed, and I am glad to see that Blanchett has, in fact, been nominated.  I still like her chances.  Feeling emboldened by my August prediction, it's time for another. 

The Wolf Of Wall Street is the third time DiCaprio has been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor, and so far he has not taken home the trophy.  (He was also nominated once for Best Supporting Actor.)  I have a feeling this time around might be the charm, especially since he already won the Best Actor Award earlier this month at the Golden Globes.  I have seen four of the five movies starring an Academy Award nominee for Best Actor this season.  Although a case can surely be made for each of the other actors, if I had a vote I would not need to deliberate long before casting it for DiCaprio.  The part of Belfort requires an actor who is handsome enough to attract beautiful women, and savvy enough to make the viewers believe he can orchestrate IPOs (initial public offerings).  On the screen DiCaprio becomes Belfort, who is drug-addled, sometimes violent, other times romantic, and charismatic.  Belfort needs to play it cool with the detectives, but in other scenes he is whipping his underlings into a frenzy to sell, sell sell.  He has it all, but he can't help himself; his "wants" equate to his "needs."  Risk-taking is sometimes its own reward.      

Movie Review: "Nebraska"

"Nebraska": B-.  Seventy-seven year old actor Bruce Dern has made a decades-spanning career playing villains, mentally imbalanced fringe dwellers, sociopaths and stone cold killers.  One of his claims to fame is that Dern may be the only actor whose film resume includes bumping off John Wayne's character in a movie (1972's The Cowboys).  Dern's characters are always a little south of normal, on the edge; not the kind of guy you'd want to go have a beer with.  For the last twenty-five years or so, it would be natural to wonder if, in real life, Dern would become a dazed and confused senior citizen, not fully in tune with his surroundings, even though capable at times of carrying on a coherent conversation.

Thus, the question is raised again as we watch Dern play Woody Grant, an ornery, semi-lucid, unsocial man, in Nebraska.  Is this fine acting or is this Dern's real life persona?  Woody is first seen walking, determinedly yet oblivious to his surroundings, along the shoulder of a Billings, Montana highway.  His destination is Lincoln, Nebraska, 850 miles away.  He has received a letter alerting him that he is eligible to win a million dollars as a sweepstakes prize.  Mercifully, a state trooper picks him up and alerts Woody's son, David (Will Forte), to come to the police station and fetch him.  We later learn from a conversation between David and his brother, Ross (Bob Odenkirk), that Woody was a negligent uninvolved father.  Not much of a husband either, it turns out.  His wife, Kate (June Squibb), is a foul-mouthed unhappy woman, with nothing good to say about her glossy-eyed husband.  Neither Kate nor Ross can fathom David's willingness to drive Woody to Lincoln, especially when everyone (including David) knows that the letter Woody received is a come-on. It does not literally say that Woody has won anything, much less a million dollars.  But David does not want his father to face the inevitable unpleasant truth alone.

At this point Nebraska turns into a road movie.  The father and son travel through Wyoming and South Dakota, heading east without incident.  It's when they get to Woody's home town, fictional Hawthorne, Nebraska, that things pick up.  Woody's brother, Ray (Rance Howard, who strongly resembles Dern), and his wife reside in an old house in Hawthorne.  Their two adult sons, Bart (Tim Driscoll) and Cole (Devin Ratray), are no-account lugs who still live with them.  The main attractions in town are the two saloons, the Sodbuster and the Blinker Bar.  It's in the Blinker where Woody and David reconnect with Ed Pegram (Stacy Keach), Woody's old business partner who once borrowed an air compressor from Woody and never returned it.  That minor nugget of info comes into play later in the story.

The scene of Woody and his brothers in Ray's living room watching a televised football game is humorous. There's a room full of people, each of whom might as well be by himself.  They stare at the TV as if in a trance.  Director Alexander Payne also gets high marks for nailing small town life on the Great Plains.  Word travels fast that "Woody is a millionaire."  The taverns are the social center of Hawthorne. (That concept reminds me of the lyrics to Jason Aldean's song, Church Pew Or Bar Stool, in which Aldean describes churches and bars as "the only two means of salvation" available in small towns.)  Some folks are genuinely happy for Woody, while others come up with fabrications as to why he should spread a little bit of his future new found wealth their way.  When Kate and Ross arrive by bus to hook up with their Hawthorne relatives, the stage is set for some feudin', fussin' and fightin'.

