Genre/Gender-Bending with Mr. Soderbergh

Written at the time of the films' releases

Haywire (Steve Soderbergh, 2011) Fairly standard actioner about a wet-ops unit for hire, and one particular freelancer who's beginning to suspect harmful links between gigs, directed by Soderbergh (written by past collaborator Lem Dobbs), with some unusual qualities of note. For one, the director stages his fights like they were dance sequences from an M-G-M musical—full-frame/full-figure (but without the Lion Studio's "stage" angle on the axis of the central figures). There are no tight shots, tight editing, it's all composed of mis-en-scene, rather than montage, just an angle/reverse angle one-two parrying between perspectives. It's tough, athletic, and the only real reason to cut away is if something goes wrong—a fluffed punch, or bad timing that creates a lull in the fight or a disconnect with "reality." There's no "lull" between hits because the way the altercations are staged you never see the connections, and there's no simulation of connection, because they're composed mostly of gymnastics, wrestling and fast action—the opposite of The Bourne Identity style of rapid cutting and implication of "hits." Soderbergh does something different with this style, while accomplishing the same intensity of the edit-dependent fisticuffs of the last few years. The most critical part, however, is who's doing the fighting, and that's where Haywire is really different and utterly dependent on its athletic lead.

Gina Carano, mixed martial artist—and frequent participant in "American Gladiator"—plays Mallory Kane, and she is disciplined enough to pull off the fight sequences with a savage speed. Any actress can train to look convincing, but Carano has the moves down for her character who is supposed to be a berserker weapon of mass-destruction, so there's rarely a cut-away or an insert shot to betray the use of stunt-doubles. There aren't any. 

So, Soderbergh (who also shot the film) keeps his camera out of the way and keeps everything and everybody in frame as best he can. We've seen women in fights before—fights with men (Tarantino loves to do that)—but it's slightly unnerving to see these, knowing full well that everything was done in-camera, with few editing tricks. The speed makes it a bit more visual—there's no 1/4 second adjustment/orientation lag between cuts—and more upsetting initially, but one does, as the fighting continues for minutes unabated, used to it (except for the question of what kind of make-up she uses to hide the bruising).

Because Carano is largely unknown except for her MMA career—she's fine in her dramatic scenes, just not great (but then, have I ever complained about Jet Li or Jason Statham's acting?)—the cast is a little top-heavy with big-name victims...Ewan McGregor, Michael Douglas, Channing Tatum, Michael Fassbender (the latter doing a fine riff on Bond coolness—of course, he gets his ass kicked in the film's best fight), Bill Paxton and Antonio Banderas. Nobody is required to do anything beyond displaying detached coolness. But the internal logic is there, so at least this one is a better example for the experiment than, say, Salt.

The girl breaks bones and furniture.

Welcome to the Crazy Club!

or

The Moon's Just a Cheap Shot Away

And what's good for the goose...

 

Soderbergh's next film after Haywire (if we don't count his second-unit work for The Hunger Games), also goes against the grain in the traditional genre/gender roles that we come to expect in movies—a dance/backstage drama movie, but with male leads.  Magic Mike is Flashdance with testosterone, the only thing missing is the "if you give up your dreams, you die" line. Here, the basic dream is moving out of Tampa, Florida...to a bigger venue, or a better life. The clutch of male strippers each have their own motivations—mostly money—and for them, the gig is a better alternative than slogging through a 9 to 5 job, wearing a tie. So, at night, they dance, flirt, tease, and as club owner Dallas (Matthew McConaughey) "pry the cash out of their purses."

We're introduced to the skin-trade by Adam (Alex Pettyfer) irresponsible brother of Brooke (Cody Horn), who makes a good enough living for him to sponge off by having a steady job dealing with medical claims. At a construction job that he's ill-equipped for, he runs into Mike Lane (Channing Tatum), who, despite seeing Adam as a loser, takes him under his wing, giving him a job as a "gopher" for the Xquisite dance club, where Mike, he finds to his surprise, is a featured dancer. Well, you know how these backstage stories go: one of the performers can't go on-stage—he's passed out from a growth hormone overdose, and so Adam must make his stripper debut.  Dallas and Mike watch from the wings and simultaneously offer an opinion: "Can't dance worth shit."

