The Monuments Men - Movie Review

Starring George Clooney, Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett, Bill Murray, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin, Hugh Bonneville, Bob Balaban and Dimitri Leonidas.
Directed by George Clooney.

★★½

This is an odd movie. All the ingredients are there to make a classic, a WWII heist thriller, a race-against-time, Over the Hill Gang type yarn. It just felt like key developmental elements were missing.

The Monuments Men was a real group but it was much larger than what the movie portrays. I understand narrative purposes for narrowing it down to eight conglomerate characters, but somewhere in there, director and co-writer Clooney forgot to make most of them characters.  Sure, Bill Murray, John Goodman and Jean Dujardin are good actors, but it's as though those men were told to just show up and "act" without anything to work with.

"George, what's my motivation?"
"Be more Bill Murray-ish."
"Thanks. Thanks for that note."

The opening scenes play like a "We're getting the band back together" montage like this is a sequel to something. Things like this made me wish someone besides Clooney had directed it, someone who could have stepped back and noticed these little problems.

The actual quest of the men is something we grow to care about.  Watching Nazis set fire to art brings the same visceral reaction of the books burning in The Name of the Rose, or the scrolls burning in Agora. Some much history lost.

The actors that come off best, mostly because they have something to work with, are Cate Blanchett as a French secretary working for the Nazis but really helping the underground resistance, and Downton Abbey's Hugh Bonneville as a recovering alcoholic who sees this mission as a redemptive chance to do something with his life. Kind of cool to see Lord Grantham hanging out with two of the Ocean's 11.

The Wolf of Wall Street - Movie Review

Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie, Matthew McConaughey, Kyle Chandler, Jean Dujardin, Jon Bernthal, Rob Reiner, Jon Favreau, Joanna Lumley, Cristin Milioti, PJ Byrne, Shea Whigham and Ethan Suplee.
Directed by Martin Scorsese.

★★★

The true story of Jordan Belfort, a Wall Street wizard who stole millions of dollars from thousands of people, and he is one of hundreds of others doing the same.  Sure, there are honest people in the financial industry, but there are a lot of dishonest ones too, and those are the ones who make life worse for the 99%.

There's been some criticism of this film that it glorifies Jordan. That's like saying Goodfellas glorifies Henry Hill.  It's a fun ride to watch, but you don't deep down actually want his life. If you do, you're a bad person.

One thing Wolf of Wall Street makes clear - it takes talent to be evil. Jordan may be a raging narcissist, but he's also excellent at selling, and lying, and leading others.  We don't see his victims because he never thinks about them. If he does, it's flippant. At one point he narrates that the way he sees it, it's better that he has the money rather than those middle-class people he's ripping off, because he knows how to spend it. Says the guy who does enough cocaine to power a small city.

It's a three-hour biopic that takes us on the decadent ride of an amoral man and his band of merry swindlers who get rich quick with no conscience. He grew up with one goal - to be rich. Didn't care how, and didn't really have a noble goal of what to do with his wealth either.

Leonardo DiCaprio gives a ferocious performance, maybe a career best for him.  It's his fifth collaboration with Scorsese (Gangs of New York, The Aviator, The Departed, and Shutter Island being the other four), and they really seem to have each other's rhythms down.

Did it need to be three hours? I don't think so. The parade of immorality goes on pretty long.  I don't think we really need that many scenes of drugs and hookers, but my understanding is his first cut could have been four hours.  It is darkly funny, like one scene where he's near paralyzed from Quaaludes but tries to drive home anyway.

So yeah, this movie ended and I felt like I'd seen a very well-made ride of a shallow, empty man who had the potential to do some good with his talents, but with no ethics or principles, he just ruined lives to feed his need for greed instead. But I do have that McConaughey chest-thumping song still stuck in my head.