'The Wolf of Wall Street' review by Captain Raptor

'The Wolf of Wall Street' review by Captain Raptor

This year's Academy Awards are, unusually, quite tough to predict. Most of the nominees would be odds-on Best Picture in any other year; there's 12 Years A Slave, the liberal issues movie by a relative unknown; Dallas Buyers Club, a film about terminal disease that required dramatic weight loss; Captain Phillips, something with Tom Hanks in it. And of course, The Wolf of Wall Street, a chance to reward/apologize to the actor and director that are arguably the most under-appreciated in the Academy Award' history.

DiCaprio's chances of winning his own naked gold man are certainly looking good with the performance he gives here. His various monologues are superb in how unrestrained he can be, and he delivers lines with smooth charm laced with menace. While it's not exactly the most complex or engaging role he's ever been given, the energy he puts in is absolutely phenomenal, and he's able to more than confidently carry the proceedings. The proceedings happen to include blowing cocaine up a prostitute's bottom and taking so many pills that he goes into a "cerebral palsy phase", and the problem is that Scorsese doesn't seem to have made up his mind if he wants to play these straight or as darkly comic. Although it's a riotous and hugely entertaining affair, the balance between drama and comedy is done slightly awkwardly, so the finished product is neither as funny or as dramatic as it could have been. The onslaught of debauchery that is the film's cornerstone does suffer from the law of diminishing returns but it still holds up, and the on-form cast manages to all but entirely wash that problem away with charisma and spirit in equal measure. Jonah Hill and a cavalcade of office drones make good backing support for DiCaprio, and Margot Robbie as his put-upon second wife is equally great, but the leader of the pack behind DiCaprio is Rob Reiner as his bellowing, exasperated father, a performance that's especially impressive given that he's primarily a director.

In terms of direction, Scorsese's talent is definitely visible but not particularly outstanding. The film's strength comes more from The Sopranos' writer Terence Winters' script packed full of excessive immorality and bravado than it does from any of Scorsese's touches. The visuals are impressive though, and the mood of the film is so electric that even offices feel like they're brimming with energy. As is often the case with films based on a true story, the plot isn't wholly satisfying - there isn't anything that really resembles a character arc, and the ending is a little limp. But it's got charm, intelligence and shock in abundance, and all the menace, style and gravitas one would expect from a Scorsese film, so really, what are a few minor issues?

The Wolf of Wall Street is a three-hour long journey headfirst into a world of drugs, sex, corruption, sex and drugs. It's not the strongest Oscar contender and nor is it the best film of its kind, but make no mistake, the wolf is a wily and vicious beast. High expectations and having it as my follow-up to 12 Years A Slave do it no favours, and it is a genuinely brilliant movie. DiCaprio is absolutely fantastic, Hill and Reiner are hilarious, and you should all go and see this movie right now. 

'12 Years A Slave' review by Captain Raptor

'12 Years A Slave' review by Captain Raptor

2013 is firmly behind us now and it's time to embark upon the hopefully rewarding cinematic journey of 2014. It's good to start the year in the cheery mood we mean to go on in with some harrowing, heart-wrenching drama about persecution and racism. 12 Years A Slave is the most talked about film of the moment, one of the few films made on one of the most important topics imaginable and has the most impressive cast this side of a Woody Allen movie, so naturally my interest was piqued.

The most obvious film to make a comparison to would be Django Unchained, but 12 Years A Slave is much closer to something like Schindler's List - total and unabashed tragedy whilst still showing restraint, a bleak tone played out with bucketfuls of pathos and drama, taking one of the worst events of history and examining it through the lens of one troubled protagonist. If that's an apt comparison, then Michael Fassbender is certainly the Amon Goethe character. He plays his utterly repugnant plantation owner with aplomb, showing great range and depth in his performance, and he threatens to steal the show. I say 'threatens' because it's hard to conceive of anybody who could outshine Chiwetel Ejiofor in this film, giving an intensely moving performance where he can mix in some subtlety whilst still breaking out into moments of extreme emotion. His delivery of dialogue and facial expressions alone are enough to not only convince but to completely captivate the viewer, and it's fantastic to finally see him in the leading role he deserves. There's solid performances from the supporting cast too, particularly from Adepero Oduye and Lupita Nyong'o, both giving incredibly emotionally charged performances that hold nothing back. There's also highly nuanced work from Benedict Cumberbatch and Paul Dano gives his most memorable performance to date.