 

"But..that..can..be..taught," replies Dallas.

Wish the rest of it could be. It'd save us all a bunch of time. Mike's the hero of the tale, the veteran, "the guy most-together," but Adam is the neophyte and must go through the unfulfilling one-nighters, the drug problems, the crack-ho relationship, the debts to the hood-pushers, the spiral down to the bottom. Mike just goes home to a brewsky and a night of uncrinkling his Benjamins on the edge of his self-designed furnishings (the establishment of such a business is his dream). He's the cleverest of the bunch—Tatum developed the story based on his own experiences dancing in Tampa, so naturally he's the cleverest—and he's the most romantic of the bunch, mooning over a past-patron (Olivia Munn*) and very interested in Adam's sister. He probably stays around being The Kid's Obi-Wan just to keep her in the picture, because there's only so many times you can say "You don't want that in your life, bro'" before it gets tiresome.

It does, but it could be a lot worse. It could be "Showboys," and in outline form it resembles it, but it avoids the smarmy camp quality of that film by having a sense of humor about itself** and what it is (and what it doesn't aspire to, which is anything with an overt message) and it stresses the economic times that drop the unskilled (but ripped) into such night-work (day-jobs being rather scarce, especially when you party until 4 am) without having any pretensions about suffering for your art.  And the performances are fine, especially Tatum and McConaughey, who clearly relishes playing an out-and-out bad-boy with no shame. But, all the men throw themselves into the roles of buck-a-throw sex-objects, with a brio and swagger that's fun to watch—as long as nobody takes it for anything more. 

 

It's the old "show-biz is a rough road, kids" movie, but with a "y" chromosome in the script of its DNA, a morality tale with enough immorality to make it worth watching.  And it's a healthy thing for Soderbergh (or anybody) to be turning the tables on these themes with their built-in sexism—even if the tables have some dancing on them.

The boys break rules (but not twenties)

* Interesting role for her.  She plays a woman who plays with Mike like a boy-toy for jollies, but he finds, much to his dismay, that she does not consider him someone to bring home to meet Mom and Dad.  Dude...(if I can use the language of the film) Why do you think you never went over to her place??  As they might say in Showgirls "Denial's not just a river in Egypt, honey..."

** Reviews and synopses are saying it's a comedy-drama, though. No. No, it's not. It's a light drama (with sprinkles of heaviness) and some clever writing here and there. Maybe that hyphenate was there to attract the ladies (as if all the beef-cake and pretty boys wasn't enough).

Mud

Written at the time of the film's release....although I've added a couple of current addendums because this writer-director is so good and his work sought out.

Possession is 9/10 of the Law
or
Lookin' for Love in All the Wrong Places

The last film that Jeff Nichols wrote and directed was the very interesting, very odd, and quite layered Take Shelter.*  His latest, Mud, is part coming-of-age movie, part Southern Gothic, part classic romance and part tragedy and complete curiosity. It features a couple of great kid performances and a top-tier cast supporting them.

Tye Sheridan and Jacob Lofland play two tweeners living on the Mississippi River. They're a couple of restless kids who are hired help in their families, but with minimal supervision, have the freedom to sneak out at night exploring. On one of those pre-dawn excursions they motor over to an island and find a wonder—a boat nestled in a tree. Checking it out, they're in for a shock. Someone's living there. 

That someone is Mud (Matthew McConaughey) who is eking out an existence there. How he got there is a mystery. Why he's there is not. He's killed a man, who was messing with the girl he loves, and that man has a powerful family (led by Joe Don Baker). He's hiding out, waiting for word from Juniper (Reese Witherspoon), and when he hears, they'll run off together, where...well, that's a little unspecific. 

