Standy By Me

Rob Reiner directs this adaptation of a Stephen King novella called “The Body.” Everybody seems to love this movie, and with good reason: it’s a touching story about four 12-year-old boys in the fictional town of Castle Rock, Oregon, in 1959. They’re at that lovely age of boyhood where girls haven’t entered the consciousness (not fully anyway), and they’re more interested in having adventures with each other than anything else in the world. These four, played by Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman, and Jerry O’Connell, are particularly lucky children because their parents basically ignore them, thus freeing them to embark on a 20-mile hike along a railroad track, searching for the body of a missing boy. (They’re of course very unlucky in that they’re not particularly loved, but the movie uses this to its advantage to manipulate us constantly.)

It’s frustrating to feel such love for this movie, yet be nagged by the gnawing suspicion that it’s a total manipulation. Perhaps if we did not learn that one of the characters later dies tragically as an adult, the movie’s evocative depictions of childhood nostalgia and innocence wouldn’t feel so calculated. But make no bones about it: this movie is calculated. It’s just so well-done that it’s hard not to be emotionally affected. Stand By Me is genuinely enjoyable entertainment, and yet it’s somehow wickedly aware of what it’s doing to the audience.

What feels authentic are the performances, especially of River Phoenix and Wil Wheaton. Phoenix is a natural actor, channeling such powerful emotions at such a young age, and his tragic early death at the age of 23 made him a contemporary James Dean figure, enshrined in cult status. Oh that he could still be with us today, even if it meant the descent into mediocrity that befell all three of his co-stars.

The Wolf of Wall Street

A strange mixture of brilliant and repulsive. You don't so much see The Wolf of Wall Street as you experience it. It's like looking into the heart of decay, only it's encrusted with jewels and wrapped in money. I had the same problem last year with Killer Joe. It was one heck of a movie, but I felt ashamed to even admit that I liked it. Is it wrong to enjoy depravity on the big screen? Even a little? Is it a sign of our own moral corruption that we might award accolades to a movie like director Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street, which some have dared to call a great film? Mike LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle writes, "Though Raging Bull must still go down as Martin Scorsese's greatest achievement, The Wolf of Wall Street makes the race for No. 2 a lot more interesting." Robert Kojder of the website What Culture concludes, "It's impossible not to become absolutely immersed."

Perhaps J.R. Jones of the Chicago Reader sums it up best: "Scorsese's helpless attraction to the very behavior he wants to indict becomes the movie's serrated edge." (All of these quotes were accessed via Rotten Tomatoes. It wasn't exactly an arduous task.) The critics don't all agree of course. Joe Morgenstern of the Wall Street Journal didn't like it, and neither did Stephanie Zacharek of Village Voice, calling the film "too much of a bad thing."

I find myself in a weird middle ground. I don't feel that The Wolf of Wall Street is a great film that will forever be remembered in the annals of American cinema. (Then again, it might be.) But I also didn't hate it. I very much enjoyed the movie, and was rarely if ever bored (which is saying a lot because it's three hours long and I usually get restless after two). I'm fascinated by people who think wealth and stuff will make them happy, perhaps because I have to fight this belief myself sometimes. (Don't we all?) There must be an element of schadenfreude at work here: I'm glued to the screen for three hours watching a heartless S.O.B. steal from lower-middle-class schlubs, abuse Quaaludes like they're going off the market (oh, wait, they already were!), take Penicillin shots every time he sleeps with a prostitute, and treat his family like pawns in his narcissistic little game, and all the while I'm hoping for the big payoff: the fall. That's the appeal of movies: they rise up, and then they fall, and it's a glorious smashing effect full of broken shards of glass and bloody palms and dust settling over the fallen anti-hero's decadent, decaying corpse.

Here's the gist of the plot: Leonardo DiCaprio plays Jordan Belfort, a slick New Yorker with dollar signs in his eyes who starts a successful stock trading company from the ground up. Jordan is ever the slick salesman (a character trait that recurs throughout DiCaprio's oeuvre), and he turns the penny-stock-trading schmucks who work for him into first-class brokers who could make a man buy his own pen from them. Belfort's schemes aren't exactly legal, which gets him in trouble with the SEC and the FBI. And along the way, Belfort becomes addicted to drugs, sex, and the overall celebration of excess. What's a guy to do when he has so much money that transferring it to a Swiss bank account takes six separate trips for five separate people with stacks of bills taped to their bodies?

So basically, it's an ultimate American success story. In America, if you really want to, you can do this. And Jordan Belfort did and got caught, but then he served his measly 22 months and became a motivational speaker and wrote two books. (The script by Terence Winter is based on one of them, of the same name.)

But we're in it for the fall. And boy does Jordan Belfort fall! When leads his considerable staff in some kind of tribal chant (taught him by his mentor, who's played by Matthew McConaughey, in a cameo appearance), where they beat their chests and hum this creepy guttural mantra. It's a money-lover's war chant, and it takes this whole money-laundering thing into an almost prehistoric realm: We haven't changed, but the stuff we chase after has. And the toys are shinier and more expensive. (And those Quaaludes, man! Oh the Quaaludes!)

There's not much more to say about this movie. It's incredibly well-made and it really is brilliant in a sick sort of way. But you've been warned: it's like staring at death, or perhaps a mirror (if you want to take Belfort as an exaggeration of every person that ever valued stuff too much). And there are a lot of scenes depicting drug abuse and sex. So bear that in mind before you head to the theater. With Jonah Hill (whose character I genuinely loathed), Margot Robbie, Kyle Chandler, Rob Reiner, Jon Bernthal, Jon Favreau, Jean Dujardin (who gives a memorable performance as the president of a Swiss bank), Cristin Milioti, and Christine Ebersole. ★★★

This Is Spinal Tap

This Is Spinal Tap (1984) is a wonderful send-up of the self-importance of heavy metal rock bands from the 1970s. British rockers Spinal Tap could be a number of groups (they reminded me of Blue Oyster Cult with all the dark pseudo-occultist imagery of their costumes and stage decor). They are addicted to their inflated sense of star status, and flatter themselves about their perceived poetic abilities. As the movie (and the "documentary" being made about them touring the States) progresses, we see their credibility and their popularity diminish. It's laced with little moments of off-kilter comedy, and the performances of the band members are so utterly deadpan that you sometimes don't know when something is supposed to be a gag or if it's being played straight. That's part of the fun of this movie, though.

Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, R.J. Parnell, and David Kaff play the members of Spinal Tap, and do all of the playing and singing themselves. The movie's a mockumentary (the first one to involve many of the people who were behind such later films as Waiting For Guffman and Best in Show), and while it's often an hysterically droll experience, it's also surprisingly energetic, and even serious at times. The lines between mock and doc are purposely blurred, and the performances are completely invested in the material, which may be one of the reasons This Is Spinal Tap remains such a cult classic. Written by Guest, McKean, Shearer, and director Rob Reiner (who plays the director of the documentary).

With Tony Hendra and June Chadwick; featuring cameo appearances by: Ed Begley, Jr., Fran Drescher, Patrick Macnee, Dana Carvey, Billy Crystal, Howard Hesseman, Paul Shaffer, Anjelica Huston, and Fred Willard.