Boston Rats

The Departed

Director: Martin Scorsese

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Martin Sheen, Mark Wahlberg, Vera Farmiga, Alec Baldwin

Released: October 6, 2006

Oscar nominations:

Best Picture (won)

Best Director - Martin Scorsese (won)

Best Supporting Actor - Mark Wahlberg (lost to Alan Arkin for Little Miss Sunshine)

Best Editing (won)

Best Adapted Screenplay - William Monahan (won)

If you've never seen it, I would highly suggest watching The Departed before reading this review. I will give warnings when I get to spoilers...I have slight spoilers and I have major spoilers. It probably won't be a big deal if you're spoiled slightly, but, trust me, you don't want to know the major spoilers if you haven't seen this movie yet! 

So this film is actually a remake of a 2002 Hong Kong film called Infernal Affairs. I've never seen it, but from what I do know about it, it's an hour shorter than The Departed (which is two and a half hours long). The inspiration for that movie was a more realistic version of Face/Off and while I was watching this, I did kind of get that vibe (just not as absurd!)

Even though this is a remake of a foreign film, I did get a slight Goodfellas vibe from it. Even though I enjoy The Departed, I like Goodfellas better. Let's be honest: that's the movie Scorsese should have won for! I will say this is my favorite collaboration between Marty and Leo. Well, it's a toss up between this and The Wolf of Wall Street. I'm not too high on Gangs of New York or The Aviator or Shutter Island. 

Slight spoiler warning alert! I feel like this information is probably known to everyone because it starts pretty early in the movie, but you never can be too careful! 

The movie takes place in Boston where Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) has become a detective for the Massachusetts State Police. However, he is actually a mole to gather information who has been trained and groomed by Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson), an Irish mob boss who has been like a father figure to Sullivan ever since he was a young boy. In fact, when I saw the young boy they cast as him, I knew instantly it was Matt Damon's character! They did a really job casting him. In fact, he even calls Costello "Dad" whenever he calls him on the phone right in front of the police captain, Queenan (Martin Sheen). "Hi, Dad, I can't make it to dinner, but my friends are still coming!" Seriously, how did they not figure out what that's code for when he was saying that right in front of them?

Meanwhile, while there's a rat in the police unit, Captain Queenan and Sergeant Dignam (Mark Wahlberg) have placed undercover cop William Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) to infiltrate Costello's mob group. He has just graduated from the police academy and nobody knows who he is except for one person (and I'll get to that later). Their plan for Costigan is to have him get arrested for assault, spend some time in jail, then get in with Costello's group. That way at least it will look authentic he's a hood rat. Queenan and Dignam are the only two people who know that Costigan is working undercover.

After a major transaction of microprocessors (whatever the heck this is) goes wrong, Sullivan and Costigan are well aware there are rats on the other side and warn their respective leaders of them. While Sullivan is on police duty watching this transaction go down through surveillance with the other officers, he reaches into his coat pocket and we see him text a message to Costello, with one hand, mind you, and keeping his phone in his pocket, "No phones". Okay, this is 2006, so he's doing this with a flip phone and he's obviously memorized which buttons to push and how many times to push the up/down arrow to get to his contacts, then how many down to click on Costello's name and which buttons to push to write "No phones", but....if I did that, I would probably end up sending it to the wrong person....if I even got to contacts and the message would probably read "77 74843" or whatever numbers correlate with those letters! Obviously, he probably practiced doing that until he got it right, but I was pretty impressed he could do that. So he warns Costello to shut off the phones and everyone is like, "They turned their phones off!" However, there's one person who has kept his phone on and Costigan has texted Queenan a simple "$" to let him know the buyers are there. So that's how the two infiltrators are aware of each other. They just don't know who they are. 