In the meantime, he uses the little go-betweeners to get food, supplies, and word out, that includes to one of Ellis' (Sheridan) neighbors, a solitary man named Tom Blankenship (Sam Shepard), who Mud labels "an assassin." Blankenship calls Mud a liar, making Ellis slightly conflicted; he's willing to do anything for Mud in his quixotic quest, out of a young man's puppy-love instincts, in part a response to the fracturing marriage of his parents (Ray McKinnon, Sarah Paulson) and his own interactions with "townie" girls, particularly May Pearl (Bonnie Sturdivant).

It's to Ellis' advantage that he and "Neckbone" (Lofland) are under the radar of everybody's notice, his parents have other concerns and Neckbone's uncle (Michael Shannon) is in his own little world, so the two boys go back and forth between mainland and island with messages and supplies, which becomes increasingly complex when Mud decides he's going to get that boat out of the tree. And when Ellis, in his come-to-the-rescue way, interferes when one of the goons keeping an eye on Juniper gets aggressive with her trying to get information about Mud's whereabouts.

Things begin to spiral out of control to a conclusion that can't come to any good, despite everyone's best and worst intentions, due to the breaking of borders between the insular natures of the players.

But, there's something else going on here that creeps like an adder through the Louisiana swamp, something to do with misogyny. Maybe it's just the timing of events—not accidental as it's all in the control of the writer-director—but all the problems seem to generate from the war between men and women. The women here—Juniper, Ellis' mom, May Pearl—have an edge of capriciousness and undependability (in the males' eyes, anyway) that derails their plans and dreams. 

The men are hardly blameless, going through their lives with their eyes wide shut, totally aware that the women in their lives may prove disastrous in the short term, while they're quixotically playing the hero or the rescuer, anyway. Everybody has some romantic view of life that is not theirs, and their pursuit of it proves their undoing. One leaves the theater with the sense of a good story well told, but with a stake through the heart in the futility of good intentions. One wants the waters of life to be smooth and transparent, but the reality of it is that it's the consistency of the movie's title.

It's a beautiful film, too. Beautifully shot by Adam Stone. 

2021 note: Nichols hasn't made a film since this one and that's a real shame. He's been working on one film, but has been hired by John Krasinski to make A Quiet Place, Part III. Well, whatever gets him back behind the camera. His work is too good not to be making something. Whatever it is, it is of worth.

* I should mention here in 2021 that he's also made a couple other film's I've loved—2016's Midnight Special and the same year, Loving.

Tropic Thunder

Written at the time of the film's release...

And, traditionally, Saturday is "Take Out the Trash" Day...

"Nobody Goes Full-Retard" 

There's a good idea in Ben Stiller's Tropic Thunder, a comic story about a trio of self-indulgent actors making a Viet-Nam era war film. By a Machiavellian director's conceit, they end up abandoned in a jungle pursued by drug traffickers, with nothing but their persona's to protect them.* The film tosses in more inside-Hollywood jokes than a Scary Movie installment, and some of them turn out to be actually funny. 

The trouble is the film itself is top-lined by self-indulgent actors all vying for screen-time to see how broadly they can play their parts. It's meant to be satire, and it's plenty satirical, as long as Stiller, Robert Downey, Jack Black and Tom Cruise are making fun of the Hollywood excesses of...other actors.** But one is reminded of a less-disciplined, unfunny version of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World in the broadness of the playing, and heavy-handedness with which its presented. Imagine Dr. Strangelove if every performance had the wing-nut intensity of George C. Scott's.

Tropic Thunder brays and screeches constantly, it's soundtrack thudding with an annoying loudness for scenes even taking place in the quiet of night. There might have been some worry on the studio's part about letting the movie breathe, or fear that the pace might slacken. All well and semi-good. But it gives the film the light and airy feeling of a train barreling into a brick wall. And the frenetic style and the frequent unintelligibility of the actors makes it a frustrating movie-going experience. 

