The Wolf of Wall Street

Flair Jordan

Grade: A–

Director: Martin Scorses

Starring: Leonardo DiCapiro, Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie, Matthew McConaughey, Kyle Chandler, Rob Reiner, Jon Favreau and Jean Dujardin

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 3 hr.

After a career spent exploring the mean streets of his beloved New York City, Martin Scorsese finally trains his lense on its most corrupt, nefarious byway: Wall Street. And whether motivated by guilt, revelation or inspiration, Scorsese amply compensates for previous oversights with The Wolf of Wall Street, a three-hour Grand Guignol of white-collar decadence.

In the memoir of stock swindler Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCapiro), Scorsese finds his gateway into the feral financial markets of the 1980s and 90s that ushered in the likes of Belfort and his outlaw brokerage firm, Stratton Oakmont. By day, Belfort and his disciplines peddle junk stocks onto unwitting marks. After hours, their trading floor becomes a Caligulan debach, where brokers blow off steam using profanity, prostitutes, alcohol, marching bands and dwarf-tossing. Testosterone flows freely, and hookers are ranked in descending order of quality as “blue chip,” “Nasdaq,” and “pink sheets.” And, oh, the drugs. Belfort’s likes his ludes and cocaine, but his hallucinogenic holy grail is the Lemmon 714, whose discovery features in (quite arguably) the film’s most maddcap sequence involving Belfort, his skeevy friend Donnie (Jonah Hill), a Ferrari, and juxtaposing Popeye's spinach with inhaling a vial of blow.

The ungainly core of The Wolf of Wall Street isn’t an exhaustive exposé of our bacchanalian securities market or even an engrossing biopic. This is Scorsese’s raised middle finger to the orgy of excess endemic to a privileged class that flouted while Rome nearly burned. But that protruding digit is also directed somewhere else.

The Wolf of Wall Street is the imperfect but audacious product of a seemingly younger, feistier director … or a cinematic capo di tutti capi looking to reclaim his turf. American Hustle, another Greed Decade favorite of this holiday season, has been called an homage to the 71-year-old Scorsese. But if that film is Scorsese redux, The Wolf of Wall Street is Scorsese 2.0.

*Originally published at Indyweek.com

Iron Man 3

But, this scene looks great in 3D!

Grade: B

Director: Shane Black

Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Ben Kingsley, Guy Pearce and Rebecca Hall

Rebecca Hall

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 2 hr. 10 min.

In every conceivable way, Tony Stark’s foe in Iron Man 3 is himself. It starts with an enemy born of Stark’s chronic dickishness, a spurned fan-turned-supervillain not unlike Buddy Pine-cum-Syndrome in The Incredibles. It continues with a superhero whose egotistical compulsion to unmask his true identity continues to put an ever present bullseye on him and his scant loved ones. But Stark’s biggest adversary is his own psyche, an id now fractured by insecurity—indeed, it’s wry genesis that the film is essentially a 130-minute psychiatrist’s couch confession.

Beneath his renowned wisecracks and cocksuredness, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) faces a new reality spawned from the Big Apple battle royale finale to The Avengers. It bears mentioning that Iron Man was the first installment of the now-interwoven Marvel Cinematic Universe. The years since have seen gods and genetic behemoths as heroes, and mutants and aliens from other dimensions as villains. Against this backdrop, Stark is a self-described “man in a can,” seized by fits of anxiety when a child fan merely asks about “what happened in New York.” (More 9/11 allegory? Nevermind, let’s just move on.) While the 42 iterations of armor Stark has fashioned in the basement his cliffside laboratory appear the embodiment of an obsessive mind, they are actually the ongoing realization of Stark’s fateful “I am Iron Man” declaration at the end of the first film. The man and the machine are becoming inseparable, an evolution propelled by equal parts ego and envy.

Comic book enthusiasts familiar with the Extremis plotline at the heart of Iron Man 3 know the physical road this journey will eventually take. But in the meantime, scour the DSM-IV to decipher a scene in which Stark, clad in his Iron Man armor, greets and gropes gal pal Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) at the outset of a romantic evening, only to further reveal that it’s actually an unmanned suit being remotely controlled by Stark from elsewhere in the house. Or moments later, what would Freud make of Stark protecting Potts during a chopper attack launched by a terrorist called The Mandarin (Ben Kingsley) by neuropathically summoning the diffuse pieces of a modular armor to tessellate around her, encasing Pepper inside a protective phallus?