For a movie without any adolescent girls or hardly any female characters for that matter, there's a lot of period talk. It's really gross. Well, it's really gross and skeevy in one scene, and in the other scene, it's still gross, but it's also funny. In the opening scene, when we're introduced to Costello and see him talking to a young Colin, he asks the girl who's working behind the counter, "Have you gotten your period yet?" First of all, ewwwwwww. Second of all, the girls is clearly at least sixteen. Of course she's gotten her period. Don't be an idiot, Frank. During this whole monologue we're getting from Costello, they keep him hidden in the shadows and I thought they were doing this because it takes place in the past and they didn't want us to see Nicholson's face cuz he needs to be young, but at the very end of his speech, we see him step out of the shadows and see his face.  In the other scene where periods come up, Costigan is at a bar where Costello's guys hang out and he orders a cranberry juice. One of the guys tells him that's what his girlfriend drinks when she's on her period and asks Costigan if he's on his period and in response gets a shot glass smashed on his head.

Speaking of women, police psychologist, Madalyn (Vera Farmiga) is the only one of note, and thank God, we don't have to hear about her menstruation cycle. She strikes up a relationship with Sullivan and they start dating. Their meet cute is super annoying. They're both on an elevator with several other people and Sullivan strikes up a conversation with her. When the elevator opens, it's her floor, and she gets off, but Sullivan, who tells her he's up one more floor, stays on the elevator, but keeps his body against the door to keep the elevator from closing and is still talking to her for several minutes, eventually getting her card. And there are other people still on the elevator waiting while these two are shamelessly flirting with each other! I'm surprised nobody got pissed at them! They're all just standing there, nonplussed. I would be so annoyed! It's like, why don't you get off the damn elevator and get her information and then just take the damn stairs up one flight when you're done! UGH! I did laugh when she gives him his card and he says, "I don't need it...I'm a detective, I'll find you" and she starts to take it back, but he snatches it and tells her, "I do need it." That was pretty cute. 

So they start dating, but guess who Madalyn has an affair with? Costigan, of all people! What a small world! Later in the movie, Sullivan will get a whiff of this information and Madalyn will tell Sullivan they're having a baby, but I have to wonder, as I did, if he suspects that it's not his as he has some, ahem, problems in the bedroom. 

When Queenan tells Sullivan to follow Costello because he believes that will lead them to the rat inside the police unit, a lightbulb goes off over Sullivan's head and he tells two officers to put a tail on Queenan, telling them he suspects Queenan might be the mole. It's actually a brilliant idea, it's just too bad the bad guys thought of it first! The two officers track Queenan to an abandoned warehouse where, indeed, Queenan is meeting with the infiltrator. Sullivan calls his guys and gives them the address and tells him they found the rat. When Queenan and Costigan found out they've been exposed, the former tells the latter to use the fire escape and that he'll be okay.

And now is a good time to go into MAJOR SPOILERS! DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER IF YOU HAVE NEVER SEEN THIS MOVIE AND DO NOT WANT TO BE SPOILED BECAUSE NOW I WILL BE GIVING AWAY HUGE PLOT POINTS!!!!!!!!!!!!! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!!!!!!

Well, Queenan wasn't exactly telling the truth when he tells Costigan that he'll "be okay" because when Costigan walks outside and around a corner, Queenan's body literally goes splat on the pavement in front of him from being thrown out the window. Oh my God! They killed President Bartlett! This is the first of many, many characters to become departed, hence the title. Costigan starts crying and freaking out and I'm thinking, Run, Leo, get the hell outta there! But when someone comes out of the building and asks him what took him long, I remembered that he was supposed to meet there in the first place. HOWEVER....in the next scene, the guy who texted Costigan tells him he gave him the wrong address and finds it curious that he showed up. Lucky for Costigan, this guy got into a shootout with the other policemen who followed Queenan and literally dies a few second later, so his secret is taken to the grave. I mean, how convenient is that?

