The Wolf of Wall Street

Martin Scorsese's outrageous new film The Wolf Wall Street is the director's return to formula known from films such as Goodfellas and Casino. A story of crime, money and ultimate consequences. Or in this case - perhaps a lack of them?

Casino

There is a certain problem one has to deal with while reviewing movies you absolutely adore. Instead of writing about them, you should just watch them again. But since I said I'll review Casino for RorschachReviews and on the odd chance there are those out there who haven't seen that splendid movie and I have the opportunity to encourage them to do so, I shall now review one of my all time favorite films. And I'll probably see it again afterwards.

Saturday TV Special: Boardwalk Empire

Plot: Chronicles the life and times of Nucky Thompson, the undisputed ruler of Atlantic City in 1920's, who was equal parts politician and gangster.
Verdict: Without a doubt in my mind, the best show on TV right now, even better than "Mad Men". I strongly advise everyone to wait for the end of season 2 and try watching season 1 and 2 all at once - otherwise you will be looking forward to Sunday's evening and let's face it - that's jut not normal.
What makes it so great? I started watching season 1 in the middle of night this summer and I finished it 12 hours later. The series is incredibly engaging and addictive and so far it's actually even better than "The Sopranos". Season 2 is slightly different than season 1 - it's much more violent and shocking and the focus shifts from Nucky to other characters - even though the show changed direction a little, it's still at the same level of greatness. You know Scorsese is behind it - some things that happen to characters are as awful and unfair as what went down in "Casino" or "The Departed". The story is incredible, each character gets a fair share of development and there two honestly outstanding performances - by Michael Shannon as a God fearing prohibition agent and Jack Houston as Richard Harrow - war veteran, who is an excellent sniper, even though half of his face is missing which forces him to wear grotesque mask. Oh and that opening sequence...just outstanding.

Shutter Island

(138 min, 2010)
Plot: Drama set in 1954, U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels is investigating the disappearance of a murderess who escaped from a hospital for the criminally insane and is presumed to be hiding nearby.
Director: Martin Scorsese
Writers: Laeta Kalogridis (screenplay), Dennis Lehane (novel)
Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Emily Mortimer and Mark Ruffalo

Rat in a maze, audience in despair.

 
I really wanted to like this movie, but I can't. I was so hyped to see this – I love Scorsese's work – Goodfellas, Casino, The Departed – the guy is a legend. I like Leonardo Dicaprio a lot – he created mind blowing performance in “Revolutionary Road” and he is a very decent actor – I haven't seen him screw up a performance once. He makes great choices, he always delivers and he is very charismatic – that man is pure anger – he yells like insane in every single movie of his and that's gotta come out of somewhere – he is too good at it. I love actors like this – passionate, memorable, driven.But here, there is simply no connection between his acting style and the movie. The casting was first thing that went wrong.

„Shutter Island” is not engaging, boring and has terrible, terrible editing - few days ago I stumbled upon porn movie on tv - God knows it had better editing. I know Thelma Schoonmaker
who is responsible for this, has 3 Academy Awards and it only makes me more surprised – what happened? Nobody can defend such horrid editing – it was awful, it took the focus away from the movie. And what's even worse – it was splendid and exceptionally well done in flashbacks scenes. Very uneven work, but mostly just plain bad.

And that's the problem with this movie – it's uneven and nobody knows what's going on and what should be done. Scorsese doesn't know how to show the story, the scene were Dolores appears in cell next to insane criminal was truly awful, I have no idea how a director of such fame and class could do something like this, actors are generally confused as if they didn't read a script at all, the editor and music supervisors, were, I assume, high during making of this film.

The music is obnoxious, chaotic and inflicts actual pain. I don't know, maybe it was intentional. Some of the pieces fit the movie quite nicely and create very dense, creepy atmosphere. But as a whole it's impossible to listen to the soundtrack album before taking a massive amount of pain killers. I tried to do that – I couldn't. And for the love of God, I listen to Slipknot sometimes.