With the exception of David's cousins Bart and Cole, two hicks who are the human equivalents of bumps on a log, I did not find the characters to be very interesting, and certainly not charming.  Woody is almost catatonic as a passenger in David's car, not a good thing considering this is a road movie.  There is no range of emotion or growth in the characters of Woody or Kate; he is always aloof and rude, and she is always profane and rude.  That gets tiresome over the course of a two hour movie.  Forte as David fares somewhat better, but his bland personality, even when breaking up with his girlfriend, is still a long way from memorable.  Considering the timing of the movie's late-year release and the Oscar buzz possibilities for Dern and Squibb, I was mildly disappointed.

When I posted my January 10 review of Philomena, I wrote that the story would set the Catholic Church back twenty or more years.  Nebraska just might have the same impact on its namesake state.  As an ex patriot of the Peace Garden State, I'm glad that the movie was not titled North Dakota. 

Vikes Ignore Flag Football Coach

Last Wednesday the Star Tribune published a list of the eight men who had the best chance of succeeding the deposed Leslie Frazier as the next head coach of the Minnesota Vikings.  There were a few familiar names (Darrell Bevell, Jack Del Rio, Ken Whisenhunt) and some not so familiar (Todd Bowles, Dan Quinn, Ray Horton).  By Sunday's edition, the list of candidates had grown from eight to eleven.  My name was not included on the short list, and to add insult to injury, it was not even on the long list either.  Assuming the lists' accuracy, what I deduce is that my one year's experience as the head coach of the Most Holy Trinity girls flag football team thirty-eight years ago was not enough to impress Vikings General Manager Rick Spielman or owner Zygi Wilf.  So be it.

The humiliating experience of being shunted by The Purple's top brass, however disappointing that might be, is not enough to erase the happy memories of my coaching days.  By my count, I have coached forty-four teams, including the aforementioned girls flag football team, one girls soccer team -- I didn't know the rules, but nobody else stepped to the plate -- one wrestling team (all boys, in case you were wondering), three T-ball teams, eleven softball teams, nine baseball teams, thirteen girls basketball teams and five boys basketball teams.  The ages of my players ranged from five to fifteen.

There used to be a TV police detective show called The Naked City which ran for five seasons starting in 1958.  Each episode took place, and was filmed on site, in New York City.  At the end of each broadcast, a deep-voiced narrator would say, "There are eight million stories in the Naked City. This has been one of them."  Just like the TV show, I could probably come up with a little story about many of my forty-four teams, but there are couple of anecdotes which I like so much that I've told them several times over the years.  With apologies to those of you who've heard them before, I offer them today for your amusement.
  
The Aquila Atrocity:  Every T-ball league in America is a treasure trove of comedic stories.  How could it be anything else, considering that the players are five and six years old?  A third of the kids are clueless, and another third are hapless.  Yet almost every parent looks at her precious darling as the next Joe Mauer. Michael's T-ball team was an anomaly, as we had no less than seven or eight kids on that coed team who were good little athletes.  Therefore, the coaches could actually teach the kids some of the basics.  We even pulled off some force plays, relays, cut-offs and run-downs, all things one would rarely see in a T-ball game.

 

I was the head coach -- the manager, if you will -- of the team, and my two assistants were Craig and Mike, who were fathers of two of the players.  Craig and Mike fit the definition of "good cop, bad cop."  Craig, a marine veteran, was a person who commanded attention, and did not want to have the kids waste his time by not listening to his instruction.  Mike, on the other hand, was laid back, soft-spoken, and saw T-ball as more of a recreational activity than a competition.  (True confession:  I was more like Craig.  My feeling was, if the league is going to have us keep score, then we are in it to win it!)  Mike was one of those guys about whom it could honestly be said, "He does not have a mean bone in his body."  That's why what I'm about to write is preposterous, yet true.

 

The game in question took place on a field adjacent to Aquila School in St. Louis Park.  The diamond was surrounded by grassy slopes (grassy knolls?) which ran along the first and third base lines, and it was on those slopes that the parents sat. Most T-ball games are very well attended because they are among the first athletic competitions when parents can see their children in action.  This game was no exception; the hills were crowded.