There's a great scene where Sullivan dials the last number Queenan dialed on his phone and Costigan is smart enough not to say anything when he answers it. Both of them are just holding their phones to their ears, waiting to see if anyone will talk first, but no one does. When they hang up, Costigan starts packing, but then calls the number back and says, "You called this number on a dead man's phone. Who are you?" Sullivan tells him who he is and that he's taking over Queenan's division. Costigan wants to confer this piece of information with Dignam, but he took a leave of absence (or rather quit because he was furious that Sullivan got Queenan killed by putting a tail on him). I don't know why he just didn't call Dignam to ask him unless he didn't have his home phone number? :::shrug:::

In another turn of events, Sullivan finds out, from going through Queenan's notes, that Frank Costello is an FBI informant. What the huh? I wasn't exactly clear who all knew that information. Queenan for sure and probably Dignam. But did Costello know that Costigan was working for the FBI too? This whole reveal really confused me. Maybe I'm just stupid, who knows! Sullivan is worried that Costello is going to rat him out, so he kills him when the police bust him and his gang for some drug thing. Costello has one of those movie deaths where he's shot in the chest and spits up blood, but psych! He's not dead yet! It takes another shot to kill him and Sullivan is hailed as a hero, so I'm guessing nobody there knew about Frank's secret. 

There's a scene where Costigan gives Madalyn an envelope and instructs her to open it if something happens to him or he tells her to and that she's the only person he trusts. Remember this piece of information. Speaking of envelopes, there's another one that's an integral part of the story. When Costello finds out there's a rat among his crew, he makes everyone fill out a form with their name, address, social security number, etc. so he can check out everyone. All of these papers will be in an envelope with CITIZENS (actually it will be written twice because the first guy who wrote it spelled it wrong) scrawled across it. Everyone is supposed to stay in the bar where they're filling out until they've all been checked, but Costigan says he's not staying, so that's a huge sign that he's the rat! Though I don't blame him that he wants to leave...if he stays, he's dead.

So this envelope with "Citizens" will come up later when Costigan sees it sitting on Sullivan's desk when he goes to get his pay and that's when he knows that Sullivan is a mole within the Force. He also knows that Sullivan knows he was the rat within the mob. He leaves without telling Sullivan, but he doesn't tell Dignam, who is, remember, the only living person who knows the truth about him. Instead he gets Sullivan to meet him at the building where Queenan was killed, baiting him by saying Costello told him he has recorded all his conversations for insurance and if they are released, Sullivan will be revealed. Costigan also called Anthony Anderson, the one person who was also in the same academy as Costigan and knows who he is. Costigan thinks he can get him to trust him, but it doesn't quite work out that way. I still don't understand why he didn't call Dignam! 

Costigan takes the elevator down with his gun pointed at Sullivan's head, but when the door opens, we see someone shoot Costigan in the head, and then when Anthony Anderson comes down the other elevator and sees Costigan dead on the floor and two of his fellow officers, he doesn't quite know what's going on. The guys shoots him too. This is someone we've seen in the background, but not a major character. He tells Sullivan that he wasn't the only one working for Costello and they have to look out for each other. When Sullivan gets the chance, he kills him. 

Not long after, Sullivan will come home to his apartment to see Dignam there with a gun and he kills him. You may have never noticed this if you've only seen the movie once, or maybe you didn't even notice on a second time, but next time you watch this movie, be on the lookout for X's when a character dies or is about to die. When Sullivan is walking down the hall to his door, the carpet in the hallway has large X's (super tacky if you ask me), when Costigan and Sullivan are in the elevator, you see an X created with duct tape about Costigan's head, and when poor Queenan falls out of the building, he pasts several windows with tape making an X. 

Remember that envelope Costigan gave Madalyn to open if anything happened to him? We never see it again. The last we see of Madalyn is her at his funeral, crying. I guess they thought it was unnecessary since we already knew what would be in that envelope, but it just seemed weird to bring up if they're not going back to it.

The movie ends with a shot of a rat on the balcony railing which made me groan for two reasons. One, this is an extremely nice apartment complex in Boston and now there are rats balconies? No, I don't buy it. (And I literally wouldn't buy the apartment if it had rats!) Two, it was a little too on the nose.  

