The Wolf of Wall Street - Danny's review

The trailer makes this look like a silly film about a rich banker who likes to play hard and work hard, and everyone has a wild time. I thought they were just showing you the funny bits, but actually the whole film is like that. It's a three hour comedy romp, and it's good.

The cult of personality around Belfort is the main excitement of the film, and you notice the lack of energy from the few scenes without Dicaprio in them. There's some crazy moments when he walks into a room and everyone goes wild with excitement, and starts shouting "Wolfie! Wolfie!". I'm sure the real Jordan Belfort (who has a cameo at the end in New Zealand) would have loved that.

Actually, I'm not sure Wolfie is such a good guy. He's a massive fraudster, and when he's in trouble he easily betrays all his friends. But then, they're not good guys either, and there's a hint that his best pal, played by Jonah Hill, is also working with the Feds. His gold-digger second wife leaves him when things turn sour, and although Wolfie acts surprised I think everyone knew she was a fair-weather bride. It's a shallow world they live in.

The madness of Wolfie's life means there's always something fun around the corner, and it's entertaining from start to finish. The main story arc of Wolfie's rise and fall is strong enough that I could do without the sub-plot of him stashing his money in Europe, which becomes a bit of a distraction with some odd cameos from Jean Dujardin (The Artist) and Joanna Lumley.

There's some classy touches, for example the bits where Wolfie turns to the camera and explains something directly. Overall, I'm going to rate it as the second-best Dicaprio-Scorsese collaboration. Here's my full ranking:

1. The Departed
2. The Wolf of Wall Street
3. Shutter Island
4. Gangs of New York
5. The Aviator

Robocop - Danny's review

The premise here is that America is robo-phobic, and the public don't want to deploy the robo-police they export to the rest of the world. To get round this Omnicorp put a blown-up (exploded) cop inside a machine. They're a bit naughty though, and when the man-machine hybrid is reacting too slow they develop a combat-mode mode where the computers takes over and bypass his slow human decision making. Then when he gets a bit unstable, and misses his family, they pump him full of dopamine to keep him on message. Don't worry though, the human spirit is irrepressible and he soon overrides his programming and solves his own murder and takes on his creators.

The original Robocop was sleazy and violent, had the distinctive style of Paul Verhoeven, and was well worth an 18 Certificate. This 2014 remake is a 12 Certificate, and has been made to appeal to a much wider audience. It's very much a studio picture, and you can almost feel the scenes which have been altered or added to make it easier to understand. The low point is when Murphy's wife and daughter are waiting for his home-coming. It's been thoroughly explained what's going on, but just to make sure you're keeping up there's an absolutely enormous "Welcome Home" sign, Then, unbelievably, the wife turns to her son and unnecessarily says "That's a nice sign you've made". That's their whole conversation! It's a really poor bit of dialogue.

The ending also smacks of studio tinkering. They want Murphy to get his revenge, sacrifice himself, and also stay alive in case they want a sequel. He goes on the rampage against his creators and shoots the Omnicorp chief executive, and the Doctor who's been working on him also turns whistle-blower against the company. This ought to be the end for Murphy, how and why would Omnicorp keep repairing him now? But, sadly and predictably, you see him recovering again at the end.

It plays out a lot like a super-hero film, though his powers are very limited, and consist mostly of watching lots of CCTV feeds at the same time. He's a less fun Iron Man in grey and black instead of red. The one amazing scene is when Murphy sees just the real bits of himself, and doesn't like it. There's quite a bit of philosophising in the film about who's really in control, man or machine, and it really hits home when you're looking at what's left of Murphy - just his brain, one arm, and lungs pulsing unpleasantly.

Gary Oldman is good as the Doctor. He starts off ethically using technology for medicine, but gradually gets talked round to building a Robocop. I also enjoyed Michael Keaton as a very laid back and scarcely believable Chief Executive. Having played Batman twice himself, he knows what it's like to be known only by the shape of your chin. He's fun to watch, much more so than the hectoring Samuel L Jackson. His role as a newscaster is to tell bits of the story (often bits we already know), in a way which is supposed to be dazzling as it's got holograms in, and of course SLJ himself. I was unimpressed.

In summary, on the plus side this is a slick production with some interesting ideas about the future of robotics. But on the minus sign it's made for kids.

Inside Llewyn Davis - Danny's review

This review contains spoliers

I really enjoyed this. Every scene is beautifully made. The Coen Brothers have an amazing knack of making very slow movies which are never boring. In this one the music comes centre-stage, and it sounds good.

In the first scene of the movie Llewyn gets punched outside a nightclub, and in the second scene he wakes up on a friend's couch. At the time it looks like that's the very next morning, but by the end of the movie you realise that that second scene actually takes place a week earlier, and most of the movie is showing that week leading up to being punched. At the time this comes as a bit of a surprise, and it took me a minute to realise what's going on. Normally in a film when you get shown the ending first something massive happens in that scene (usually the main character dying), so that you realise that the next scene must be taking place in the past. Here though, there's no clue that's what's going on. It's a clever device that makes me want to see the movie again straight away just to work out the chronology.

I think the idea of looping back to the start is that he's made no progress. It's a sort of Groundhog Week; a Road Movie with no destination. He tried to go to Chicago, he tried to rejoin the navy, but he didn't get anywhere. As Llewyn says about his music "If it's never new and it doesn't get old, it's a folk song". But there are a few signs he's moved on - he manages to stop the cat getting out the door the second time, and after it's cut short twice we finally get to hear him play his old partner's song all the way through at the end.

Oscar Isaak is good as Llewyn Davis. It's a tough character, as he's got to be both charismatic and lazy, a bit like The Dude in The Big Lebowski. You feel for him as he keeps getting given opportunities, and keeps on throwing them away. The surrounding cast is much more colourful, and I'd even say the normally very good Carey Mulligan is a bit over the top.

The ginger cat Ulysses looks very handsome, and there's some very atmospheric scenes in the car where characters are drifting in and out of sleep on the way to Chicago and back. Although the film is always exciting by the end you do feel the fatigue of Llewyn, and this probably isn't a good movie to watch if you're very tired.

Llewyn's folk songs are good, and the pacing of the movie allows you to hear them all the way through. Each of his songs describes his mood, especially when he has an audition and rejects commercial music by doing a wilfully obscure song about Henry the Eighth. "There's no money in it", says producer F. Murray Abraham, and I think he's right. The folk songs from other artists are much worse, not sure if they're meant to be deliberately bad or not.

Overall, a fantastic film, and I look forward to enjoying it again.