Still, there are moments: the movie starts with a commercial and previews for films featuring the characters in the film, and they are inspired little mini-movies that skewer trailer-style marketing, as well as Hollywood hype. None too subtle, but they're mercifully short and focused. Then there's the performance of Matthew McConaughey, as the distracted agent of Stiller's Tugg Speedman, a breezy graceful performance that's funny and relaxed, but just as nuanced as the other, more aggressive performances.

 

At the opposite end of the scale is Cruise's studio-headcase Les Grossman. Made up with a balding pate and fat-suit, it's played with a giddily vulgar intensity that's pure hyper-Cruise; one wonders if Tom can play a real human being anymore, or for that, even recognize one. Still, it's quite the artery-popping performance. 

But ultimately one is left with a bunch of absurdist little off-ramps that go no where, as in the dramatic send-up typical of the testosterone/weeper when Tugg implores Lazarus, "You tell the world what happened here!"

A puzzled look passes over Lazarus' face: "What happened here?" 

"I don't know" is the reply. 

I found myself laughing at the vacuousness of the exchange, but now, in retrospect, I regret it. Maybe I was desperate for a laugh at that point.

At one point Speedman and Lazarus are discussing acting techniques, and the former brings up a disastrous attempt at a feel-good Oscar-bait film playing a disabled person. "Everybody knows you don't go full-retard," says Lazarus. "Autistic, yes. Imbecilic, yes. Full-retard, no."

And yet they made this movie, anyway.

 

* What's really funny about the script is the cribbing of the making of Apocalypse Now. Back in the early stages of Francis Ford Coppola's American Zoetrope film factory, the plan was for screenwriter John Milius and director George Lucas to make the film "guerrilla-style" by actually dropping the actors and a skeleton crew in Viet-Nam to make the movie. Today, Lucas admits the idea was crazy. Milius still imagines it as a lost opportunity for adventure.

** It's pretty obvious who is being made fun of here: Stiller makes a wicked stab at Cruise mannerisms, Downey is tweaking Russell Crowe and heavy-method actors--his Aussie Kirk Lazarus undergoes treatments to turn his skin black and never breaks character from a dialect straight out of Amos n' Andy, and Jack Black is one of the long line of overweight, drug-addicted comedians on a short fuse. And though Cruise has cause to lampoon Summer Redstone, his movie mogul is more in the Weinstein mode (and is supposedly based on Stiller's production partner Stuart Cornfeld). 

 

Wilhelm Alert: @ 2:25 into the film proper (if you can call it that)

Interstellar

The Lo-ove Dimension
or
The Play Fails in the Tesser-act

The must-see movie of the past weekend was Interstellar, Christopher Nolan's new space film with Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, and a surprising number of good actors, who pop up almost as a surprise. Welcome ones, at that.

For a year or so, Steven Spielberg was attached to direct this, but he let it go, presumably because he could not crack the story and a problematic last act.* Christopher Nolan, the new Spielberg in regards to Hollywood clout, took it over and he and his brother Jonathan re-shaped the screenplay, and unfortunately, this is where the movie fails, and fails rather spectacularly.

For, despite all the research, all the attempts to work with current space-time theory, all the concessions to be...you know, accurate about the science (for instance, no sound—finally—in space—if only one could say the same for Hans Zimmer's interfering, and even dialogue-drowning score), the film is only sporadically interesting, often is eye-rollingly obvious in telegraphing its resolutions, and has a deus ex machina that is so sloppily sentimental** that you have to suspend a little more than belief; you have to practically believe in magic. Or think the whole thing is a time-transplanted conspiracy theory.