A Made Man

Goodfellas

Director: Martin Scorsese

Cast: Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Lorraine Bracco, Paul Sorvino

Released: September 21, 1990

Oscar nominations:

Best Picture (lost to Dances with Wolves)

Best Director - Martin Scorsese (lost to Kevin Costner for Dances with Wolves)

Best Supporting Actor - Joe Pesci (won)

Best Supporting Actress - Lorraine Bracco (lost to Whoopi Goldberg for Ghost)

Best Adapted Screenplay - Martin Scorsese and Nicholas Pileggi (lost to Michael Blake for Dances with Wolves)

Best Film Editing (lost to Dances with Wolves)

I need to watch Dances with Wolves in the near future to see if I agree with the Academy's decision of awarding that Best Picture over Goodfellas. I call BS on Kevin Costner winning Best Director over Marty Scorsese, though, ESPECIALLY since at this point in time Scorsese had never won an Oscar for directing (and wouldn't win one until 2007 for The Departed....personally, I liked Goodfellas better, though I will admit it's been awhile since I've seen The Departed.) If you remember, back in 2010, I posted several videos about a poll asking which was the biggest Best Picture upset in Oscar history. Dances with Wolves winning over Goodfellas was on the list, but it was not the one that won the poll and not the one I thought should have win....oh, trust me, there's a much bigger upset! You'll just have to go back and watch to find out, but if you know me, then you already know my answer!

Goodfellas is based on a book by Nicholas Pileggi called "Wiseguy" (damn, I can never remember if book titles are suppose to be italicized, underlined, or in parentheses which is why I just do all three!). Since there was already a show on TV called Wiseguy, Scorsese (smartly) changed the name. I think Goodfellas is a better title anyway. Wiseguy sounds like a comedy. "Ehhhh, Wiseguy!" The book and movie are based on the true story of Henry Hill (played by Ray Liotta), a man who got sucked into the mafia life at a very young age and would eventually turn on his mob family. The movie begins with him saying, in voiceover, "As far back as I can remember, I've always wanted to be a gangster." He tells the audience that as a young child and teen in the '50s, he was always awed by the power these Italian-American men in his Brooklyn community held. He was able to get part-time work from them by running errands for them and doing small jobs. This soon became a full-time job and he was part of their family.

His mentor is Jimmy Conway (Robert De Niro), who Henry is in awe of the first time he meets him at a club because Jimmy is just tipping everyone one hundred dollars, like he has money to blow through like it's no big deal. He gives the doorman $100 just for opening the door and the bartender $100 for keeping the drinks coming. When he meets Henry he gives him a couple hundreds, just for the hell of it, really. Jimmy likes to sell things on the black market, such as cigarettes, booze, shrimp and lobster. He gives Henry two important pieces of advice: "Never rat on your friends and always keep your mouth shut." Henry will NOT abide by these rules later on in the movie!

He meets Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci), a very volatile man which makes him extremely scary and dangerous. One of the most well-known scenes in the movie is when Tommy is telling a story to a group of guys including Henry, and the punchline of the story is, "Yeah, I told this guy to go f*** his mother" and then he sees this guy again and he says, "Hey, I thought I told you to go f*** your mother!" All the guys are laughing hysterically, including Henry who says, "You're really funny." Tommy seems to take this more as an insult and asks him, "Funny how? Like I'm a clown? I amuse you? I make you laugh? I'm here to f***ing amuse you? What do you mean funny?" The whole table is silent and Henry has to try to backtrack what he meant so he's not insulting Tommy anymore than he (apparently!) already is. He tells him he thought the way he told the story was funny and Tommy gets even more angry and says, "How the f*** am I funny?" Henry gets a little freaked out then calls him out and says, "Get the f*** out of here!" and Tommy laughs and says, "I almost had him!" So he was just playing with him the entire time. Although, as it turns out, when he gets angry, sometimes he's not always playing around. This proves to be true in another scene when the guys are playing poker and and a young guy named Spider (played by Michael Imperioli aka Christopher (Christofuh!) from The Sopranos) is serving them drinks. He misunderstood Tommy wanted a drink after delivering the beverages to the table and Tommy says to him, "Where's my f***ing drink?" Spider tries to explain to him he thought he said he didn't need a drink, but this only makes matters worse. Spider asks him if he wants a drink and Tommy says, "Yeah, I want a f***ing drink! Move it, you f***ing bastard!" He thinks it would be hilarious if he made Spider "dance" and takes out his pistol and shoots him in the foot. The other guys are like, "What's the matter with you, Tommy?" and Henry goes over to help Spider. Tommy says, "So what? He got shot in the foot! Big f***ing deal!" Henry and another guy go take him to get his foot taken care of and Tommy says, "Let him crawl there like he crawls to get the drinks!" He is laughing and smiling and obviously does not feel bad he just shot someone in the foot. (Well, he does do worse things than shoot people in the foot and he never feels bad about those either!) He tells Spider, "Don't make a big f***ing thing out of this, you little prick!" and "It was an accident!" At a following game, we see Spider has a cast on his foot. Tommy makes fun of him and Spider tells him, "Why don't you go f*** yourself, Tommy." Big mistake. BIG. MISTAKE! The other guys (except for Tommy who is just sitting there looking mighty pissed!) are laughing and Jimmy jokes that he has respect for Spider for standing up to Tommy. The second he tells Tommy, "You gonna let him get away with that?", I KNEW Spider was a dead man. Because Tommy takes out his gun and just brutally blows him away. All the guys are shocked and Jimmy says, "I was f***ing kidding with you and you f***ing shoot the guy?" And I'm thinking, Well, maybe you shouldn't have egged him on! We all knew this was going to happen!

