An Epic Comedic Masterpiece

Rating: 10/10 (26 November 2019)

I don't necessarily think that Scorsese's "Wolf of Wall Street" is the best film he's ever made, in fact, I'm sure plenty of cinephiles would jump down my throat for even suggesting that "Wolf" is better than "Goodfellas", but as far as personal preference goes, this is my favorite Scorsese film. All of Scorsese's movies are incredibly watchable; it's just easy to throw one of his films on and get swept up in the world he creates for you, be it 1870s high society New York ("The Age of Innocence"), the modern day crime-ridden streets Boston ("The Departed"), or a Parisian train station in the 1930s ("Hugo"). No matter what kind of film he makes, Scorsese brings his masterful direction to these stories in a way that simply brings those worlds to life, and this film, "The Wolf of Wall Street", is perhaps his most insane offering to date; the parties Jordan Belfort hosts are wilder than those attended by Marcello Rubini ("8 Â½"), he consumes more drugs than Hunter S. Thompson ("Fear and Loathing and Las Vegas"), and he gets into more debauchery than Loki the God of Mischief, and those reasons are exactly why I love it as much as I do. If there is a film that better demonstrates the allure and destructive powers of wealth, greed, and excess, I don't know what it is. "The Wolf of Wall Street" is Scorsese's funniest film, but it's also one of his most epic and brutally honest.