 

At one point in our four-inning game, our opponents had the bases loaded.  Coach Mike yelled out to our infielders, "Get the easy out," meaning "if the ball is hit to you, throw it to the nearest base."  It is something that 99% of all baseball and softball coaches have yelled to their players under the same scenario.  That sentence is definitely part of the baseball lexicon.

 

Unfortunately, the mother of the kid who was batting took umbrage at Mike's choice of words.  She thought he was yelling to our pitcher that the batter was a weak stick!  Totally oblivious to the fact that Mike was only using conventional baseball parlance and was not demeaning her little Johnny in any way, she started swearing at him as if she were from the cast of Scarface.  She was sitting on the first base hill and our team's parents were across the field on the third base side, so her bellowing went across the diamond, audible to everyone there including the kiddies.  Finally, presumably when her husband or one of her friends explained things to her, she sat down and zipped her lip for the duration of the game.  The parents of our team laughed about that incident for the rest of the summer. But poor Mike!  He didn't deserve the verbal abuse.  

 

The Brookside Beanie:  My favorite sports quote of all time was uttered by John McKay, the head coach of the expansion Tampa Bay Buccaneers which, in 1976 under McKay's leadership, went a perfect 0 and 14.  Following one defeat late in the season, McKay was asked at a post-game press conference what he thought about the execution of his team.  "I'm all in favor of it," he quickly replied.

 

I only bring this up because my second favorite sports quote was delivered by my coaching assistant, Craig -- yes, the same Craig who coached T-ball with me -- during a hotly contested fourth grade boys game in the St. Louis Park Rec League at Brookside School.  The fourth graders played on a court drawn width-wise across the gymnasium floor, and the baskets were adjusted to eight feet (instead of the regulation ten) for the little guys.  The parents and other spectators sat on folding chairs lined up on the stage which ran along the length of one side of the modified court.  The team benches were along the opposite side.  As a result of this configuration, the parents could hear virtually every word that was spoken (i.e., yelled) by the coaches.

 

The teams in the fourth grade league were assembled by neighborhood, which for us meant Fern Hill, heavily populated by Jewish families.  Half the kids on our team, the Rockets, were of the Jewish persuasion, including Uri.  Uri was one of the most conscientious players on the Rockets, a hard worker, a good listener and a diligent competitor.

 

In the closing minutes, the game was on the line, and the Rockets were clinging to a slim lead.  The hot shot guard of the opponents was dribbling up the floor, and Uri was defending him well, although having difficulty keeping up with the kid.  While Uri was holding onto his own yamaka with his left/back hand, he was attempting to swipe the ball away from the dribbler with his right/front hand, all the time side-stepping to stay between his "man" and the basket.  Just as it looked like the guard was going to blow by Uri, Craig yelled out, "Uri, let go of that damned beanie and play some defense!"

 

If I could have dug a hole and disappeared into the Brookside floor, I would have.  There was no doubt the parents heard Craig.  Of course, the action didn't stop, and by the time the game ended fifteen or twenty minutes later, the shock value, if any, had dissipated.  There was the usual mingling of families after the game while we exited Brookside.  No one brought up the "beanie" comment.  I breathed a sigh of relief as I made my way out to my ice cold car.  I felt like we'd just dodged a bullet.  Craig and I straightened things out before the next practice. 

Movie Review: "Philomena"

"Philomena": B+. Those of us who were taught by the nuns in Catholic grade schools are very familiar with the concept of being put on guilt trips.  Even something relatively minor, such as telling a white lie or using the "D" word, might have caused us to make absolutely certain we confessed our sins at the first available moment lest we suffer a fatal accident and get sent to purgatory or, possibly, hell.  Philomena takes guilt trips to an entirely new level. It is the story of a devout Irish woman who has been on a guilt trip for over fifty years.  Her crime?  Consentual sex at the age of fourteen, followed by conception of a baby boy she named Anthony.

The year was 1952, and as was customary in that era, young Philomena (Sophie Kennedy Clark) was "sent away" to Roscrea Abbey, a grim institution run by (mostly) heartless nuns.  In return for room, board and purported medical care, the unwed mothers signed a contract by which they relinquished present and future parental rights to their offspring.  The movie does not get into the legality of these contracts, and therefore questions of minor capacity (i.e., the enforceability of a contract signed by a person under the age of 18 or 21) must be overlooked by the moviegoer.  During the first twenty minutes of the film, one thought I had was, "This story is going to set the Catholic Church back twenty years."  I underestimated the damage.