As brilliant as the performances are, the absolute best thing about 12 Years A Slave is the directing. Steve McQueen has been handed a fantastic story full of drama and horror, and he sets about presenting it in the best way he could - unflinchingly. 12 Years A Slave is brutal in parts, and goes to great length to portray the genuine suffering of slaves in America, utilising both subtle elements like the dirt-filled, claustrophobic accommodation and more explicit, violent scenes where bones crack and pained, agonized faces are pointed right at the camera. Tension builds over the course of the film and is released in one horrendous, haunting and superlative whipping scene, and it's hard to know whether to concentrate on the pain of the victim, the anger of the perpetrator, the fear and shame of the onlookers or the gore and brutality of the punishment. Also brilliant is McQueen's use of audio overlap - Cumberbatch's idyllic preaching sequences have the sounds of racist taunts and cries of anguish played underneath to keep the shocking and melancholic atmosphere at its peak.

12 Years A Slave is truly phenomenal. It's not an easy watch and parts of it will make you want to crawl out your own skin, but it's insuppressible, enthralling and sublime. There's so many amazing components that it's hard to fit everything into one review whilst doing it justice. Steve McQueen displays some of the smartest, most dramatic and affecting directing that I've ever witnessed, Fassbender and Ejiofor give knock-put performances, and the film's harsh tone and total conviction make it an intense and hugely engrossing movie.

Top Ten Films of 2013

Nearly a year after I've started this blog and we're back to where we began (by which I mean January). The selection of films here is based on British release dates, so while these films might have been in cinemas in 2012 in other locations, from my perspective these were all released in 2013. Without any further ado:

10. Pacific Rim - Loud, dumb but inventive fun, and some of the coolest CGI set-pieces ever filmed, anchored by a mostly on-form cast and the masterful hand of Guillermo Del Toro doing what he does best. It might not be thought-provoking but it's riotously good entertainment all the same.

9. Don Jon - Joseph Gordon-Levitt's debut as a writer and a director was sharper than a pin prick and balanced masturbation jokes with life crises in its own weird, beautiful way. Promising and intelligent, it's an admirably audacious piece of social commentary.

8. Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa - Steve Coogan's hero of British screens gets a well-deserved and well-executed foray into new territory with an adaption that takes everything good about the original and makes it just that little bit more daring. Funny throughout and frequently hilarious, it proves that you can teach an old Partridge new tricks.

7. Iron Man 3 - The funniest and most entertaining installment of Marvel's money maker, it stuck with the sarcasm and explosiveness and elevated it to a higher level. Knowing exactly when to go for laughs and when to go for thrills, Iron Man 3 is crowd-pleasing without being simple or lazy, and an excellent blockbuster.

6. American Hustle - Just creeping in before the year was out, David O Russell's stylized yet serious crime flick wrings fantastic performances out of a prestigious cast to a backdrop of ridiculous design, thoroughly engrossing drama with sprinklings of mirth and enjoyable 'who's conning who' shenanigans. 

5. The World's End - Maybe the Cornetto Trilogy deserved a better send-off, but as a stand alone film it's simply side-splitting, jaw-dropping brilliance, combining anarchy and banality to extraordinary effect from the masters of the art form. Comedy and sci-fi have never made better bedfellows.

4. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire  -Things got moodier and even more intense for the second chapter of the dystopian action series. Jennifer Lawrence's spellbinding performance is the highlight in a more confident, more emotional and subtler re-run of what came before. 

3. We're The Millers - I'm as surprised as you are. What looks like a mediocre stoner comedy is actually a snarky and most importantly hysterical comedy that takes things back to basics to show that low-concept and intelligent immaturity can still be funny, distinct and fresh if you have a good cast and you're prepared to go far enough. 

2. Filth - A no-holds barred turbulent wrecking ball of a film providing enough shocks to run a power plant. James McAvoy gives the best performance of his career, and the bleak, pitch-black sense of humour will have you wheezing for breath though a mixture of laughs and gasps. Not recommend for the faint-hearted, recommended for anybody wanting a dark, subversive and intense delight. 

1. Django Unchained - Powerful, powerful film making - subtlety be damned. Combining genuinely harrowing drama, over-the-top spectacle, intelligent story/dialogue and sheer guts, Tarantino's latest is as brilliant as it is controversial, showing brains behind the brutality and insensitivity. It's not just a film that will blow your mind with it's droll witticisms, blood-stained madness and spine-tinglingly good performances, but actually makes a statement about racism and exploitation. 