It starts off intriguingly. We see a person (Ellen Burstyn in elderly make-up) talk about the Earth's new "Dust Bowl"—with just enough minutiae to place it in the future and mix it in seamlessly with other interviews taken from Ken Burns' The Dust Bowl. Earth is losing its sustainability and bio-diversity, crops are failing into extinction one by one—first wheat, then okrah, with corn being left,*** but for how long no one can say. Budgets and high-tech industries have mostly failed with agriculture and farming replacing them to try and maintain a starving population. That's the history of Cooper (McConaughey), a former NASA test-pilot and engineer who now maintains a vast farm caretaken by automated combines.  But, as has happened before, the top-soil is taking a toll and the country is periodically overtaken with large dust-storms that blanket everything with dirt.

Meanwhile, at home, Cooper is dealing with domestic issues:  a widower, living with Grampa (John Lithgow), Cooper is caring for his son, who, rather than going into a higher earning field is slated for a career that is more necessary in the current day—farming; his daughter is having difficulty with abandonment issues and has a secret friend—a "ghost" who pushes books off the library-shelves. An odd detail like that telegraphs that it will pop up later in the proceedings. It will, so much so that you begin to wonder if you're watching a remake of Signs.

Never mind how they get there, but Cooper stumbles upon a facility which is the last remaining vestiges of NASA, headed by Professor Brand (Michael Caine—Nolan's most regular cast-member) and a team of theoretical physicists and engineers. Their goal is the most lofty one imaginable—Earth's eco-system is so far out of balance that the only way for the human race to survive is to find another Earth and transport the population to that other world. That's Plan A. Plan B is to repopulate the designated planet with a "population bomb" of new humans to that planet in the hopes that they can re-populate without the need of nannies. Both plans are more than a little far-fetched, as is the means to exploring those planets—a wormhole has opened up in the orbit of Saturn, and exploratory teams, twelve in all, have been dispatched to planets visible in the wormhole to send back blips of information about each planet, and Cooper, along with a minimal team of specialists, including Brand's daughter (Anne Hathaway) rocket away to reach those teams, and discover for themselves the viability of human life on those planets.

Saturn's wormhole—a snow-globe full of worlds.

That mission will take years—for how long no one can speculate—and it is further complicated by the presence of the black hole that has caused that wormhole in space-time. The closer they get to it, the more the crew will be out of time-sync with Earth. They will age slower than the people of their home-planet. This, frankly, is the best concept in the film (and similar to the different time-rates of the various dream-worlds in Nolan's Inception) and produces the best line in the film about their precious commodities of food and water being added to by time. 

But Cooper going on the mission—no matter how important it is to the species—does not sit well with his family, especially daughter Murph (Mackenzie Foy), who's already lost one parent, and at 10 years old does not want to lose another.  His decision to go anyway, creates a rift between them that time and space only increase, not transcend. But, it will inspire them both on their separate journeys.

Cooper receives messages from home

There are complications—very big complications—that makes one wonder if humans are even worth saving at all. Meanwhile, the uncaring Universe rolls on, completely indifferent to whether you'll be able to make it to your kid's soccer matches...or their weddings...or their funerals. There are wormholes, black holes and more engulfing plot holes. There is an adherence to science theory, but only so far as writers' desperation will allow, and then a lot of fudging goes on in the interest of drama and closure and coincidence...and a banal lack of imagination in its realization of the penultimate act is displayed.  

Ambitious it is, in its limited way, and in places, beautiful. But, for all the dialogue about man (or woman) being an explorer and that, even though humans are born on this planet, they're not destined to die there—ultimately the film falls back to Earth in its focus and its intentions. Opportunities for saying something more, about our place in the Universe and maybe beyond, are lost, for domestic concerns and earthly desires. Interstellar's sights are in the Heavens, but rarely gets off the ground.

* The reason is much less interesting than that.  The property was attached to Paramount, but Spielberg moved his production company Dreamworks from there to Disney.  And, if based on what this article reveals, it's just as well this version wasn't filmed, as the current version is a bit more focused.