Philomena (Judi Dench) has not let her treatment at the hands of the nuns at the abbey render her faithless. Quite the opposite, in fact.  Philomena regularly attends Mass, praying for the well-being of her son.  She cherishes a photograph of little Anthony which a young novice at Roscrea secretly handed her days before the nuns permitted his adoption by an American doctor and his wife,   She has kept the existence of Anthony secret throughout the years, but finally reveals the truth to her adult daughter, Jane (Anna Maxwell Martin).

Martin Sixsmith (Steve Coogan) is a journalist who used to work for the BBC before getting fired from the British prime minister's cabinet.  He is "in between jobs" you might say.  Jane meets Martin at a reception at which she is working, and attempts to interest him in Philomena's story.  He quickly dismisses it as merely a public interest story, but an editor urges him to change his mind.  The editor figures her readers will eat it up. Whether the ending turns out to be happy or sad makes little difference.  In fact, in her view, sad might be better.  Jane is the liaison between her mother and Martin.  Soon thereafter Martin accepts the challenge of helping Philomena find out what happened to Anthony, a question that's been tugging at her heart since her days at Roscrea.

The story which unfolds mostly takes place in America, where Martin uses his connections in an attempt to ascertain Anthony's whereabouts.  The two intertwined story lines are the search for Anthony and the relationship between Martin and "Phil," as he sometimes likes to call her.  As with any investigative story, the Englishman and his Irish companion track down leads, doing research and interviewing key people.  Their findings lead them to dig deeper, with both Philomena and Martin choosing not to settle for merely the "what" answers, but also for the "whys."  The ending is disturbing, but of course you will have to see the film yourself to find out why.

Special mention must be given to Clark for her portrayal of young Philomena.  I was wincing during the childbirth moments, and the scenes involving her and baby Anthony are enough to make a grown man cry. Clark is probably not on the screen enough minutes to garner Oscar consideration, although keep in mind that the Academy surprised a lot of people when it nominated Viola Davis for Best Supporting Actress for her appearance in 2008's Doubt.  Davis was not on-screen more than a few minutes in that film.  Whether or not Clark is nominated, keep an eye out for this twenty-something Scottish actress, who used to be a model for Burberry.

Dench, who will turn eighty this year, is on an absolute roll. I loved her in Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (reviewed here on May 31, 2012, A-) and in the Bond caper, Skyfall (December 20, 2012, B+).  As the title character in Philomena, Dench is sensitive, heartbroken, hopeful, spiritual, humorous and witty. Philomena holds her own with the former government official, Sixsmith, who is several decades younger and obviously more world-savvy.  Coogan, age forty-eight, might be more well-known in the UK for his television work, but kudos to him for his pairing with Dench.  One can tell that this actor has a certain comedic sense and, indeed, his resume includes years as a comedian and impressionist.  One of the funniest lines in the film occurs early on, when Sixsmith is going over the results of his physical examination with his doctor.  The doctor rattles off several findings:  Blood pressure, check; heart rate, check, etc.  Then the doctor says, "Stool sample, outstanding," to which Sixsmith, with a huge smile, expresses relief.  "No," exclaims the doc, "'Outstanding' means you never submitted one!"      

Movie Review: "American Hustle"

"American Hustle": B+.  American Hustle is a slick, entertaining, humorous but imperfect film which brings together several of the rising stars in moviedom.  Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale) is a shyster who makes his unlawful living deceiving would-be yet uncreditworthy borrowers into thinking that, for a five thousand dollar non-refundable fee, he can secure six-figure loans for them.  Unbeknownst to his victims, he has no actual funding source.  When that shady business isn't enough to keep him busy, he operates a gallery which passes off forgeries as masterpieces.

Irving is married to Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence), but when he meets glamorous Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams) at a party, he pegs her as a fellow wheeler-dealer who can help him with his shady pseudo-lending operations.  Early in the film, Irving and Sydney get busted by FBI agent Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper) who's working undercover.  DiMaso is willing to cut a deal with the two if they'll help him nail high profile figures in a mega bribery and corruption scheme. Setting up and executing DiMaso's plan require huge outlays of money for purposes such as use of a private jet, wire transfers and renting an entire floor of a luxury hotel in Manhattan.  The scenes in which DiMaso begs his boss for that money are some of the funny bits in the story.