The theme of identity is central in Iron Man 3, including the complexities of celebrity, frontmen for terror, and the duality of actor and character. North Carolinians will further identify with shooting locales throughout the state, from Wilmington to Wrightsville Beach, from SAS campus in Cary to downtown Rose Hill (inexplicably set in Tennessee for the film).

In Downey, Shane Black finds the perfect vehicle for the keen action screenwriting once forged in his Lethal Weapon scripts. For example, take the terrific byplay between Stark and Harley (Ty Simpkins), a 10-year-old Tennessean who comes to Stark’s aid after he’s stranded in Rose Hill. Backed by Black’s staging, Simpkins more than holds his own opposite Downey, who in turn wisely refuses to pull any rhetorical punches.

But for all the intriguing (pop) psychological, where Iron Man 3 falters is, ironically, its mechanics. Directing only his second feature (after 2005’s Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, which also starred Downey), Black’s pace and plotting fizzle as often as Stark’s constantly malfunctioning suits. While that affords Downey an inordinate amount of screentime sans armor, you eventually want to see Iron Man in an Iron Man movie. When Black tries to make up the deficient all at once during the final act, the result is garish, confusing and head-scratching—why didn’t Stark summon his Iron Legion the half-dozen times he could have used their help earlier in the movie? Indeed, there are repeated logistical lapses, and several supporting parts are not fully realized, including the underutilized red, white and blue Iron Patriot, nee War Machine (Don Cheadle), and Dr. Maya Hansen (Rebecca Hall), a botanist from Stark’s past whose work helped create Extremis along with scientist Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce).

But filmmakers understand who the real hero is, thematically and financially. It’s no accident that the end of Iron Man 3’s closing credits declares that “Tony Stark Will Return.” Yes, it’s an indication of that melding of men and machine. But back in the theater, it’s also reassurance that no matter the storyline, Robert Downey Jr. will remain star of this show.

Identity Thief

My money's on the Ford...exploding

Grade: C +
Director: Seth Gordon
Starring: Jason Bateman, Melissa McCarthy, Jon Favreau, Amanda Peet, T.I. and Genesis Rodriguez
MPAA Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hr. 41 min.

In keeping with a movie premised around someone adopting a false identity, there’s not a moment of Identity Thief that rings true. It starts in minute one, when Sandy Patterson (Jason Bateman), the accounting head of a Denver, Colo. investment firm, mindlessly provides his name, date of birth and Social Security number to a stranger who cold calls him offering credit fraud protection. The huckster on the other end of the line is Diana (Melissa McCarthy), a portly, Tammy-haired grifter in Windermere, Fla. who subsists by creating fake credit cards using other people’s personal information, and then runs up huge tabs along with other nefarious acts.

Sandy realizes he is Diana’s latest mark once Denver PD arrests him for a Florida warrant actually intended for Diana, apparently without first checking either her mug shot, fingerprints, height, weight or the sex of the actual perpetrator. Yet, even once this criminal entanglement is sorted out, the local police inform Sandy that they are powerless to, I dunno, take a report, or pick up the phone and alert Windermere authorities, or do detective work. So, the only way for Sandy to save his job—even though his employer KNOWS he’s the victim of identity theft—is to jet to Florida, track down Diana and coerce her back to Denver to confess her sins to Sandy’s boss and the eavesdropping cops.

Confused yet? Don’t worry, Identity Thief gets more mind-numbing once Sandy and Diana embark on a cross-country road trip, pursued by a bounty hunter (Robert Patrick) and a couple of hitmen (T.I. and Genesis Rodriguez) whose narrative function is actually less clear by film’s end. But narrative clarity isn’t exactly screenwriter Craig Mazin’s strong suit (The Hangover II, Scary Movie 3 & 4). Sandy has to keep the slippery Diana in his sights at all times during their trip, until he doesn’t. Diana is crass and cold-hearted, until she isn’t (indeed, the screenplay never grasps the utter immorality of Diana’s crimes). Sandy is a straight arrow, until he isn’t (a legal predicament that evaporates far too easily and illogically). Diana is a depressed loner who can’t find anyone willing to love her for who she is, until she does...and then leaves him.

