Movie Review: The Wolf of Wall Street

How does this Scorsese guy do it? 71 years old and he’s still at the top of his game with the energy of a 22 year old.

The Wolf of Wall Street will do two things to you:

1) It makes you laugh till your sides hurt, and 2) It makes you take a shower asap. Because it’s a rare movie that makes you laugh and makes you feel guilty for laughing.

Debauchery has never been captured so sharply on screen, and The Wolf of Wall Street is a three hour long drunk story, cautionary tale and horror movie rolled into one. It’s spectacular. It’s repulsive. It’s the Goodfellas of modern day gangsters (investment bankers) and it’s Scorsese’s best since The Departed.

The protagonist Jordan Belfort is a thoroughly unlikely character, and in some instances hilariously so. Some of the things that happen in the movie are so over the top you won’t believe they’re real. The funny thing is they are real, and the amount of excess and overindulgence that Wall Street honchos engage in is ridiculous. Show those guys this film and they’ll clap and cheer at Belfort’s wrongdoings.

Leo, in the performance of his career plays Belfort like any hotshot top level WS banker. I knew Leo is a great dramatic actor but I never expected his comic timing to be this insane. Take the performances of all the cast members of 2000’s terrific Boiler Room, multiply them by a thousand and that’s still less awesome than Leo’s portrayal of Belfort. There is a ten minute long scene where his character is completely bonkers on drugs, he’s unable to walk, and he struggles to crawl to his car, somehow drives back home still out of his wits, watches Popeye eating spinach on TV and becoming strong, and snorts cocaine to come back to his senses. This will be used in film school textbooks in the chapter titled ‘how to render a badass fucking performance’. This team of Scorsese and Leo is certainly one of the greatest things to happen in cinema history and we’re lucky to live in the era where this is possible.

The supporting cast is equally terrific, Jonah Hill seems to be getting better as he ages and there’s Matthew McConaughey, Rob Reiner, Jean Dujardin and a half a dozen other extended cameos all bringing their own devilish scumbaggy charm to the movie.

There is a bit of outrage regarding the movie being sexist and glorifying drug use. The joke’s on you, because the movie isn’t misogynist, but you are if you enjoy the stuff happening on screen. Portrayal of misogyny and drugs is never defence of misogyny and drugs, and if you’ve seen any Martin Scorsese film to date, you should know that by now. Not once does the film condone Belfort’s behaviour, and Scorsese makes it a point to not victimize Belfort for falling in the drug trap – he is shown as an innately narcissistic individual who wanted to do the disgusting things that he did.

Belfort wanted more and more money, sex and drugs, and the film ultimately becomes him, offering more and more outlandish scenarios as it goes on. Every scene is long, indulgent and excessive but so energetic, euphoric and shocking you can’t take your eyes off it. It’s definitely not something you should see with your parents. But it’s definitely something you need to see to know that entitled assholes like Belfort get away with minor jail time while others are branded criminals and rot in prison for far lesser offenses.

(First published in MiD Day)

Movie Review: 47 Ronin

I’m not sure whether to dislike 47 Ronin or feel pity for it. The movie was supposed to come out in 2012, the budget somehow ballooned from $150 to $220 million, the director Carl Rinsch suffered a nervous breakdown while filming, he was fired shortly and the studio reedited and reshot the movie to make it more Hollywood-ey. Heck, Keanu Reeves was not even supposed to be the protagonist of the film and that changed after filming was completed. And Reeves had done this movie to finance his own directorial debut The Man of tai Chi which also bombed. I’m quite sure that a film on the making on 47 Ronin would be way more entertaining than this movie.

The Japanese press has called 47 Ronin the second worst thing to have happened to the country this century, the first being the tsunami. And the film pretty much is a lumbering, sloppy, utter mess. It’s offensive to the Japanese (and fans of Japanese cinema like me) because it doesn’t know the difference between a Yakuza, a Shogun, a Samurai and a Ronin. It doesn’t know how to develop characters. It doesn’t know how to construct an entertaining fight sequence. It doesn’t know how to create good CGI. And it certainly doesn’t know that post converting a bad movie to 3D is like poking our eyes with nunchucks. It’s a sad, stark display of everything that can go wrong while making a movie, and budding filmmakers can probably use the behind the scenes stories to know what not to do while making a film.

