Tag: Comedy

I can’t remember which movie it was, but I only know about Best Man Down by watching some other shitty indie movie.

It was a trailer before it (because some times I am too lazy to skip them) and the plot just seemed really intriguing to me. I was even more surprised to find that it wasn’t yet out on DVD and I’d have to wait to see a movie. Those dicks.

Either way, it has been awhile since I have loved a random indie straight to DVD movie, so the odds are not forever in its favor.

This would be an example of Best Man Up.

Hooray weddings!

We are gathered here today to celebrate the matrimony of Scott (Justin Long) and Kristin (Jess Weixler). About time, amirite?

Lumpy (Tyler Labine), good friend of Scott, is his best man and very very excited about the whole thing. He goes crazy all night, drinking booze, living it up, being a bit annoying. Well, next morning, he dies. What the fuck? Didn’t see that coming I bet.

See, now Scott and Kristin have a huge problem. (Technically, Lumpy has the biggest problem). Now their happy day will forever be remembered as also the day Lumpy died. They will have to cancel their honeymoon, and put on a funeral. They aren’t selfish people, these are just facts. But it turns out that Scott might not have been keeping up to date with what exactly Lumpy had been up to. He lost his job, and dropped out of school, but no one is actually sure why.

He also has a strange relationship with a high school student, Ramsey (Addison Timlin) up north, who no one knew about. She has her own problems, with a whore-ish mother (Frances O’Connor) who is dating a junkie.

Ohhh, secrets, what fun!

Well shit, now the Best Man is neither up nor down, he’s just fucking missing.

Yeah, so, strangely enough, I really liked this movie. I had a bigger emotional attachment to it than I would have expected. Shit. Having someone die at your wedding? That is all sorts of fucked up.

The movie felt pretty real too, both in Lumpy’s side story, learning about the last year of his life, and the newly married couple’s reaction to the events. A lot of powerful lines when I think back to them, I was going to type some quotes but A) out of direct context, they lose their power and B) no one probably gives a shit.

It wasn’t a long look into the lives of the main characters, but it was enough to really know how they valued friendships and how their lives would change from the event.

It had some humerous moments too, but it is definitely far more on the drama sides of things. I will say the funeral uppercutted me emotionally as well, if you know what I mean, where a nice speech was given by Addison Timlin’s character, and I really like how it wrapped up everything at the end.

So yeah, surprisingly nice indie movie. Yay.

In my attempts to watch everything nominated for the Academy Awards, I was afraid that I wouldn’t have the opportunity to see Nebraska before the actual ceremony. It was the one movie I knew least about, and honestly, Ames doesn’t usually get those types of movies.

We didn’t even get Silver Linings Playbook until weeks after last year’s Oscars!

But hey, maybe things are now on the upside in this city!

Maybe this whole story is just another Jesus allegory.

The story is about Woody Grant (Bruce Dern), a very old man who has won a million dollars.

Or at least, that is what he believes. He has received a letter in the mail that says he has won the million dollars, but it is a publisher clearing house like thing, and most definitely a scam to buy magazines. He doesn’t care. He wants to go to Lincoln, Nebraska to claim it, as he doesn’t trust the mail with a million dollars, and will walk there if he has to (from Billings, Montana).

Fed up with his own current situation in life, his youngest son David (Will Forte) agrees to drive him to Nebraska. David is also tired of having to find his dad wandering the streets and highways.

Yep, we got ourselves a road trip movie, although a stranger one than most given the characters involved. Due to some complications, they end up having to spend a few days in Woody’s hometown, a few hours outside of Lincoln. That means Woody is stuck dealing with old family and friends, when he just wants to get his money and run. Although, being treated as a rich celebrity comes with its perks as well…

June Squibb plays his wife, Bob Odenkirk his other son, and Stacy Keach his old business partner.

Ah yes, the whole family, looking all black and white.

In case you didn’t notice, Nebraska is a black and white movie. I think it was done that way in order to enhance the themes. You know, the ones about getting old, repressed memories, and living in a simpler time.

The director is Alexander Payne, and apparently I have seen the last six movies he has made, including Citizen Ruth from 1996. Sure, I was only 8-9 at the time, and probably not intellectually capable enough to understand a dark comedy about the abortion debate, but I remember still finding it entertaining.