It’s typical slow burn Bateman, but McCarthy is the real reason anybody’s forking over money to watch this scam. There’s something infectious about her brazen audacity, and it’s little surprise that she throws herself—often literally—into even this thinly written role. Still, a torrent of non sequiturs and outdated hip-hop—there are two gags involving Kelis’ “Milkshake”—can carry a performance only so far. The true eye openers of Identity Thief are a couple of tender moments, totally unearned by the script, that are windows into McCarthy’s still untapped talent. One scene takes place after Diana undergoes a massive makeover, an appropriate metaphor for how the red-haired McCarthy—an already an Oscar nominee for the bawdy Bridesmaids and the latest heiress-presumptive to Lucille Ball—might one day reap further accolades outside the comedy arena.

Cowboys & Aliens

Blondie...James Blondie

Director: Jon Favreau

Starring: Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Olivia Wilde, Sam Rockwell, Keith Carradine, and Paul Dano

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 1 hr. 58 min.

The titular juxtaposition of Cowboys & Aliens portends an unfortunate stylistic clash first born at the crowded writers table. As the last of a revolving door of contributors throughout the film’s gestation, “Lost” creator Damon Lindelof’s penchant for character development over narrative symmetry proves a toxic mix with Transformers/Star Trek scribes Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman’s outlook that characters are mere window dressing for visual razzle-dazzle.

The dissatisfying result is a rather passé alien invasion flick populated by Old West archetypes that you end up knowing/caring less about the longer you’re around them. Director Jon Favreau (Iron Man and Iron Man 2, spanning the spectrum) uses the opening half-hour to establish an engaging Western tableau. Amnesic Man With No Memory (Daniel Craig) awakens in the 1873 Arizona desert with a stab wound in his side and a laser gun mysteriously strapped to his wrist. He wanders into a town named Absolution, where the real power broker is gruff cattle baron and ex-Army colonel Woodrow Dolarhyde (gruff Harrison Ford).

Their mounting conflict, along with any plot intrigue, evaporates as soon as the alien abductions begin. From there, Cowboys & Aliens is a meandering rescue mission punctuated by the back-story of a doe-eyed mystery woman (Olivia Wilde) and action sequences that pause frequently mid-battle for cloying moments of redemption – e.g., Dolarhyde eventually grows to regard Injuns, including his noble ward (Adam Beach), as real people, too.

As the film lumbers along, it becomes alarmingly apparent that the story the audience is writing in its collective head is far more interesting and original than the one that ends up onscreen. Favreau gets trapped between embracing the story’s dark elements and preserving a popcorn-munching crowd-pleaser. He accomplishes neither, demonstrating he knows the paces of each genre but can’t find their rhyme. Even by the time it rides off into the sunset, Cowboys & Aliens still remains a title in search of a movie.

Neil Morris

Iron Man 2

Iron Man says 'Practice safe sex'

Grade: B –

Director: Jon Favreau

Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Don Cheadle, Gwyneth Paltrow, Scarlett Johansson, Sam Rockwell, Mickey Rourke, and Samuel L. Jackson

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 2 hours, 5 minutes

If Iron Man was a phallic embodiment of the United States' single-minded crusade to impose a Pax Americana at the point of a spear, then the Tony Stark in Iron Man 2 is most aptly viewed as a metaphor of his own. The bajillionaire protector we meet in the sequel has fully assumed the qualities of the proverbial Ugly American, exuding the arrogance and entitlement of Uncle Sam as the world's unaccountable enforcer.

Here, Stark dons sunglasses and blows dismissive kisses at a Congressional committee bent on bullying him into relinquishing his ferrous-plated super suit. "I am Iron Man; Iron Man is me," he declares to the Senate subcommittee. It may as well be Robert Downey Jr. making that claim, for while multiple actors have capably portrayed Superman and Batman on the screen over the years, it is nearly impossible to imagine anyone other than Downey as Tony Stark.

Congress questions Stark out of concern for the country's increasing dependence on him to the exclusion of an increasingly irrelevant military industrial complex; not coincidentally, the politicos are also sniffing around for ways to exploit him before external enemies do. These are provocative issues, even if the notion of escalation in the face of an omnipotent superhero was explored to much greater effect in Christopher Nolan's Batman films. Problem is, they are all brought to bear inside the first 15 minutes of Iron Man 2. The remainder of its clunky, two-hour-plus running time is spent sidewinding through a series of bullets, bombs, babes and disjointed plot points.