I wrote in my Breakfast Club review that I grew up knowing Emilio Estevez best as the coach from The Mighty Ducks because that was the generation I grew up with. Well, it probably won't surprise you when I say that Joe Pesci will always be one half of the Wet Bandits from Home Alone to me. I was a kid when that movie came out (and you know I'm a big Home Alone fan!), so I will always associate him with that movie. It only came out two months after this one, but I was too young to see Goodfellas! I don't even think I was even aware of it until several years later. Haha, can you imagine if Tommy DeVito was the character in that movie? First of all, I don't think Kevin would survive! Or Marv after that scene with the crowbar and the tarantula! Second of all, those f-bombs would be dropping every which way!

I heard somewhere that 27 people who were in this movie, would later go on to appear in The Sopranos, which is pretty much the TV version of Goodfellas. I already mentioned Michael Imperioli, but probably the most well-known one would be Lorraine Bracco, who plays Henry's wife, Karen Hill. They first meet on a double date they have with Tommy and a woman who is a friend of Karen's. While Tommy and his date are canoodling and having a great time, Henry and Karen aren't talking to each other and show no interest in each other. Another double date is set up, but this time Henry doesn't show up and Karen is pissed about that. We suddenly get voice over from her which was a little jarring at first because so far at this point, we've only heard voice overs from Henry. When she confronts Henry about standing her up, he is attracted to her fiery personality and they soon start dating. There's a great scene where Henry takes her to the Copacabana nightclub and instead of going through the front doors and waiting in line, he takes her through the back and there's this great one-take scene of them walking through the back halls and the kitchen. Here's the scene:



Man, I tell you, that Marty Scorsese is a great movie director. That is a brilliant scene. This is why I enjoy this movie so much; a lot of the scenes just suck you in like this one. Although I will say I mostly associate that song with Adventure in Baby-Sitting! (I have seen that movie a lot more than this one! This is only the second time I've seen Goodfellas.)

Needless to say, Karen is very seduced by Henry and becomes even more attractive to him when he beats up her neighbor with the handle of his gun when he tries to get too handsy with her. Henry hands Karen the bloodied gun and she says she knows this would have scared most woman, but it made her even more attracted to him. They eventually get married, but that won't stop Henry from having some fun with another woman on the side.