** Spoiler Alert: To sum it up, it is "Only Love Can Escape the Sun-Crushing Gravity of a Black Hole."  Really?

*** Rice is never mentioned, which makes one wonder if it's just America that's having these issues and wants to leave the planet.

The Wolf of Wall Street

Down Wall Street Lay Many Socio-Paths
or
The Bacchanal Stops Here (in the Raging Bull Market)

"May you live in interesting times" says the old Chinese proverb.  With the Chinese holding a good chunk of the U.S. debt and the financial stakes being held by the likes of the degenerates of The Wolf of Wall Street, these are interesting times, indeed, as Martin Scorsese and his frequent collaborator Leonardo DiCaprio present a contemporary tale of Roman excess, only slightly more believable than the horrors they collaborated on with Shutter Island by hoodlums only slightly more endearing than the gangsters of Goodfellas.

That it is also Sorsese's most roaringly entertaining film in awhile says something else.

One must be prepared to be shocked going in—the film starts with a dwarf-tossing contest as a way of letting off steam on "casual Friday" and that's just the beginning—within ten minutes we'll be treated to a rather delicately composed shot of DiCaprio's Jordan Belfort, the late 20th Century descendant of Horatio Alger and Sammy Glick, snorting cocaine from a highly unusual receptacle, and still thoroughly plowed out of his mind that he crashes his personal helicopter onto his property. And over the next three hours—don't worry, the movie zips by, jumping from extreme to extreme every ten minutes like battles in a space epic—we follow a familiar path in the films of Scorsese, of the rise, fall and subsequent grovelling of its protagonist, forced to a penance of knowing how good he had it and never being able to get there again—of having "the secret" and not being able to use it. There has been a critical backlash that perhaps Scorsese and his screenwriter Terence Winter haven't been quite so judgmental in their portrayal of the events of the film, but that's because they've chosen for their principal point of view that of Belfort, himself, who, while breaking every rule in the book to get whatever he wants, violates the fourth wall, continually, as well, addressing the audience and explaining enthusiastically "How He Did It." It's the perverse counter-point to the kind of seminars on selling that Belfort conducts now to make money...and avoid the constant glare of the authorities who took him down.

DiCaprio's Belfort Explains it All to You

It's also the American Dream turned into an American Nightmare. Belfort takes the get-up-and-go spirit of American capitalism and never puts on the brakes. In America, he hears nothing but the sound of opportunity knocking—at every opportunity, in business or his own pleasure—and, like any addictive personality, can't stop. He is given a lunch-lecture on the perverse nature of Wall Street brokering by a mentor Mark Hanna (Matthew McCounaghey, scarily entertaining, again), downing martinis and snorting cocaine at the table, explaining in a rambling monologue about the pressures on brokers pushing "fugazi's" while enjoining Belfort to join him in a fraternal caveman chest-thumping that becomes emblematic of the low-mindedness of every enterprise Belfort takes on subsequently.  For awhile, he does okay, then gets blown out of his job, thanks to the Crash of '87.

He's reduced to making cold-calls on penny-stocks for a boiler room in a strip mall, where Belfort soon establishes himself as a top-tier hustler there, adapting an attitude of hyper-optimism for gullible first-time investors, finding as he does so that he is actually making more money as he gets higher commissions pushing worthless stocks. To push his credibility with buyers further, he establishes a new firm with a neighbor Donnie Azoff (Jonah Hill) and a line-up of friends who are bottom-feeder salesmen and drug pushers. They start a firm with the prestige-dripping name of Stratton Oakmont, aggressively playing the market by promoting bad stocks, then cashing out once the stocks reach a peak, a strategy scam called "pump and dump."