Looking back at Payne’s work, he is an diverse director, covering a wide range of subjects. A few of them about getting older, but none about getting this old.

Dern was excellent as the main character, and Squibb was cute as his ever nagging wife. I am surprised there is no talk about Forte in this movie, as he is a central character, going through his own journey alongside Dern. But I guess it takes a lot for a former SNL cast member to really get praise. Either way, the cast had great chemistry together, and they really felt like a family.

It was a very simple movie, where silence carries a lot of weight, but yet it is still a movie that is not afraid to surprise you either. I don’t see it actually winning any of the awards come March, but I can understand how each person earned their nomination.

Not my favorite movie from 2013 by any means, but a very solid movie.

My main initial complaint with Inside Llewyn Davis is the name. I have seen the title online for months, but no one ever pronounced it for me by an official source. I had to wait til I saw the dang thing to know just how to pronounce Llewyn. And it is like Lue-Win.

Now we all know!

I still have problems spelling it too though, so that’s not going well either. I end up adding like, two extra e’s some how.

Clearly, I was not made for the folk scene.

But clearly these guys were!

Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) is a folk singer in 1961, and he is basically living couch to couch at his friends apartments in the Village in NYC. He used to be part of a duo, with a Mike, but now he is a solo artist and basically making no money at all. Sad times.

The movie basically examines a week in his life, trying to make ends meet, trying to not piss off all of his friends, and trying to get rediscovered as an artist to sign a new deal. He also performs at The Gaslight Cafe, which was famous in real life for folk stuff. He is good friends with the owner Pappi Corsicato (Max Casella), which gets him gigs all the time.

Some of his friends include Jen (Carey Mulligan) and Jim (Justin Timberlake), also folk singers, but they are making better life choices and potentially getting really successful. He has a college professor friend (Ethan Phillips) and his hippie wife (Robin Bartlett) as sort of a last resort.

He meets other musicians, like Al Cody (Adam Driver), a deep voiced almost country singer, Troy Nelson (Stark Sands), a simple army man with a simple voice, and Roland Turner (John Goodman), a limping jazz star who wont shut up and his personal driver Johnny Five (Garrett Hedlund).

Basically, it is just a story of poor old Llewyn Davis trying to get by, to make money, to get signed, to be who he wants to be as an artist, and occasionally carry around someone else’s cat.

Basically, a great movie for those who love kittens.

A professor of mine described the movie as sort of a O Brother, Where Art Thou? meets A Serious Man, and I’d have to agree. If you know those movies, you might be able to figure out what I mean. If you don’t, go fucking watch the first one right now. Then maybe watch the other one soon after. Eventually. That one is a bit weirder.

Because Inside Llewyn Davis is kind of weird. In a nice way. I liked its weirdness more than I liked A Serious Man.

The music though, was awesome. I already have the soundtrack. The songs are all very soulful and seem from the heart. Well, not the one “pop song” but at least that one is silly and fun to listen to. Huh. Like pop music.

Oscar Isaac really transformed himself for the role. I’ve seen him in a few movies, and I don’t think he has ever gone too deep into a character like this one. I am sure he received some votes for Best Actor.

Although it was an enjoyable film, and one I will definitely buy and watch again, I can’t help but want more. Which is part of the point of the movie. To not give you everything. To make you fill in your own theories with what they don’t tell you. I am not saying I would change anything either, I just didn’t super love it. Just regular like it.

A few months ago, for whatever reason, I decided to watch a shit ton of random dance movies that came out throughout the years, that I of course ignored. These were the non Step-Up movies, basically. I stopped because Battlefield America really messed with my psyche.

But before that abomination happened, I watched StreetDance, a British dance flick from a few years ago that for whatever reason took over a year to make it to the US. It was okay, very Step-Up based plot, but had a lot better music than the other dancing movies so I gave it a a pass. I knew at the time that a sequel, StreetDance 2 already existed, but wasn’t making it to America until over 1.5 years after it was released in the U.K.

Those jerks. Well, today is my day! Come on, mediocre dance movie!

Huh. Blindfold dancing. I wonder if this will be important at all.