Escalation begins before the opening credits in the form of tattooed, vodka-swilling Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke), a Russian stereotype who speaks in three-word sentences and whose unexplained rage against the Stark family leads him to construct a plasmatic lash he intends to lay to Iron Man. Rourke's two battle scenes bookend a performance that mostly features him furiously tapping on computer keyboards. More significantly, he is one of two barely realized baddies whose narrative impotence emphasizes Iron Man 2's violation of rule No. 1 for successful action films: the presence of a compelling, imposing villain.

Vanko's partner in evil is Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell), a rival weapons contractor with aims on developing and outfitting the military with its own high-tech wardrobe. Rockwell, normally a durable actor, misplays Hammer with an exaggerated cartoonish affect that wears out its welcome after two scenes. Add to that mix Stark's encroaching mortality, daddy issues and Stark's increasingly erratic behavior and heavy drinking that prompts his military buddy, Rhoadey (Dan Cheadle, replacing Terrence Howard without the audience batting an eye), to commandeer one of Iron Man's suits, a precursor to his eventual transformation into the sidekick War Machine. Oh, and don't forget Scarlett Johansson's role as shapely Natasha, Stark's newest personal assistant and acrobatic woman of mystery. Even still, the series' backbone remains Downey's wiseacre high wire act, particularly his banter with his Girl Friday, Pepper Potts (a fine Gwyneth Paltrow).

The worst moment in Iron Man 2 finds a drunken, costumed Stark rampaging through his own birthday party. It's a scene worthy of a bad comic book-movie parody, and it underscores the film's fundamental problem—its excessive jokiness. The first Iron Man's levity rested with Downey's bravura performance and director Jon Favreau's fanboy sensibilities. What's different this time out is the screenwriting is handled by seemingly kindred spirit Justin Theroux (Tropic Thunder) rather than Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby (best known for Children of Men), a decision that enabled the sequel's flaws. Iron Man was a popcorn movie that dared to succeed during an era of brooding movie heroism. Its sequel suffers not only by comparison but also due to its strained efforts to please an audience now hip to its hipness.

Neil Morris

*Originally published at http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/iron-man-ramps-up-the-camp-but-falls-flat/Content?oid=1411907

I Love You, Man

You wouldn't like me when I'm angry.

Grade: B –

Director: John Hamburg

Starring: Paul Rudd, Jason Segel, Rashida Jones, Sarah Burns, Jon Favreau, Jaime Pressley, Andy Samberg, Jane Curtain, and J.K. Simmons

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hour, 45 minutes

The delightfully uncomplicated (see also simplistic) I Love You, Man eagerly draws from the Judd Apatow casting pool and comedic tableau. Its import, however, does not flow from its mixed bag of sardonic wit, gross-out gags, and the way it playfully inverts the hoary rom-com genre. Instead, the film is indicative of the current state of movie comedies: the Apatow playbook run to exacting, rhythmic precision. While not officially touched by the comic Creator, the significance is that his disciples are now cranking out facsimiles like so much grist for the Hollywood mill. [Another critic recently wrote that “Apatow is beginning to look like the Johnny Appleseed of bad indie comedy.”] Next up: Adventureland from Superbad director Greg Mottola, and Seth Rogan’s Observe and Report by Foot Fist Way director Jody Hill, both dropping next month.

In the meantime, I Love You, Man is a formula-flipping tale about a friendless milquetoast and struggling L.A. realtor, Peter (Paul Rudd), whose fiancée, Zooey (Rashida Jones), pushes him into man-dates in search of a BFF and, hopefully, best man for their wedding. Enter Sydney (Forgetting Sarah Marshall’s Jason Segel,), a Lebowski-esque layabout whose gonzo, devil-may-care attitude belies the same inner longing for male-bonding as Peter. Their platonic, borderline obsessive bromance, rife with reverence for (the band) Rush and walks along Venice Beach, threatens to hamper Peter’s pending nuptials and his vain efforts to sell Lou Ferrigno’s mansion (whose presence fully furnishes the script with a glut of Hulk jokes that run until the closing credits).

By design, Peter and Sydney is the film’s most charismatic coupling: the script crackles whenever Rudd and Segel share the screen and riff off each other’s pop-culture repartee. Moreover, the duo’s thematic shrewdness is a microcosm of a culture so shaped by girl-power that men like Peter find it easier to relate to women than act like – much less interact with – members of their own fraternity. However, Peter and Zooey’s comparative lack of sizzle is symptomatic of a screenplay too preoccupied with infantile homo-hilarity and recurring gags focused around dog poop and Peter’s social anxiety (Rudd’s solo ad libbing grows tiresome whenever Segel isn’t around to play comedian to his straight man). Only a bickering married couple played by Jon Favreau and Jaime Pressley augment the humor; seriously, isn’t it high time that the quick-witted Pressley gets cast as the lead in a feature film comedy?

