The Railway Man, 12 Years a Slave and The Wolf of Wall Street

Two harrowing films in succession started with The Railway Man. Colin Firth is excellent as a former WW2 POW who still has nightmares about his experience in the hands of the Japanese. Fortunately, we are spared prolonged excerpts of his time as prisoner, as told in flashbacks from his 1950's marriage to a Nicole Kidman. Despite criticisms of her performance, I found it solid and believable. To me, this was a carefully researched and well directed story that did credit to the whole cast and crew.

Given it's subject matter, I was surprised to find a packed cinema for 12 Years a Slave. And even more surprised, given the mainly elderly audience, only one couple left before the end. Which was a shame as they only missed the crucially happy ending that made what went before a little more comfortable. In my opinion, this was a good enough movie but not the outstanding one it was said to be. The story is the story, the dialogue was only just good enough and the acting was OK. If anything was top drawer, it was the direction and cinematography. I am still amazed that Steve McQueen got funding for this pretty expensive project, but he needs to learn more about the art of direction for a mainstream audience instead of getting too arty.

After the last two movies, I needed to see something lighter. Another true story to make a third, The Wolf of Wall Street  has to be seen as making fun of 1990's brokers, and in particular the real life Jordan Belfort. These days he would have not got off so lightly with his ripping off the endless number of clients in his wake. I thought that Martin Scorsese disguised the sleazy criminal activities of such an immoral character by wrapping it up in a succession of light-hearted over the top scenes. So we end up with a fun laden, but overlong three hours of hedonistic uproar. Leonardo DiCaprio puts in a huge bravura performance and is hardly off screen. But most memorable is a brilliant cameo from Mathew McConaughey that is worth on it's own the price of admission.