'American Hustle' review by Captain Raptor

'American Hustle' review by Captain Raptor

It probably doesn't seem like it, but I think that the worldwide obsession with Jennifer Lawrence (which I completely endorse) has peaked, maybe around the time of last year's Oscar ceremony. Her endlessly GIF'd stumble aside, Silver Linings Playbook obtained a sweep of nominations, serves as a landmark point in the career of almost everybody involved, and it's current cultural significance is pretty much indisputable. So, obviously, I still haven't seen it. As a sort of karmic apology to David O Russell, I watched his latest effort, featuring many of the same cast members.

The most immediately striking thing about American Hustle is the more superficial elements - the outlandishly stereotypical 70's outfits and hairstyles, the fluid camerawork and the fantastic soundtrack. It's a brilliantly stylish film, but the near fetishistic approach to showcasing its wardrobe can be grating at times. As wonderful as Christian Bale's comb-over is, the film's best parts lie elsewhere, in the performances. An absolutely phenomenal cast share equal levels of brilliance in their roles, even the smaller players like Louis CK and a menacing Robert De Niro on cameo duties. It's hard to pick any one cast member as particularly stand-out, but Lawrence and Bale are probably the most attention grabbing; although in fairness to their fellow cast members, those two have the most outlandish characters to play around with. They're backed up by a script that's got fair measures of intelligence and a low-key sense of drama. The film's a drier, more serious affair than I expected, but by no means was this a disappointment; besides, there are a few incredibly funny moments, in particular a scene revolving around a microwave and a recurring joke about an ice fishing anecdote. 

Some underlying weak points do impair the film a little. The plot doesn't really conjure up anything new, it could do with a little more editing, the ending's a little too abrupt and convenient for my taste, and the camera seems to be on a life-or-death mission to objectify Amy Adams. Those are more than minor flaws, but they're vastly overpowered by the sheer excellence of the film's style and performances. The flashiness can be gratuitous but it does make for a sleek, charismatic, highly polished final product, and all the main cast get an opportunity to display a full skill set - there are equally engrossing moments of heightened emotion and of near total restraint. It's a well balanced set of characters, all greatly flawed but understandable and likable, all distinct personalities but realistic and never caricatured.  

American Hustle is a wonderful piece of cinema, but a few tweaks and alterations and it could have been even better. That aside, it's got brains, drama, style and outstanding performances, which far more than makes up for anything that it does wrong. It's a strange blend of straight-faced realism and farce, but ultimately it's an excellent movie that had me entertained nearly throughout, and at times even captivated.

'The Usual Suspects' review by Captain Raptor

'The Usual Suspects' review by Captain Raptor

Given that he's been a key Hollywood player for almost twenty years, I've seen surprisingly little of Kevin Spacey's body of work. The Usual Suspects, for anybody whose cultural awareness is the size of the Greek federal reserve, is a 1995 crime film in which Spacey (in arguably his most famous and most important role) recounts the convoluted tale of his small criminal outfit during an interrogation.

The Usual Suspects really is Spacey's film. His character is incredibly quiet and perpetually in the background, so he never dominates the screen in the way of most great performances, but still his turn as the crippled, nervous conman Verbal is absolutely fantastic, from the mannerisms and movements to the delivery of dialogue and emotion, and it was certainly a well deserved Oscar. The other performances, while by no means below average, aren't particularly noteworthy, due to a combination of weakly defined, unextraordinary characters and the film's realistic and restrained style. This style serves the film well, allowing for the building of tension and it brings out the best in its intricate plot, but when all this tension boils over in the final act into mayhem and violence, it is a little tonally jarring. I do think that Gabriel Byrne was given too much screen time, partly because his character is by far the least interesting out of the gang members and his performance doesn't really elevate it any further than this, and partly because any time spent dwelling on him isn't spent with more interesting characters portrayed by fantastic character actors such as Benicio Del Toro and Kevin Pollack, who is given a great introduction and the film's funniest line and is then practically irrelevant for the remainder of the film.

The drama and complex plot are both fantastic, but not fantastic enough to prevent small segments in the middle of the film feeling somewhat dry. I'm not calling for more action or more comedy - that would be completely inconsistent with the tone and take away from some of the film's greatest attributes - but maybe some added flair to the dialogue, a tiny bit less restraint and realism in the performances, and the film might draw me in a little more with the added intensity. Really though, all these are minor complaints - I liked all the film's components and I especially liked the way they're put together, I just have personal preferences to the degrees to which each component is used.

The Usual Suspects is a brilliant film, and while I feel it might be just a little undeserving of the adoration placed on it and its seeming 'modern classic' status, a truly magnificent performance from Kevin Spacey and an intelligent and intriguing story certainly elevate it above the majority of the competition. It's definitely something I recommend, mostly on the aforementioned successes in screenwriting and performance, and just all round a very good movie.