Film Review: The Wolf of Wall Street

The Wolf of Wall Street. Rated R18+ (high impact sex scenes and drug use). 179 minutes. Directed by Martin Scorsese. Screenplay by Terence Winter. Based on the book by Jordan Belfort.

Verdict: Vanity project or cautionary tale? You decide.

If there’s a point to this long, raucous and rambling epic about an ambitious young stockbroker’s fall from the dizzying heights of a particular kind of success, it’s difficult to know what it might be.

Through his brokerage firm Stratton Oakmont, Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio at full stretch) ripped off unsuspecting investors in the 1990s. Before he was finally convicted of fraud and jailed, lots of people suffered the consequences; except Belfort it would seem, as he went on to the lucrative international motivational speakers circuit. And why anyone thought that this sordid tale of debauchery, set in the darkest depths of a moral vacuum, should take three hours to tell is a complete mystery.

Problematically, Belfort’s fall from a certain kind of power and influence might be easily considered as unremarkable and equally well-deserved, and it is odd that Scorsese and DiCaprio considered his tale of drug- and sex-crazed indulgence a worthy subject for their fifth cinematic collaboration.

The only revelations are the extraordinary, break-out performance from Australian-born Margot Robbie (Neighbours) as Belfort’s wife Naomi, and an excellent sequence of clowning brilliance as DiCaprio attempts to get back into his car while almost completely paralysed by the effects of a high number of drugs.

Scorsese and Winter (Boardwalk Empire, The Sopranos) take an each-way bet on the extent to which we will care about their fraudster and his eager band of disciples, led by the loyal and enthusiastic Donnie (the always reliable Jonah Hill). DiCaprio plays Belfort as some kind of financial market revolutionary, when in fact, his collision of business misadventures is a good deal less fascinating than the attention this handsomely over-produced film suspects it deserves.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.

Film Review: The Railway Man

The Railway Man. Rated M (mature themes and violence). 116 minutes. Directed by Jonathan Teplitzky. Screenplay by Frank Cottrell Boyce and Andy Paterson. Based on the book by Eric Lomax.

Verdict: A superb account of an incredible true story about learning to forgive.

I discovered Eric Lomax’s autobiographical account of his experience as a prisoner of war in a bookshop many years ago. This unassuming book by one of the few who were able to recount the horror of their experiences in the wilds of tropical Asia after Singapore fell to the Japanese in 1942, has always held a very special place in my heart. If there is a definitive story about the immeasurable value of forgiveness, this is it.

When Eric Lomax (Colin Firth) meets Patti (Nicole Kidman) on a train, it is love at first sight – but almost immediately after their wedding, Eric’s nightmares threaten to destroy their life together. Patti refuses to be defeated by the invisible horrors, and tracks down her husband’s friend and comrade Finlay (Stellan Skarsgård) in an effort to find out what happened to Eric during the war. As Finlay reluctantly shares their story of being forced to construct the notorious Thailand–Burma Railway, we experience it through the eyes of the young Eric (Jeremy Irvine) and one of his Japanese tormentors Takashi Nagase (Tanroh Ishida). Years later, when Eric discovers that Nagase (Hiroyuki Sanada plays the older Nagase) is working as a railway tour guide, he returns to the scene of his torment to right the wrongs that continue to destroy whatever chance of peace he might have.

Boyce and Paterson’s considered adaptation focuses on the essential conflict in Lomax’s courageous account, and Australian-born Teplitzky (Burning Man, Better Than Sex) resists the temptation to glorify the characters – focussing, instead, on the intimate human drama of their shared circumstances. He is rewarded by outstanding performances from his cast, especially Irvine (War Horse), whose beautifully crafted performance as the young Eric informs Firth’s excellent turn as the older Lomax.

Throughout its final sequences of retribution and healing, Firth and Sanada are magnificent, but nothing prepares you for the penultimate scene in the un-used railway cutting, when the film-makers realise the everlasting value of Eric Lomax’s life story to absolute perfection.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.

Film Review: Saving Mr. Banks

Saving Mr. Banks. Rated PG (mild themes). 125 minutes. Directed by John Lee Hancock. Written by Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith.

Verdict: This big-hearted, engrossing tear-jerker kicks off 2014 in magical style.

