Tag: Henry Zebrowski

I am happy to say that before I watched The D Train, I knew absolutely nothing about it. I had only briefly seen the poster/DVD cover. Enough to recognize the two leads.

I actually thought this was a war movie. Again, quick glance at the cover, I thought the arm in the background was like, a gun strapped to the back. I thought they had just won a war!

Or you know, a movie about trains or something. A lonely New York meet up that turns into friendship. Fuck it, let’s just go into it.

Quit yelling. I’m trying to relax on my couch, far away from war and trains.

Dan Landsman (Jack Black) is a weird dude. But we will get into that. First let us talk about his normal tendencies.

Dan has a wife (Kathryn Hahn), a 15 year old boy (Russell Posner) and a baby girl. He has a boring job doing something and has been there for awhile. It isn’t particularly rewarding, but it pays the bills. His boss (Jeffrey Tambor) is an older guy who doesn’t like new technology and is generally swell.

And he is the self-appointed head of the Alumni committee for his high school class. The others (Kyle Bornheimer, Henry Zebrowski, more) don’t agree with a head, but whatever, they have a 20 year old reunion to prep for. No one seems to give a shit and turn out is looking low. Things turn around when Dan finds out that the coolest kid in school, Oliver Lawless (James Marsden), has finally made it after all this time. He was an actor and wanted to be a big star and now he is in a national television commercial about sun block!

OH MAN SO COOL. He thinks if he can convince Oliver to come to the reunion, more people will show up, and he will be a hero! He just needs to fly out to LA to convince him in person. So he lies about it as a business trip to his boss and wife, just to hang out and party with Oliver.

And Oliver is a great dude. They get drunk, they get happy, they dance, they flirt with women and Dan is able to convince Oliver to show up!

And also, something very different happens. Something that has never happened to Dan before. Something that will make his trip home and subsequent weeks leading up to the reunion very weird and uncomfortable.

Enough to drive a mediocre middle aged man to drinking? You betcha!

From the description, it looks like The D Train can be a very uncomfortable movie from start to finish. An average dude in a boring life, put into a super liberal party setting, with a man he has strangely idealized for decades. He has always wanted to live vicariously though him, but now he has the opportunity to seem cool and actually celebrate with the man. Life is wonderful!

Unfortunately, it wasn’t an uncomfortable movie, just a boring one. Sure, there was that one scene. And like, a good scene at the reunion, and maybe another good joke. And that is it.

The best thing really about this movie is that it was a different sort of character for Jack Black. Not different like Bernie, but more just regular dude. So good job Jack, diversifying your resume. That will be good help in the future assuming you need it. Marsden unfortunately adds nothing to the film. Hahn does a pretty good exasperated housewife though, sick of her husband’s shit.

The plot isn’t even that bad. With some work, better dialogues, and better…just scenes in general, it could have been a solid movie. Instead this movie is about a nickname and a dream gone wrong, and is completely forgettable.

Sometimes, the best publicity for a movie is a battle with the MPAA. Just ask Harvey Weinsten and the movie Bully. That is what (intentionally/unintentionally) happened with The Wolf Of Wall Street. It was supposed to come out on November 15, but after being given an NC-17 rating by the board, Martin Scorsese had to go back and cut some more material out of his three hour biopic of of one Jordan Belfort.

Which is why it was pushed back to Christmas (pushing back Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit to January 17. Same distributor, didn’t want to compete against itself). I couldn’t be happier that it got pushed back, either. Compared to last years Les Miserables and Django Unchained, this year’s releases needed a kick in the butt to be anywhere close as good.

A raunchy, naked woman filled hard kick in the butt.

Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio), for all intents and purposes, was a self made man. His parents were accountants, and he wanted to go to Wall Street in the late 1980s to become a stock broker. He quickly got a job, became good buddies with the boss (Matthew McConaughey), and was taught all of the ins and outs of the business. Including the not so legal ins and outs.

Well, his first actual day as a stock broker, Black Monday happens, and the firm he works for quickly goes under. Back to being on the bottom, Belfort finds out about “penny stocks,” companies too little to be sold on the actual stock market, where the commission for a broker goes from 1% of the sale to 50% of the sale. If he can land some big fish on these worthless stocks, he could probably make fat cash quickly, with everyone none the wiser.

But that illegal activity is just the tip of the iceberg. Drugs. Money laundering. Drugs. Drugs. Prostitution. Tax fraud. Bribing officials. You name it, this guy did it. With the help of his very awkward buddy, Donnie Azoff (Jonah Hill), there ain’t nothing they can’t accomplish, or at least nothing that can’t be bought.

The Wolf Of Wall Street has a huge cast of characters, most of them actually quite important and memorable. Rob Reiner plays his dad, an angry accountant, and Kyle Chandler the FBI agent trying to bring him down. Cristin Milioti plays his original wife, and Margot Robbie plays his new wife. Jon Bernthal plays a drug dealer, and Jon Favreau his lawyer. Finally, last but not least, P.J. Byrne, Kenneth Choi, Henry Zebrowski, Brian Sacca and Ethan Suplee play his original start up friends and workers who carry him to the top.

I don’t think I need to say anything for this one.

The Wolf Of Wall Street can best be summed up by three words: Unforgiving, Real, and Amazing.

I initially groaned at the three hour run time, and although it can be difficult to make it through if you drink a lot of fluids during the movie, the viewings at home when you can pause will be easy peasy. The three hours are full of so much tension and energy (while also constantly moving the story forward) that it all flies by in a jiffy. In the last twenty minutes or so, the extreme length became noticeable as the movie slowed down. But slowing down makes sense at that point in the movie, to fully understand that Belfort’s bubble had finally been burst.

The acting performances by everyone involved was incredible. DiCaprio, despite looking like himself, felt like a completely new man. Every time he got up on the microphone, I was in awe at the intensity and heartfelt that he showed. The second “chest bumping song” scene is unforgettable. On the other side, Hill didn’t look or sound like his normal self at all. Dare I say, he has actual acting talent?

The movie definitely earns its R rating, and it is pretty clear why originally it was given the NC-17. It was incredibly dark and funny, so much that I couldn’t tell if I really wanted to laugh or run and hide from the screen. It is a twisted version of the American Dream, a train wreck that somehow rampaged through the country side, and something that I could not take my eyes off.

Although I doubt it will be considered the best film of 2013, it can certainly be considered the most ambitious.