Soon, Belfort and Co. have more money than Croesus, which they re-invest in extravagent lifestyles, primarily booze, drugs—primarily cocaine and quaaludes—and hookers, which are claimed on taxes as entertainment expenses. "On a daily basis I consume enough drugs to sedate Manhattan, Long Island, and Queens for a month," he crows in voice-over. "I take Quaaludes 10-15 times a day for my "back pain",Adderall to stay focused, Xanax to take the edge off, pot to mellow me out, cocaine to wake me back up again, and morphine...well, because it's awesome." Before too long, he's in a toxic affair with Naomi Lapaglia (Margot Robbie), "a former model and Miller Lite girl," which gets found out by his wife, he's divorced, and married again to his blond dream girl.

"Cinema is a matter of what's in the frame and what's out"--Martin Scorsese

Margot Robbie as "Naomi" Belfort

But, that's not enough. There is no limit to his appetite or avarice. And before long, he's noticed by the IRA and the FBI, which leads him to Swiss banks and offshore investments, and an escalating series of disasters as the risks he takes (along with the drugs) increases.

It culminates in one of the funniest, scariest sequences in movies this year, as Belfort has to call his lawyer from an "outside phone" (his have been tapped by investigators) at the same time a few quaaludes ("Lemmon 714's") past their shelf-date by a few years finally kick in, and leave him a drooling, crawling, babbling mess unable to function, at anything above an autonomic level. Here's that scene, but be warned, this is NSFW, has multiple f-bombs (this film set a record for fictional films of 569 times over three hours, averaging 3.18 per minute, the clip is five minutes long, so you do the math), and will look bizarre out of context, as it is bizarre and zany enough in the film.

DiCaprio's work here is hilarious, but the entire performance may be the best of his career, a prancing walk-and-talk act with the kind of pugnacious grace that Cagney gave to his gangster roles and Malcolm McDowell gave to his thug in A Clockwork Orange. There's a mad-cap joy to his work, and a genuine desire to make Belfort look as dysfunctional as possible, a prince in the boardroom, but a sad-sack in his private life, that's only matched by Jonah Hill's second-in-command who knows no shame, and may be more out-of-control than Belfort. Margot Robie will be wise to de-glam her next few roles, if she doesn't want to do the next ten "It-girl" roles—after Sharon Stone, Nicole Kidman, Charlize Theron, Angelina Jolie, and every model who's tried to act—as she's barbie-doll-objectified to perfection, but also given some roaring good scenes to spit out. Kyle Chandler is the hang-dogged FBI agent assigned to Belfort, and the movie is full of nice work by a long line of character actors, including bits with Jean Dujardin and Rob Reiner.

As I said, it's the "fullest" film of Scorsese's recent decade of movies, but it won't be everybody's cup of arsenic—the film has been attacked for being sexist and not condemning Belfort more. Both attacks seem a little spurious, as Belfort and Stratton Oakmont were as "Old Boys Club" as it comes, and reveled in declassé behavior of all stripes—"not only was he a degenerate and a crook but he didn't have a high opinion of women, either" wins the "Sherlock" award for stating the obvious. And, again, the condemnation?  It's there. Belfort out of control looks as ridiculous on-screen as the filmmakers can conspire to make him, short of giving him a "Bozo" nose; just because he is too full of himself (or some other substance) to recognize his ridiculousness does not mean that depiction does not exist. It just means that the character is maintaining his conscienceless attitude and his sociopathic detachment, especially regarding himself. In the Scorsese mixture of bull-headed comedy and tragedy, the protagonists don't recognize condemnation, even if they get it.

It is, after all, "based on a true story."  And a real creep.

The real Jordan and Nadine Belfort in happier, if less sober, times

That "Forbes" article they talk about in the movie.

Dallas Buyers Club

The Adventures of Lone Star and Tinkerbell
or
"Worst Case Scenario Being What?"

Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey), electrician and bad ol' Texas boy, does not look well. Maybe it's the drinking and drugs. Maybe it's the whoring around and the bad betting he does at the rodeo that gets him beat up a lot. Hey, that's Texas and that's Woodroof. But when an accident at his work-site finally knocks him out so that he can't crawl home and self-medicate, he gets a medical analysis. Somewhere along the way he's acquired the HIV virus and the prognosis is not good: he has 30 days to live and is advised "to get your affairs in order."