The movie begins with Henry, Jimmy, and Tommy driving at night when they hear a sound coming from the trunk. They stop the car and open the trunk to reveal to the audience a bloodied and beat up man who they thought was dead, but is still alive (but barely because he looks really bad). We see Tommy take out a huge knife and stab the poor guy several times and then the movie starts in chronological order. About an hour in the movie, we will find out about the man in the trunk. He is a mobster named Billy Batts and he did a very stupid thing by insulting Tommy. Do these people never learn. You don't f*** with Tommy DeVito! Not if you want to live! Billy is actually an old friend of Tommy who he hasn't seen in several years because they do hug and seem happy to see each other after all this time. But then Billy starts joking around with Tommy about his shoe shining days and this really ticks off Tommy. (Someone needs to go to anger management!) Billy tells him to calm down, that he's only kidding with him. Everything seems to be calm, but then Billy (who must be a real idiot), has to make another crack and this really sets Tommy off and he goes to attack Billy, but is stopped by Henry and Jimmy. Later, when Billy is alone, Jimmy distracts him so Tommy can sneak up on him and start beating the crap out of him with Jimmy's help. They put him in the trunk of the car and head to Tommy's mother's house because Tommy tells them there's a shovel at her house. Here's a fun fact: Tommy's mother is played by Scorsese's real-life mother, Catherine Scorsese. (Another fun fact about this movie is that Samuel L. Jackson has a small role. He plays a man who helps the guys with a big heist, but then after he carelessly leaves a trail for police, he is whacked.) He tells the guys to be quiet because he doesn't want to wake her up, but she's already up when the enter the house. She ends up making this big Italian meal for the three men in the middle of the night and Tommy takes this huge carving knife and asks her if he can take it because he hit a deer (he explains to her that's why he has blood on his shirt!) and he needs the knife to hack off the hoof of the animal! We then return to the very first scene of the movie and see him use the knife to stab Billy and kill for good this time. Since Billy was a made man, Tommy soon gets his comeuppance and I think we all saw that coming!

Towards the end of the movie, things start to spiral for Henry and he is forced to go into the Witness Protection Program and rat on Jimmy and mob boss leader, Paulie (Paul Sorvino). I just love the way this movie is shot; lots of brilliant camera work. Yes, the movie is very violent, but it IS a gangster movie, after all! It also makes me want to read the book it was based on. I am looking for something to read!

Let's Make Lots of Money

The Wolf of Wall Street
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie, Kyle Chandler, Rob Reiner, Jean Dujardin, Matthew McConaughey
Released: December 25, 2013

Oscar nominations:
Best Picture (lost to 12 Years a Slave)
Best Director - Martin Scorsese (lost to Alfonso Cuaron for Gravity)
Best Actor - Leonardo DiCaprio (lost to Matthew McConaughey for Dallas Buyers Club)
Best Supporting Actor - Jonah Hill (lost to Jared Leto for Dallas Buyers Club)
Best Adapted Screenplay - Terence Winter (lost to John Ridley for 12 Years a Slave)

My city's newspaper movie reviewer liked this movie, but he commented that he saw a few walkouts and the article got a few feedback letters from readers saying they walked out of the theater. Now I have seen a few movies in the theater I wish I had walked out on mainly because they were long and boring. This movie is long (three hours) but it is not boring. But I'm doubting its the length that made those people walk out. This movie is not for everyone. Let's just say it earns its R rating. There is plenty of vulgar language, nudity, and drug use. If people are going to be bothered by that, then they shouldn't see an R rated movie about a self-centered rich guy! What are they expecting?!

Jordan Belfort (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) adopts the Gordon Gekko motto of "Greed is good" and makes riches as a stockbroker earning something like $49 million a year. I had never heard of this Belfort character and didn't realize he was a real person until this movie came out. I enjoyed DiCaprio's performance of him, but would not like him if I ever met him in real life. He was a bit of a smug jerk, but I suppose most rich people are smug jerks...I would probably be a smug jerk if I were rich! The film breaks the fourth wall with Belfort talking to the audience. I love the bit at the beginning where he's  walking out of his mansion, talking to the camera as he sips on a mimosa and tosses the glass flute and the rest of the unfinished drink in a bush behind him. I thought little moments like those were great.

Belfort tells the audience that that he made $49 million last year, but it pissed him off because "it was just 3 shy of a million a week." Now the line delivery is hilarious, I won't deny that, but seriously? If you're complaining that you're not making a million a week, you really need a tall glass of STFU. I would be happy if I made one percent of what he made!