Ash (Falk Hentschel) wants to be a dancer. Well, he dances. But he wants to be great. He challenges the Invincible crew who always wins (random dance competition), but while spinning his moves, he falls down and everyone laughs at him.

Everyone buy one man, Eddie (George Sampson) who wants to be his manager? What? That was quick. Yeah, his manager, and he wants to put him as the leader of a crew to challenge Invincible and take em down.

And what a crew they find! During the opening intro to the movie, we see them shuttle all around Europe. They all have clever-ish names too, like… Steph (Stephanie Nguyen), Tino (Samuel Revell), Skorpion (Brice Larrieu), Bam-Bam (Elisabetta Di Carlo), Killa (Ndedi Ma-Sellu) and his son? Junior (Akai Osei-Mansfield), Ali (Ali Ramdani), Legend (Niek Traa), Yo-Yo (Delphine Nguyen), and Terabyte (Kaito Masai).

But besides making the rag taggiest rag tag group of dancers “All around the world!” (re: Europe), Eddie still claims they are missing something. That is because he was in the last movie and knows what’s up. Last movie infused ballet with street dancing. This movie, this movie Eddie wants to bring in some Latin dancing element. So he goes to some big club, and there they meet Eva (Sofia Boutella) and boyyyyyyyyyyyyy can she dance. But can the team accept the fusion? Can Eva? Can her overbearing but wise Uncle Manu (Tom Conti)?

Or will everything work out magically at the last moment?

Shit, are they also doing invisible fencing?

Well, I guess all I can do is compare this one to the last one.

It definitely is following the same plot line as the first film, maybe even set in the same world. Dance crew, adding traditional dance element. So that is good. Being similar makes sense in a movie series.

But overall, this one is definitely not as good as the first. The crew is less likable, as there are only 3-4 characters who matter I guess. I only was able to get the whole crew down correctly because I wrote their names during the intro. Most of them didn’t have personalities. Junior? There is a fucking kid on this team? What? Meh.

The music is okay. Still better than a regular dance movie, just not as good as the first. I don’t want to go listen to the soundtrack afterwards.

The ending went as expected. The main chracter is currently most well known as a random bad guy from White House Down. And I guess the dancing was a bit worse than the first film too, with more nonsensical plot moments.

All the words put me towards giving this an overall 1, but it was still okay, and better than a lot more current dance movies. So hey. Take what you will from this.

Here’s a totally non surprising confession.

I. Love. Plays.

And musicals. But that live shit, on a stage? It is great. I especially love plays because the entire focus point of the play will generally always be people conversing with one another. No amazing special effects. Just acting and great dialogue. Mmm, great dialogue. I fancy myself a shitty writer. The only good part about my stories is the dialogue, so I think I need to write plays.

This is me blabbering on, and not talking about August: Osage County, which won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. So of course it was turned into a movie. Of course it was nominated for awards. And of course, I watched it.

If you look closely, you will see a confused and bewildered Benedict Cumberbatch.

The year: Who knows. The month: Probably August. The location: Osage County, Oklahoma.

Why? Well, Beverly Weston (Sam Shepard) has flown the coop, and left his house without notice. Known for being a drunk, he at least hired a maid (Misty Upham) to clean up the house. His wife, Violet (Meryl Streep) is extremely distraught. She has mouth cancer, and is addicted to a lot of pills, so she calls in her family during this time of woe.

We do have a big cast of people coming over. Of course her sister, Mattie Fay (Margo Martindale), is there, with her husband, Charles (Chris Cooper), and their son Lil’ Charles (Benedict Cumberbatch). Her youngest daughter, Ivy (Julianne Nicholson), still lives in the town, so of course she is there right away too.

The eldest daughter, Barbara (Julia Roberts), who left for Colorado, has brought her husband, Bill (Ewan McGregor), and 14-year old daughter, Jean (Abigail Breslin). Her middle daughter, Karen (Juliette Lewis), has brought along her new fiance, Steve (Dermot Mulroney), from Miami.

Lot of faces, lot of family, and a lot of time apart. It doesn’t help that very early on (not a spoiler), Beverly is found dead after he wandered away, so the family is now grieving. Perfect opportunity to air out grievances, abuse drugs, and tell people what is really going on, no matter who it hurts.