What order?

After storming out of the hospital, he starts his thirty days by bingeing himself blind, but he can't escape a glance at a calendar. Not being the sharpest tool in the woodshed, he doesn't know anything about Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and the five stages of grief, he goes from denial to anger and stops at bargaining—he starts to investigate what's happening to him. Libraries, medical journals, he pores over them to find out why a straight man could contract HIV, and finds that doctors and Big Pharma are starting to run tests on an experimental drug, AZT. With cash in hand, he goes about his business like he would looking for cocaine—go to the place that has it and offer money. But, the hospital is only running trials for the FDA, and only some of the subjects will be getting the real drug. The doctor (Jennifer Garner) offers him a support group.  "I'm dying, and you're telling me to get a hug from a bunch of faggots?" But, that's all she can offer. The support group offers some literature, but that's it.

Meanwhile, word of his disease gets around to his cronies, who have as much tolerance for the LGBT community as he does, but, by now being a quick study, he spits at them, scaring them off, and becomes determined to find a cure for his disease. That involves a trip to Mexico and a discredited doctor (played by an unrecognizable Griffin Dunne) who has a lot of information on AZT—not good—and has been getting good results with vitamins, minerals, and an experimental drug called Peptide T. They work for Woodroof—at least preventing debilitating seizures (foreshadowed in the film by the whine of tinnitus) and so, he smuggles years worth of the stuff over the Mexican border, attracting the attention of the FDA.

Jared Leto as Rayon and Matthew McCounaghey as Woodroof

But, Woodroof is nothing if not an entrepreneur, seeing an opportunity and a need in the HIV patients in his community.  He cannot sell the drugs he's brought over—that would be illegal—but taking a page from other parts of the country, he sells membership in a club, providing the recommended dosages of the meds at no additional cost. Being a straight redneck, it's a little difficult to form a trusting relationship in the gay community. For that, he forms a partnership with another HIV transgender patient, Rayon (Jared Leto), who provides him street-cred and an unlikely ally.

The character of Rayon did not actually exist, but is emblematic of many people Woodroof worked with in his efforts that started as a money-making venture and turned into a cause and a quest for better (and less toxic) medical solutions. There's a lot of "sugar-pill" scenario-writing going on between the actual events and the way they're depicted. lt "plays" better for Woodroof to be the rebel fighting the evil system of Big Pharma and the snail's-pace approval process of the FDA. There's also a lot of drama on the early AZT testing, which was done at levels that were too high and too toxic for the human body to take, but this was done, not to harm, but because there was no previous testing of the much in-demand drug—and the experts did not know the effects ahead of the tests, hence the reason for tests in the first place. It is also consistent with the constant battling Woodroof had to endure to save his own life, his own system, and finally, the people who depended on his efforts.  If Woodroof is an unlikely hero, the filmmakers want to make it unambiguous—yeah, he's a jerk, but, ultimately he's doing the right thing.

Those issues of authenticity aside, the filmmakers, in front of and behind the camera, do a nimble job of keeping the detailed, jargoned and acronym-filled story clear and concise and human—they probably had to cut many, many detailed corners throughout the film's ten year development to get there. McConaughey, as he's been proving for a while now, gives a great performance, pulling no punches with his portrayal of Woodroof, while also losing a scary amount of weight, and contnuing to lose it as the movie, and the disease, progresses. He's only topped in the film by Leto, who runs far afield of caricature and makes Rayon an endearing, if fatally flawed, recognizable human being (even if the actor is not recognizable in it, at all), and their scenes together, starting with a prickly-bitchy card game in a hospital room, keep the film yin-yanging with a tension that starts out at odds, and ends up feeling more like family.

Ron Woodroof