If this splendid film about P. L. Travers (Emma Thompson) negotiating with Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) over the rights to film her beloved Mary Poppins is anything to go by, then 2014 is going to be a great year at the cinema. What, at first, appears to be a film that is going to quaintly recall the relatively unknown story about the creation of one of Disney’s masterpieces, soon reveals itself to be a brilliantly written and acted story that will capture, and then melt, your heart.

Thompson is spell-binding as the perfectionist Travers, who travels from her home in London to the Walt Disney studios in Los Angeles to oversee the big screen adaptation of her beloved novel. Running in tandem with the showdown between the incredibly proper Mrs Travers and the determined Disney, is the story of the author as a young girl – Ginty (Annie Rose Buckley) – growing up in Australia, full of admiration for her alcoholic father Travers Goff (Colin Farrell).

Hancock (The Blind Side) directs what might have been an unwieldy affair masterfully, with the transitions between Australia in 1906 and LA in 1961 beautifully handled. John Schwartzman’s (The Amazing Spider-Man, Seabiscuit, Pearl Harbor, Armageddon) cinematography is gorgeous, as is Michael Corneblith and Daniel Orlandi’s (who collaborated on The Blind Side and Frost/Nixon) perfect production and costume design respectively.

Veteran composer Thomas Newman’s (American Beauty, Skyfall, Finding Nemo) score powers the story-telling beautifully, while still allowing the Sherman brothers’ (B. J. Novak plays Robert and Jason Schwartzman plays Richard) unforgettable songs from Mary Poppins (Let’s Go Fly a Kite is an absolute high-point) to star, as rightfully they must.

Hancock’s faith in his stellar cast is rewarded by superb performances from everyone, and from about the halfway mark until its heartfelt conclusion, be sure to have tissues handy. Quite a few.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.

Departures: The Best of 2013

2013 was definitely the year that animation took control of our cinemas, and a little snail with big dreams and an equally aspirational family of cave people lead the field of the top five films we reviewed this year – with links to the review published at the time of the film’s release.

Turbo

David Soren’s winning tale of a cute little snail called Theo  who dreamed of breaking out of his ordinary little garden-variety existence and winning the Indianapolis 500 with his custom-designed shell, was a supremely entertaining race to the finish line. With a delightful assortment of original and charmingly idiosyncratic characters, Turbo – with its engaging ‘no dream is too big and no dreamer too small’ through-line – was a memorable, beautifully made and often hilarious experience.

What to watch as well: How to Train Your Dragon.

The Croods

Fear, trust and generational change were the grand themes at play in this unassuming and visually dazzling adventure about the importance of learning from one another. As their physical world constantly collapsed around them, the resourcefulness required to ensure the Croods could find safety from the elements and hostile predators created some wonderful opportunities for grand adventures – and every one of those opportunities was brilliantly realised.

What to watch as well: Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2.

The Great Gatsby

Baz Luhrmann’s ambition for this film was to incise the novel’s themes of hope, optimism and the desolation of a life-long infatuation and lay the threads that both unite and divide us bare in scene after scene of artfully considered cinematic mastery. With magnificent production and costume design from Catherine Martin, the stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan and Tobey Maguire played it as though their lives depended on it, while Joel Edgerton’s standout performance as the morally-bankrupt Tom Buchanan was one of the best of the year.

What to watch as well: The Aviator.

Zero Dark Thirty

Featuring a brilliant performance from Jessica Chastain as a CIA operative whose obsession with finding and killing Osama Bin Laden became dangerously all-encompassing, Kathryn Bigelow’s telling of Mark Boal’s forensic screenplay was never less than entirely absorbing. By focussing on the human cost of often futile, exhaustive (and exhausting) counter terrorism activities, and by refusing to drown in propaganda or sentimentality, Zero Dark Thirty was a raw and uncompromising film that, like Bigelow and Boal’s The Hurt Locker, remains impossible to forget.

What to watch as well: The Hurt Locker.

Flight

Robert Zemeckis’s powerful and utterly engrossing study of the perils of addiction featured career-best performances from Denzel Washington as an alcoholic airline pilot and Kelly Reilly as a heroin addict who meet by chance in hospital after he survives a plane crash. Under Zemeckis’s masterful direction, the stricken airliner sequences were astonishing, but it was during the film’s well-considered and unapologetic study of the fateful consequences of addiction that Flight became one of the most compelling films of the year.

What to watch as well: Castaway.

This compilation was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.