“Oh, he died! Ha ha ha!” Creepy women, yo.

Let’s keep this short and simple, self. I gotta remind myself to not go overboard with these analyses sometimes.

I loved every character in this play. A lot of them are horrible people. But I loved every single one. Every person had a reason to act the way they acted. The movie explained the reasons for everyone eventually, and not much was left open by the end. Sure, there was a general “Where do they go from here?” but that one is completely fine and worth being left open ended. I loved every character, so of course I loved every person acting in this movie as well. They all brought something to the character, and conveyed information with more than just words and loud noises.

That’s right, this is a movie for people who like great acting and a decent plot, nothing more. The plot itself is of the dysfunctional family variety, and even by the end I was surprised to find out some of the secrets that were kept hidden. Sure, they made some plot lines a bit obvious and easy to figure out, but others came from quite far out of left field, it was a joy experiencing them all.

My only issue with the movie is that the beginning felt a tad bit slower, up til the funeral. Post funeral is where the movie really kicks it into high gear, and then stays at that level of intensity until the credits roll.

Way back in July, I had to write a synopsis of the upcoming year of movies, from August to April. 2014 at that time barely had anything listed still, so it was mostly a crapshoot. Of the little that January had, I remember thinking that Ride Along had the most potential. Two actors who I tend to enjoy, a buddy cop (ish?) movie and it’s an action comedy. Buddy cop-ish, because only one of them is actually a cop in the film.

As January grew closer in closer, it was still one of the potential bright spots, because January itself is where they just tend to dump a lot of bad movies. So I hope Ride Along ends up being brilliant, or else I am just stuck relying on Zac Efron to save the month.

Relying on Zac Efron is a pretty common theme in my life.

In Ride Along, Ben Barber (Kevin Hart) is a short nobody. He is a security guard at a high school, but he really wants to be a cop someday and is trying really hard to get into the police academy. He thinks he needs to become a cop in order to finally marry his long term girlfriend, Angela (Tika Sumpter).

But really, all she wants is for him to stop being in a war with her brother, James (Ice Cube), who he might have accidentally set on fire. But hey, now that Ben has gotten accepted into the police academy, maybe James will like him and give him his blessing for marriage. Hah.

Turns out James still hates him, but he does agree to give Ben one day to try and change his mind. He will invite him on a ride along, see if he can make it on the streets, while making his life a living hell.

John Leguizamo and Bryan Callen play other cops on the street, and Bruce McGill as their Lieutenant. Oh, and Laurence Fishburne is in this movie. Yeah, Laurence Fishburne!

I decided to include no pictures of anyone actually riding along.

You know what I like most about this movie? Ice Cube said that today was a good day. I get that reference. Well done Ice Cube.

I also laughed a couple times at Kevin Hart. More so later on near the end of the movie.

But not a lot, unfortunately.

For an Action/Comedy, the action was sub par, and the comedy felt extremely sparse. It is a huge shame that I found this movie so disappointing because I really tend to at least find their work enjoyable. Maybe Ice Cube was just too much of a hard ass, trying to pretend he was a BAMF, but really being a bit meh.

The acting wasn’t too great, and unfortunately all of the twists and turns you could see coming a mile away.

If About Last Night in February doesn’t end up being impressive for Kevin Hart, I might have to rethink actually liking him. Good at stand up, bad at movies.

The Nut Job has the honor of being the first animated movie of 2014, which also means it is both the worst and best animated movie of 2014 so far.

Bask in that position while you can, The Nut Job, because your time on top will fall. It will cascade downward into oblivion, becoming worse and worse as the year goes on, until May. At that point, Legends of Oz: Dorothy’s Return comes out, so it will take the last spot so that you will have some shoulders to climb on. There you will be the second worst until July, in which we see Planes: Fire & Rescue. Whether or not you end up better than the “third worst animated film of the year” is left up to debate. But as of right now, thinks are not looking good.

Seriously, those things on the right look like beavers without the tails?

