Manchester By The Sea

Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck) is a janitor in Boston who spends his days just getting through life and his job while hopefully avoiding any social interaction along the way. While his nights are largely spent drinking alone at home or in bars with a quick fight to round off the evening. We do not know at first what has brought him to this.

If he isn’t fed up enough he then hears that his older brother Joe (Kyle Chandler) has died from a heart attack. Lee now has to return to his hometown of Manchester, a picturesque place on Massachusetts' north shore, to put his brother's affairs in order but where he also has to face many people from his past including his ex-wife Randi (Michelle Williams).

Then he finds out that he has been named the legal guardian of Joe's 16-year-old son Patrick (Lucas Hedges) because Patrick's mother Elise (Gretchen Mol) is an incapable alcoholic. This is a task he feels he’s not up to but he reluctantly takes it on while trying to move Patrick back with him to Boston because he really cannot bear being in Manchester any longer than necessary.

Patrick meanwhile is having his own problems coping with his father's death but at least he has his two girlfriends to help him with this.

The film moves between the past and the present, showing a time where Lee was content with his life and the present day when he clearly is not. Everything moves along at a slow, measured pace, revealing details of Lee's past bit by bit, drip feeding us the gradual unravelling of Lee’s life until when you're least expecting it, the pivotal event that altered Lee's life forever is casually tossed into the film like a hand grenade. Boom. 

Once you’ve found why he has detached himself so much from life you're inside his head and you are suddenly watching the film from a very different point of view to where you started. Brilliant.

Clearly they needed someone to play this solemn, withdrawn, complex loner who could nail miserable to a T so they sent for Affleck and the role fits him like a glove. He proves that nobody does emotional distancing like him and he's amazing from beginning to end. 

Michelle Williams is good too in her small role, as are most of the cast, but Manchester by the Sea belongs to Casey Affleck.

An absolutely brilliant film. Must see.

The Wolf of Wall Street

The Wolf of Wall Street is the biographical story of Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio), a stock broker on Wall Street and is directed by Martin Scorsese.

Belfort is keen to make money, lots of it, but sees his initial job at L.F. Rothschild taken away from him when the firm collapses following the 1987 stock market crash. After hitting rock bottom, he bounces back working for a firm selling penny stocks. 

He quickly discovers that he can make good commission on these trades and quickly forms his own company Stratton Oakmont Inc. He recruits an unlikely bunch of guys to work for him including Donnie Azoff (Jonah Hill), who quickly becomes his right hand man.

Belfort’s extraordinary business mind ensures that Stratton Oakmont went from strength to strength, making the huge piles of money that he dreamt about. Forbes Magazine writes an article on the firm calling him ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ and the name stuck. Forbes also points out that his methods were rather dubious and that he was misleading investors whilst Stratton Oakmont’s staff lived a life on debauchery on the profits.

The film depicts life at Stratton Oakmont as one long outrageous party where the only thing as important as the money is the orgy of sex and drugs that it can buy. Here too Belfort is the ring leader, wallowing in a raucous excess of cocaine, prescription pills, non-prescription pills, alcohol and women.

Yet when he meets Naomi (Margot Robbie) he is smitten and has to have her. Despite her boyfriend and his wife, they are naked in bed the next day. In the end they marry, settle down and have a child... well she does. Belfort continues as before.

 

It is satire and is probably a reflection on today's society and on Wall Street itself. Whether it is wildly exaggerated satire is open to debate.  

Eventually the FBI start investigating and Agent Patrick Denham (Kyle Chandler) is on their case causing Belfort to attempt to smuggle all his cash out to Switzerland. Here is assisted by a corrupt banker Jean-Jacques Saurel (Jean Dujardin) and opens the account in the name of Naomi's aunt Emma (Joanna Lumley).

As the FBI close in, he is offered a deal to avoid jail but Belfort decides he doesn't want to be saved, turns it down and eventually the whole company is taken down.

When you read up on Jordan Belfort it becomes apparent that Martin Scorsese kept to the story as much as possible, which is a bit of a rarity for Hollywood. What he gives us is a film that is swift, energetic and enormously entertaining. It did not feel like a three hour production because there is not a quiet moment in it.

It's also one of the funniest things I've seen for a long time but that depends on your sense of humour. It is also likely to offend some people but only if you object to explicit language, explicit sex, explicit nudity, explicit drug etc etc.

It is one hell of a good film and Leonardo DiCaprio is, I have to say, simply terrific. If he doesn't win the Oscar for this, he probably never will.