Director John Hamberg uses this project to boost a big-screen resume previously highlighted by the Ben Stiller-Jennifer Aniston clunker Along Came Polly and penning Stiller’s Focker series. Admittedly, whenever Russ and Segel share the screen, I Love You, Man is cooking with gas. The rest of the time, it’s merely an amuse-bouche whetting your appetite for another bona fide Apatow entrée.

Neil Morris

Iron Man

The latest in court-ordered GPS monitoring devices

Grade: B +
Director: Jon Favreau
Starring: Robert Downey, Jr., Jeff Bridges, Terrence Howard, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Shaun Toub
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 2 hours, 6 minutes

Iron Man is the kettle corn counterpoint to the brooding psychoanalysis in Batman Begins, the Spider-Man trilogy, and even Superman Returns. It gamely balances character and plot development with the reasons most of us started going to movie houses in the first place: fun and funny. In so doing, slowly but surely improving director Jon Favreau flouts a string of insipid Marvel Comic-based films and a super-protagonist who is both unknown by the general public and venerated by a rabid core fan-base. He takes a Cold War relic, reconfigures it for current relevancy, and peppers it with a pitch-perfect cast, respect for the source material, and whiz-bang F/X. Iron Man is not a great movie, but frankly, it does not need to be.

For all those deserved hosannas, is real hero is Robert Downey, Jr., who in his world-weary forties seemed a dubious choice to play the role of an armored-plated, high-flying hulk. Favreau wisely recognized that today’s special effects could allow virtually anyone to don a CGI metal, rocket-propelled suit and save the world. Moreover, he realized that Downey was ideal to play wisecracking billionaire lothario Tony Stark, who parlays an M.I.T. education and a stake in his late daddy’s weapons manufacturing business into a worldwide conglomerate flooding the market with high-tech instruments of death and destruction.

While on a sales expedition in Afghanistan, Stark is injured, kidnapped, and tortured by a terrorist group called the Ten Rings. Seeing them flush with weaponry produced by his own company that was in turn being used against American soldiers, Stark experiences his own Road to Kabul epiphany. Under the guise of building a new missile for his captors, Stark and his fellow prisoner Dr. Yinsen (Shaun Toub) cobble together a crude suit-of-armor prototype that Stark uses to escape.

After returning home, Stark’s announcement that he is getting out of the weapons-building business sends his company’s stock price plummeting and puts him at odds with his mentor/partner, Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges). Meanwhile, Stark secretly proceeds with perfecting his original suit design and building, from the ground up, his titular superhero alter ego.

Downey’s past personal travails continue to camouflage the fact that he remains one of Hollywood most underrated actors. His quirks, ticks, and wiseacre persona create the perfect Tony Stark, a jet-setter who owns a private plane outfitted with pole-dancing stewardesses, is not yet bedeviled with the same split personality or mental anguish of a Bruce Wayne or Peter Parker. Stark is narcissist never really changes – only his priorities.

Nicely complimenting Downey is Terrence Howard Lt. Col. Jim Rhodes, Starks’ friend and military liaison, and Gwyneth Paltrow – in one of her breeziest performances in years – as the alliteratively perky Pepper Potts, Stark’s girl Friday. Against the backdrop of super-villains and terrorism, the three (particularly Downey and Paltrow) carry on a repartee that lends the characters depth without transforming this comic book adaptation into a cartoonish farce along the lines of the dreadful Fantastic Four series.

The final clash between Stark and Stane emits a perfunctory air, a la the father-son brawl that concluded Ang Lee’s The Incredible Hulk. However, the rest of Iron Man is smartly written, from Stark’s meticulous backstory to narrative markers scattered throughout that point to Favreau and Co.’s planned trilogy – e.g., the continued involvement of S.H.I.E.L.D.; Rhodes’ eventual stint as an alternate Iron Man and, later, the superhero War Machine. Emulating its comic book inspiration, Iron Man is a heady page-turner that, like the magnetized gadget surgically implanted in Stark’s chest, will get your summer movie-season heart palpitating.

Neil Morris