Surly (Will Arnett) is a purple squirrel, and thank everything he isn’t fucking named Squirrel. I mean, it’s still close to it, but its not Squirrel. Hate lazy family films like that. He lives in the cities park, but he is on his own, with his mouse friend Buddy. He doesn’t believe in collecting food for winter with the rest of the animals. No he wants nuts for himself.

Well, after a freak accident, involving a flying nut cart, the park’s food supply gets burned up in a fire. They blame it on him, despite it not really being his fault either. So the leader of the park, Raccoon (Liam Neeson) wants to avoid a trial and holds a vote for banishment of Surly from the park forever. Also, what in the fuck. Damn it, damn it, damn it. Raccoon named Raccoon? Fuck that.

So Surly has a bad time in the city, but he runs into the holy grail of buildings. A nut shop, with nuts! He could live there forever! But he can’t do it alone. Thankfully, due to the food storage, Raccoon has sent out Andie (Katherine Heigl) and Grayson (Brendan Fraser), the Park Hero, to find more food, and they will help! Also there they bring in a mole, named mother fucking Mole (voiced by mother fucking Jeff Dunham, ugh), and some beaver or something. Definitely bigger rodents.

So yeah, breaking into a nut shop, like a classic bank heist movie. But while this is happening, the “owners” of the nut shop are actually working on robbing the bank across the street by digging under the streets. Mob boss, typical story, everything going nuts. Also, Maya Rudolph voices a dog named Precious.

There is so much wrong with this movie, I don’t know where to begin.

Alright, first, the animation. It isn’t the best quality of CGI in any sense. It has its moments, but mostly it feels like a very strange…video game feel to it? Like they had no heart in the animation and it was something that they had just lying around. I don’t even know how to describe it. It never felt great to me though.

The puns. I like puns. But there are only two groupings of puns here. Referring to things as “nuts!” over and over again. And the Mob Boss talking about how much he hates “rats.” They can be clever, but they both get overused to the point where it doesn’t matter anymore.

The idea of the plot is a good one, but it barely followed any part of the traditional heist movie format. All of the plot is through miscommunication and people being dicks to each other. I am a bit happy to hear Fraser say “Shut the FRONT DOOR” in a PG movie though. That was a bit surprising.

Movie is full of random other bullshit that I noticed. For instance, the bank is across the street from the park. We learn that early on, because that is why the nut cart is there, for surveillance. But also, the nut shop is across the street from the front of the bank too. Some how. What? Fuck you. Makes even less sense when they show the people going on a long journey to stumble upon it, when it should be visible from the park.

More inaccuracies. A dam gets blown up that leads to the city. Explosions, cracked walls, big danger. Doesn’t affect the city at all. The water goes in two directions, one down a lazy river to the park, the other goes down a HUGEEE waterfall where we assume people/animals died. Surly goes down the dangerous waterfall, yet somehow that brings him…back to the park also. Geographically inconsistant.

They have major plot points that are either obvious, or used in terrible unclever ways (re: everything related to the dog whistle).

It was a mess of a movie.

As a side note, people who forgive a movie for being lame might say “Hey, it’s a kids movie, you are being too hard on it!” Kids movie should not be an excuse for poor quality. Pixar proved that a long time ago. Unfortunately, the theater was packed when I saw this. Many families. So many kids. Rarely did any of them laugh. Yeah, a shitty kids movies that kids don’t even enjoy.

Let’s all take a moment to cry about the fact that we lost James Gandolfini this year.

.

.

.

Are you feeling better? No, me neither.

It does suck. He played a similar character in most movies, but there was some talent there too. Even if he didn’t do anything else, he at least gave us The Sopranos, and that is all we can ask for.

So that is why I went to see Enough Said, his last major role/film release, before, you know. Let’s just get into it.

We will always remember him as a man who loved to eat.

Eva (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is a massage therapist, and living a lonely life. She has a daughter, but that daughter is about to graduate high school and move off somewhere to college, and she her ex husband is now newly married while she hasn’t found anyone.

So Eva goes to a party, that her friends invite her to, where hey she can hopefully meet some new clients or a guy, even if none of them look attractive to her. At the party she meets two unique people. Marianne (Catherine Keener), a real life poet for money, who might need a masseuse. And Albert (James Gandolfini), a single man, works at a TV history museum, and live a quiet and simple life.

