The Wolf At The Box Office

 ** Resolutions are no joke ( or at least not on the 2nd of January they’re not) So in an effort to keep mine, I’m reviewing the most talked about movie of the season! Yay me!

The Basics 

You already know the basics even if you haven’t seen the trailer at all. It’s Wall Street pre 2008 collapse post 1987 collapse in an era where money bought you status and influence but more importantly bought you copious amounts of drugs, booze, and sex. Even if all you’ve seen was the movie poster and those facts, you basically know how this ends and but boy is it a pleasant cinematic ride to get there.

What I loved…

Everything. This whole movie is our society’s guilty pleasure of 2014. It’s sex and drugs and lots of it, but isn’t that the whole reason we watch movies to begin with? It also includes some of the highest grossing actors in Hollywood earning ever penny with performances that made it seem like they were really coked out their minds during the entire production, which, of course, didn’t hurt either. It’s fast talking, non stop madness that we mental condemn but secretly wish we could live. Like the great Scorsese movies that come before it, it doesn’t back down from telling a story of a man who literally did everything we see in the movie and yet both the actors, and the director make you root for him in a time & place where being rich (and in particularly Wall Street rich) is paramount to being a sinner. The over indulgence of every person who graces the screen should make you feel anger and contempt for a profession that no regular minded person can even understand let alone pull off but by the end you walk out feeling so thoroughly entertained you wonder if you’d accidentally taken a “lude”.

What I hated… 

The time stamp on this baby comes in at a whopping 2 hours and 50 minutes, which if I had seen this at a regular theater instead of dinner theater I probably wouldn’t have made it through. However, the complaints from my side end there. Lots of media attention has been paid this week to the “violence” and “sexism” played up in this movie and honestly it’s pathetic. Of course there’s sexism and violence in this movie, it’s a movie! It’s a movie that plays out a real life memoir where those things definitely existed. Just because there’s such a thing as sexism doesn’t mean Hollywood should take it out of their movies or risk the judgey looks of feminist bloggers. Those bloggers who feel that the men in this movie treat the women like objects should watch the latest episode of Scandal and tell me how they feel. It’s not real people. Ug, annoyed.

Why watch?

For all the reasons above and then some. Oh and for soon to be breakout stars Jonah Hill and Margot Robbie (who my boyfriend is still drooling over and we saw the movie 2 days ago… Robbie, not Hill, just to be clear) Jonah Hill pulls of serious almost as well as he does comedy, and his version of Belforts best friend and VP is so spot on it’s scary. While Moneyball got him into the arena with the big boys, look for this movie to catapult him into Leo, Brad, and Johnny territory within the next few years. Robbie on the other hand play a sexpot New Yorker perfectly but lets not go calling her the new Julia Roberts. She isn’t a household name yet but if she can find a niche outside of her famous co-stars (she’s been rumored to be having an affair with her leading man co-star Will Smith from her next film) look for her to pop in and out of every genre of movie you can imagine. ** ***Side note, chick is only 23 and is already killing it with 2 more films slated for release this year. Awesome, thanks for making me feel like an underachiever.