Matthew McConaughey has a small cameo as the executive who takes a young Belfort under his wing and molds him into the stockbroker he will eventually become. When he is forced to quit his job because of Black Monday, Belfort, desperate for anything, takes a job at a small Long Island firm that sells penny stocks. He impresses the crew there with his charming salesman tactics...he was someone who could sell ice to an eskimo. There's a great scene where he's making a big sell to some unassuming schmuck and everyone is gathered around him as he's making the deal. Belfort teaches the others how to scam people out of their money and soon they are lucrative and Belfort starts his own firm called Stratton Oakmont where they make even more money...because now they're conning rich people into paying lots of money for worthless stocks instead of average Joes. One of the people who Belfort takes under his own wing is Donnie (Jonah Hill), this socially awkward weird guy who lives in the same building as Belfort but notices that Belfort drives a nice car and wants to know what he does.

Everyday is a party and spectacle at Stratton Oakmont. They bring in strippers, monkeys, marching bands, bet people to shave their heads, and don't forget the drugs. There were a lot of people who worked there and they all seemed to be making millions of dollars which I didn't really get. How are all these people making so much money? Wouldn't Belfort want all that money? I have no idea how stockbroker firms work anyway...which is probably why I'm not rich! There's an amusing scene where Belfort's dad (Rob Reiner), who manages the firm's expenses yells at Belfort for spending thousands of dollars on a business meeting dinner.

Before he acquired his riches, Belfort was married to a woman named Theresa. Having already seen his future, you know they do not stay together because he's married to a blonde bombshell. I figured he was going to dump Theresa as soon as he started raking in the dough, but that's not the case. He meets Naomi, the blonde (Margot Robbie) and cheats on his wife with her. His wife catches them together and they get a divorce. I think he does feel bad for hurting his wife, but after five seconds he realizes he has a more beautiful woman and marries her...then starts cheating on Naomi!

If there's anything that Belfort loves more than women (well, then besides his money), it's his drugs. He is a hard core drug user and one of the most memorable scenes involves him and Donnie taking something called lemons which is a quaalude that doesn't exist on the market anymore. They both take one, but after thirty minutes (and watching an entire episode of Family Matters without laughing), they decide the drugs have lost their effect and take a second one...and after that they take a third! Well, turns out these drugs need 90 minutes to kick in...which seems like an awful long time to wait! Or maybe it was 60 minutes, I don't remember...that's still a long time. Belfort gets a call from his dad telling him to use a different phone because the feds (led by Kyle Chandler) are onto his scam and have tapped his phone. He drives to the country club in his Lamborghini and the drugs don't kick in until he's talking to his dad on the pay phone and suddenly can't speak and looses all function of his muscles. He wants to get home quickly to warn Donnie and his wife and thus begins a hilarious segment of him having to crawl down stairs and into his car. I heard this scene lasts about 25 minutes! It does go on for awhile, but I guess since I was so entertained by it, it didn't seem that long to me. I felt a little unsure whether I should by laughing or not because here was this guy who was totally impaired by drugs and could have killed someone by getting into the car. Luckily he didn't. In fact, he's so out of it, he only remembers driving very slowly and not hitting a thing and his car being in perfect shape, when in fact, later a police man comes to give him a ticket for reckless driving and we see his car as being totaled and wrecked beyond ruin.

I knew that scene was played for laughs when later we get a very serious scene involving Naomi telling Jordan she wants a divorce and he tells her he's not going to take his children away from him (I didn't know why he said "children" when I think they only had one daughter...?) and he then attempts to kidnap his daughter and nearly kills both of them when he almost crashes his car.

Eventually Jordan's scam catches up with him and he is caught by the FBI (while filming an infomercial, no less) and is sentenced to two years in prison. With all his extravagant things, Belfort didn't do a very good job of hiding his money from the IRS...even though he tried to put it in a Swiss Bank (although that did not go over very well), but I couldn't really blame him. If I had all that money, I would want to buy nice things too...even if that money was obtained illegally! I think that would be anyone's first impulse. Look at poor Walter White: he had enough money to last a lifetime (several lifetimes!) but the only things he ever bought with it was a nice bottle of champagne and a new car for his son. At least his money will go to his kids under the disguise of rich benefactors. But that would suck to have all that money and never get to spend it! So I can't blame Belfort for going a little crazy with it. So don't obtain money illegally!

