Three Hours Of Excess

We've a busy week ahead so we thought we'd fit our weekly cinema trip in early and headed off to Ipswich today for a noon screening at Cineworld

I don't know about you but I've said and done one or two things that I am not exactly proud of when I've over indulged (and they're just the ones I remember). But, in Martin Scorcese's brilliant The Wolf Of Wall St, Leonardo Di Caprio (as financial crook Jordan Belfort) in a performance that redefines the term "wide eyed and legless",has shown my very worst excesses to be but minor indiscretions.

The film is based upon the true story of Belfort who, at the peak of his criminal financial activity was "earning" $50 million a year and, if we are to believe the film, squandered a huge proportion of it on drinks, drugs and prostitutes. After losing his job as a broker on Wall St in the 80's crash he started out selling penny shares and persuading small savers to part with their well earned cash for worthless stocks. Carrying on from the success he went on to sucker rich investors into the same mistakes (but with a lot more noughts on the amounts involved).

At three hours long you would expect the film to drag but there was so much excess in his business (dwarf throwing, naked bandsmen, and in-house orgies during business hours to name some of the minor ones) that it's surprising that Scorcese has managed to fit it all in. It's an entirely convincing performance from DiCaprio who is on screen for most of the film and speaks to us (a la Miranda) in a number of pieces to camera. In fact Di Caprio is so good and depicts the drug addled Belfort as such a charismatic leader that you almost side with a character who would have made Caligula blush.

I'm surprised that the film managed to make it onto the screen uncut - it holds the current record for f words and there's a hell of a lot of naked flesh but it's a film about excess and it has to be excessive for it to work. As a study of corruption and charisma it is a one off. 

There's a good supporting cast including Jonah Hill as Belfort's right hand man, Margot Robbie as his trophy wife and Kyle Chandler as his FBI nemesis. Matthew McConaughey gives an incredible cameo performance as Belfort's first Wall St boss but the film is all about  Belfort and DiCaprio is outstanding in the role. 
  

A Great Performance From Leo Can't Make Up For A Dull J.Edgar

An Oscar winning director and a five times nominated leading man are the perfect ingredients for an excellent movie. So when we went to our favourite cinema FACT in Liverpool last night for a preview of J.Edgar we were hopeful of seeing something special. Well, we did  see a preview of FACT's new publicity film and that was very exciting and demonstrates brilliantly what an outstanding arts venue it is. But when it came to the main event I am afraid that we were less than blown away.


Leonardo plays FBI chief J Edgar Hoover as a stuffy, priggish repressed martinet of a man and Hoover may well have been all of those things. But they are all things that make Hoover a thoroughly dislikable man and, with a lead for whom the audience has little or no empathy (echoes of The Iron Lady here), it is very difficult to warm to the film. DiCaprio is excellent and creates a cowardly character whose real ability is in organising filing systems and forensic investigative resources instead of being the heroic, machine gun wielding  G-Man that he wants to project.


Throughout the film it is clear that Director Clint Eastwoood has decided that the rumours of Hoover's closet homosexuality are true and an almost Brokeback Mountain relationship develops between Hoover and his right hand man Clyde Tolson played by Armie Hammer. For me this relationship is ruined by both the schmalzy music which accompanies scenes of tenderness between Hoover and Tolson and by Hammer's make up as the older Tolson which make him look as if he is wearing a particularly uncomfortable latex mask ( which he probably is - don't expect any Oscar nominations on this front).


Eastwood hints that Hoover's incredible forty eight years as head of the FBI was achieved by his method of digging up dirt on anyone and everyone and keeping it in files maintained by his loyal secretary Miss Gandy who stuck with him for the whole time and was a beacon of discretion. But nobody ever dug any dirt on Hoover which implies that, in view of the machiavellian scheming of some of the presidents he worked with like Nixon and Kennedy, any closet gay tendencies that he had were, as the film depicts, totally unfulfilled. 


There is not a lot of excitement in the film which is all about Hoover's relationships with Miss Gandy (Naomi Watts), Clyde Tolson and his bullying mother (Judy Dench). There are mentions of the Lindbergh  baby case and Capone et al but in the end it's all about J.Edgar (what else do you expect? - look at the title dummy) and I am afraid that Hoover's lack of charisma is the downfall of the film.