The story is credited to Chris Morgan and Hossein Amini but there’s no way even an alphabet from their script made it to the screen. The only thing the filmmakers had to do was follow the Ronin story – it’s a great, heroic, tragic tale of banished warriors avenging the death of their leader. They didn’t need to change anything because the material was gold by itself. Imagine 300 done with the narrative and aesthetic style of 13 Assassins – that what 47 Ronin would have been. But 47 Ronin for some reason throws in a witch, a dragon and other magic realism elements that make no sense and are quite badly designed to even entertain.

The acting is universally terrible starting with Reeves carrying the lone expression of a sad outcast and Rinko Kikuchi (from Babel and Pacific Rim) playing a witch as if in a Ramsay film. Hiroyuki Sanada (Kaneda from Sunshine) was originally supposed to be the hero and he’s clearly unhappy with being sidelined in a role that doesn’t make any sense. If there’s anything good to be said about the film it’s the one or two instances of grand production design, but that’s pretty much it. Director Rinsch is the protégé of Ridley Scott and is the guy behind terrific commercials and some truly amazing short films like The Gift. Whether it was studio interference that did him in or his inability to handle such a huge budgeted debut film remains unclear. But there are some cool ideas and some evident traces of a good film hidden in 47 Ronin, hopefully he’ll get to make something like that someday. 

(First published in MiD Day)

Movie Review: Walter Mitty

After watching Ben Stiller’s hilarious Tropic Thunder I expected his next directorial venture to also be a star studded comedy. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is not a comedy, it’s a tearjerker sappy dramedy, and it’s a bad idea because drama is clearly not Stiller’s forte.

The second film adaptation of the short story of the same name and hitting screens after decades of development hell, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is visually spectacular, but it doesn’t have a heart or a brain in its script to turn it into a memorable film. Stiller casts himself in the role of Mitty, an employee of Life magazine who frequently blacks out and daydreams about all kinds of stuff. On that front the movie is fun – the cutaways from reality to dream are seamless and moderately funny. It’s when the film tries to sentimentalize Mitty’s ‘problem’ and tries to make a statement about ‘quitting your job and living the dream’ that it fails to find footing.

One other problem is that Stiller in the lead role here is somehow dull and unsympathetic – you don’t feel anything for the character. Whether he rollerblades on an Icelandic highway, or escapes a volcano, or flies a helicopter and jumps into the ocean, or climbs a mountain in Afghanistan, his expression never changes. Stiller expects you to be blown away by the imagery and Mitty’s experiences but his own expressions don’t register that feeling. It doesn’t help that Kristen Wiig once again plays the exact same awkward mildly stuttering but likable character.

Stiller’s observations of the contemporary world remain intact. Tropic Thunder had a geek rambling about a Blu Ray player in a PS3 as opposed to lack of one in Xbox 360, Walter Mitty sheds some light on the sudden tragic death of the print industry. There are a couple of sequences where the film becomes completely over the top in Mitty’s daydream cutaways, if only the rest of the film were as engaging and intelligent as those two scenes. 

(First published in MiD Day)

The Worst Bollywood Movies of 2013

2013 was a wonderful year for Bollywood – the industry gave us Satya 2, Murder 3, I Don’t Luv You, Hum Hai Rahi CAR ke, Shortcut Romeo, Ekk Thee Sanam and Ishq Actually. With great vengeance I sifted through the cinematic trash can to collate the worst movies of the year. Because these movies weren’t hand grenades, but the atom bombs whose detonations of dreadfulness created Hiroshima and Nagasaki sized mushroom clouds in my cerebrum and caused permanent damage to my mental harmony.

10) R Rajkumar

With choice lines like 'mere mooh mat lagna, mai sehed ke liye haanikaarak hoon', and Sonu Sood singing ‘I am your Bull, You are my shit, Together we are Bullshit’, R Rajkumar was an unfunny, idiotic, juvenile, maddening, moronic, outdated gulag of guano that galled and irritated with every passing second of its interminable stream of pig swill pretending to be humor. Not to mention the film’s regressive and misogynistic tone that expected the audience to cheer when a woman gets whipped.