One of those high profile people targeted by DiMaso and company is the mayor of Camden, New Jersey, Carmine Polito, played with a puffy pompadour by Jeremy Renner.  Renner is extraordinary at putting on that innocent look while attempting to resist the temptation of ill-gotten gains.  Is he in it for his own personal fortune, or does he have the interests of his down-trodden city at heart?  The story arc here is complicated, which makes gauging the mayor's motives even tougher.  Polito conveys the doe-eyed choir boy countenance throughout.

It's hard to believe that Jennifer Lawrence is the same young actress who played Katniss Everdeen in the Hunger Games movies.  Her character in American Hustle, Rosalyn, requires her to be part dumb blonde and part savvy and sophisticated moll.  In one scene she is in a face-to-face shouting match with her husband, in another she is sitting on a bar stool making the tough guy hoodlums drool.  She is a devoted mother but not immune from hanky panky.  The one constant is that Rosalyn is unpredictable, and therefore not someone to whom you'd entrust a secret plan. 

American Hustle is purportedly based on the famous late-seventies Abscam scandal.  But this is no documentary; far from it.  We are tipped off in the opening credits that the filmmakers have taken great liberties with historical accuracy, as the movie begins with the disclaimer, "Some things portrayed in this film actually happened" (my emphasis), or words to that effect.  The opening scene spends several minutes showing Rosenfeld rearranging and gluing his combover.  He wants it to look just right with his polyester suit.  The point is that we are chuckling before the action starts.  There are several times in the early stages of the story when we witness business owners somehow believing that Rosenfeld and Prosser can score them a big loan, even though Rosenfeld looks slimy and incapable of having the wherewithal to come up with the dough he promises, and Prosser dresses like an expensive call girl.

Don't make the mistake of taking things too seriously.  Sure, there's the issue of government entrapment (which, if proven, would enable the crooked politicians to have the cases against them dismissed), but this is mostly comedy. It's all in good fun, plus, there's a neat twist at the end.   

Quarterly Cinema Scan - Volume XIV

The sub-zero temperatures, which are a way of life here in Minny, present opportunities to stay inside and watch movies on the idiot lantern.  Unfortunately, of the eight I saw during the last three months of 2013, only two were worthy of a rank above a B.  Rio Bravo, which I'd never seen before, is a little long (141 minutes) but has to place as one of the top half-dozen westerns on my honor roll.  Watching The Pit And The Pendulum reminded me of attending the Saturday matinees at the Liberty Theater in Libertyville.  The weekly offerings were geared for the town's kiddies, and typically consisted of double features of a certain genre such as westerns, science fiction, action heroes and horror stories.

1. Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy (2004 comedy; Will Ferrell is a self-absorbed, misogynistic TV news anchor feeling professionally threatened by newcomer Christina Applegate, who aspires to share Ron's anchor desk.) B

2. Beautiful Girls (1996 drama; Timothy Hutton goes back to his New England hometown for a high school reunion, and discovers that his old buddies like Matt Dillon still have the same archaic attitudes about women that they did ten years ago.) B

3. The First Time (2012 dramedy; Dylan O'Brien and Britt Robertson are high schoolers who meet at a Friday night party and by Sunday have run the gamut of possible first-time love experiences.) B

4. Foreign Correspondent (1940 spy drama; Joel McCrea is a New York paper's investigative reporter who is sent to London to get a sense of how close the Brits are to plunging into a war with the Nazis.) C+

5. Masque Of The Red Death (1964 horror; Vincent Price is a blood thirsty, devil worshiping prince who shows no pity toward the local village when it's hit by the Plague, and thinks nothing of bumping off his unsuspecting guests within his decadent castle.) C-

6. The Pit & The Pendulum (1961 horror; Vincent Price is a creepy Spanish nobleman who is visited by his suspicious brother-in-law following the mysterious death of Price's wife inside a spooky castle.) B+

7. Rio Bravo (1959 western; John Wayne is a sheriff in a wild west town, who enlists the help of lush Dean Martin, singin' Ricky Nelson and scene-stealing Walter Brennan in an effort to keep the bad guys from springing Wayne's prisoner before the US Marshall arrives.) A-

8. A Walk To Remember (2002 drama; Shane West is a popular high schooler who easily finds trouble until he gets to know the preacher's daughter, Mandy Moore.) C+