He asks her out on a date. Aww.

Eventually Eva realizes that her two new friends/lovers aren’t strangers, but ex husband and wife as well. All she can hear from Marianne is negative thoughts and attributes of Albert, which seem to be affecting her own relationship with him! Of course she also keeps this knowledge a secret, as she feels bad for Marianne not having any friends. Coupled that with her daughter leaving, she reaches out to the younger friend of her daughter to really bond with, quite awkwardly.

Also featuring Ben Falcone and Toni Collette as her friends.

What? He also loved movies I guess. That’s good. He used to be in them.

Damn it. His final starring role, and it is not the best movie of the year.

It is awkward sure, awkward enough to make a decent movie. But it follows a pretty obvious path, and there aren’t many surprises in store. The plot line with her daughter never really felt finished, but once it got to the weirdest point, it just stopped mattering I guess?

The acting was good from the three main leads, everyone was a basically normal human being, so it wasn’t too difficult. I guess it is worth noting that Gandolfini wasn’t a gangster, so he must have been acting here too right?

The story is a decent one, but it basically just stays there. Just a decent, okay movie, nothing special. I guess, I have said enough about this movie now. Har har har.

Without a doubt, Her was one of my most anticipated movies of 2013 to watch. That is why I was disappointed I had to wait until 2014 to see it! It is one of those rather annoying ideas by the guys trying to win Oscars. They release a movie on a limited run near the end of the year, then wide release in early January after it has built up steam.

Living in the middle of Iowa, where they have zero movie previews, you will always get the short end of the “limited release” stick.

Despite the wait, Spike Jonze has made some great movies in the past (Being John Malkovich/Adaptation), so I was hoping he could deliver on his first major release that he both wrote and directed.

Especially with a topic as serious as this one.

Her is set sometime in the distant future. In this world, human interaction is basically nonexistent. Everyone is attached to their computer devices that they carry around with them, more extreme than it is now. In fact, Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) works at a job where he writes hand written letters for people, because people really don’t know how to do that anymore. They’d rather leave their intimacy to strangers.

He is also going through a divorce with Catherine (Rooney Mara), but he is reluctant to sign the papers because he doesn’t want that part of his life to end.

Regardless, Theodore decides to upgrade his computer’s operating system, as it comes with a new artificial intelligence software that will adapt and learn over time. His new operating system, which gives herself the name Samantha (Scarlett Johansson), immediately makes his life more organized and better. In fact, he now has someone he can talk to who seems real. Yay, human-ish contact!

Then, Samantha and Theodore fall in love.

The only other main character is Amy (Amy Adams), his long time friend (who he once dated), who is also currently married (Matt Letscher). She provides an actual human constant experience to his life. Chris Pratt and Olivia Wilde also make appearances.

I bet overall, Theo is actually in love with himself.

The basic concepts of Her are not entirely unique. Futuristic society and very smart computers who have human personalities. See, even Disney had a made for TV movie, Smart House along the same lines. But rarely is love touched upon.

Phoenix, like we have come to expect, did phenomenal in this role. He was a dreamer, but alone, a lover, but afraid. The movie is mostly dialogue based, most of which is between Theodore and Samantha, leaving the camera on Phoenix for most of the film to react and talk. Since Samantha doesn’t have a face, the film just falls on his shoulders. Despite his crazy good performance, he will probably fall short of Best Actor Oscar thanks to Leonardo DiCaprio and Chiwetel Ejiofor.

I thought the writing and dialogue in the movie felt incredibly realistic for what was going on. It was also quite beautiful. You could tell that the main character had a lot bottling up inside of him, so every time he started to talk with Samantha, he could let it all out and be real to himself. The love between him and the operating system was by far one of the more heart felt performances of the year.

Because the subject matters of Her are so serious, I can say that after one viewing I don’t think I was really able to understand and get everything I needed out of the movie. This is the type of film that might require multiple viewings, not because of plot twists or surprise endings, but to really capture and appreciate everything that happens subtly through facial expressions and dialogue.

Her is by far one of the more relevant films of 2013. I don’t even have to go into detail about how it relates to modern day life. I’d suggest watching with an open mind and an open heart.

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.