Weekly Movie #5

Hugo
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Asa Butterfield, Ben Kingsley Chloe Moretz, Sacha Baron Cohen, Emily Mortimer, Christopher Lee
Released: November 23, 2011
Viewed in theaters: February 1, 2012

Oscar nominations:
Best Picture (lost to The Artist)
Best Director - Martin Scorsese (lost to Michel Hazanavicius for The Artist)
Best Adapted Screenplay - John Logan (lost to Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon, and Jim Rash for The Descendants)
Best Art Direction (won)
Best Cinematography (won)
Best Editing (lost to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo)
Best  Costume Design (lost to The Artist)
Best Sound Editing (won)
Best Sound Mixing (won)
Best Visual Effects (won)

Despite having a bad viewing experience (at least for the first hour) and despite it being in 3-D (which I loathe) and despite the self-importance with all the "movies are great!" mantra embedded in this film, I actually did enjoy Hugo for the most part.

Let me explain each of these points.

Since this movie had been out for a good two months I wasn't at all surprised when I was the only one in the theater...until these two guys came in and sat in the back (I was seated in the middle) and proceeded to talk in Spanish throughout the movie. During the loud parts I couldn't hear them (and maybe they weren't talking during those parts), but I could hear them talking (in a regular speaking voice) when there were two characters onscreen talking to each other. It was highly distracting and really irritating. Thank God, though, they left one hour into the movie (I know because I checked my phone) and I could enjoy the movie in silence! I don't know why they would pay ten and a quarter to watch a movie they (presumably) couldn't understand only to walk out an hour later, but I was glad when they left. A quick public announcement: SHUT YOUR MOUTHS DURING MOVIES!!!

As for the 3-D, yes it was impressive, but I think the movie would have been just as fine in 2-D. I really hate wearing those glasses because your peripheral vision is blocked and it's really weird when you take off the glasses and see Ben Kingsley with four pair of eyes. Yes, I realize I shouldn't take off the glasses in the middle of viewing a 3-D movie, but it is a bad habit I have. I think 3-D is a passing gimmick and it doesn't add anything to the movie and I will try at all costs to avoid it, but sometimes you can't like with this film and the upcoming re-release of Titanic (which I will see hell or high water!) But I will admit the 3-D was top notch.

Being that Hugo is a love letter to the very first movies in cinema, it does get a little heavy-handed in its "movies are the best thing ever!"It reminds me when singers (mostly rappers) sing, er, rap about how awesome and rich they are. It's just so self-indulgent. I love watching movies, but when movies have to tell me how great movies are, it makes me roll my eyes. Show don't tell!

So despite those three things, I did like this movie. It's a beautiful movie to look at, even more beautiful than War Horse. It's about a boy named Hugo (Butterfield), as you may have guessed, an orphan who lives in a train station in Paris where he winds the big clock. Since he has no money he's always stealing food and other little knick knacks and a toy shopkeeper (Ben Kingsley) catches him and makes him empty his pockets and give all his possessions to him. This includes a notebook that is very dear to Hugo's heart because before his dad (Jude Law in one scene) died, they were working on a project together and the notebook has all the notes and sketches for the project. Hugo follows the toykeeper home after he threatens to burn the notebook and asks his granddaughter (Moretz) to make sure her grandfather doesn't burn the notebook and she promises she will look after it.

They get into a discussion about movies and the girl tells Hugo that her grandfather doesn't allow her to watch movies. We later find out that her grandfather is Georges Melies, a French magician who became one of cinema's first and famous directors. He had a love for movies and made many of them but once the war started he had to give up his dream because nobody had time for fantasy anymore. Hugo and his granddaughter find out about his past and persuade him not to hide who he is and be proud of all his accomplishments. A very nice tribute to the Golden Age of cinema even if it does become a little heavy-handed at times.