9) Himmatwala

Sajid Khan was confident that Himmatwala would be Ajay Devgn’s biggest hit and one of the most successful Hindi films of all time. For assuming that he really is a Himmatwala, as were the poor sods who dared to watch this movie in theatres. The film was presented as ‘a Sajid Khan Entertainer’, but it was pretty much the entertainment equivalent of being poked in the ribs with a screwdriver for two and a half hours.

8) Issaq

Manish Tiwar’s Issaq used the soundtrack of Blood Diamond in its trailers but was made as if its only purpose was to infuriate the audiences. From terrible green screen to hopelessly horrible writing and acting, this was a fully equipped stinker doomed to tank.

7) Grand Masti

How this movie, starring a singularly uncharismatic trio of actors, with ten year old SMS jokes as its selling point managed to make money is beyond my realm of understanding. But hey, one shouldn’t blame the audience right? Shame on me for even thinking along those lines.

6) Sanjay Dutt Double Bill

Policegiri and Zilla Ghaziabad are proof that Sanjay Dutt wanted to commit two crimes so heinous it would take the focus off his 1993 court case. The only reason why he keeps getting out of Yerawada every now and then is because they keep playing Policegiri and Zilla Ghaziabad in the rec room TV.

5) Satyagraha

At this point it is clear that Prakash Jha is only making movies to troll audiences. There is absolutely no other way that the guy who made Damul, Mrityudand and Gangaajal would make Raajneeti, Aarakshan, Chakraviyuh and Satyagraha, all of which look like unused footage from one single film that Jha shot and abandoned in the 90’s.

4) Chennai Express

Good comedy film me interesting plot hoti, solid characters hoti, funny jokes hoti, comic timing hoti. Kya? Tum ye sab Chennai Express se maangti? Tum High Maintenance Diva hoti. Humesha jaake bokwas Nicholas Winding Refn film dekhti aur commercial cinema appreciate nahi karti.

3) Zanjeer

Not much needs to be explained about a movie where Prakash Raj the villain mouths ‘Chickens and chicks are the two meows of my life’ and the hero Ram Charan’s facial muscles are so tightly attached his eyelids would close if he scratched his cheek. The cherry on top was director Apurva Lakhia making blatant mockery of the late crime journalist J Dey to commercialize his film.

2) Krrish 3

With CGI made from MS Paint, costumes recycled from Alif Laila, a super villain Garbage Can Man, made by people who are convinced that Hrithik + Dance + Flying + Kangana cleavage = free money, and box office shamelessly inflated to pretend to be a blockbuster, Krrish 3 is the pits of filmmaking. This wasn’t even a film, this was Rakesh Roshan calling you a moron for two and a half hours, and it wasn’t the worst movie of the year only because of the existence of Ram Gopal Verma.

1) The Attacks of 26/11

It took an RGV to demonstrate that Kasab wasn’t the worst thing to happen to the 26/11 victims. The Attacks of 26/11 will be used as a case study on how a filmmaker can make the most offensive possible film on a national tragedy. It astounds me that RGV utilized the music from the video game Max Payne during the shootout scenes. It astounds me that this movie had a sex scene between two rubber tyres. It astounds me that he got away with all of this, and he still continues to procure money from producers to make more films.

Bonus Suite - Films that are so bad they’re awesome:

Rajdhani Express – Starring Leander Paes as a psychotic killer.

3G – Where Neil Nitin Mukesh is haunted by a mobile phone screen ghost whenever there is 3G connectivity.

Enemmy – Starring Mithun, his son Mahakshay, Sunil Shetty, Kay Kay Menon, Johnny Lever, Mahesh Manjrekar as Expendables style CBI officers.

Sona Spa – India’s answer to Inception, starring Naseeruddin Shah as the owner of a spa where women don’t sleep with you, but for you.

Dishonourable Mentions: Besharam, Chashme Badoor, Gori Tere Pyaar Me, Boss, Rangrezz

(First published in Firstpost)