{The Wolf of Wall Street opens in Seattle on December 25, and is screening at Sundance Cinemas Seattle, Thornton Place, and the Regal Meridian}

At one point last eve, amidst the rum balls and hot buttered rum and glasses of cava, I declared that I had to write this review and my love suggested that I could just claim my drunken state was “research” into the excess shown in The Wolf of Wall Street. Brilliant, right? And then, I totally forgot and fell asleep.

Brushing the sleep out of my eyes early this morning instead, I’m here to tell you that Wolf is my favorite Scorsese movie since Goodfellas. It’s funny, no, I mean, REALLY funny, and Leo. Mygod. I didn’t even notice it was Leonardo DiCaprio up there on the screen. It WAS Jordan Belfort.

The “wolf”, if you don’t know, is a guy who started on Wall Street as a stockbroker’s intern, got laid off on Black Friday, and then lucked into selling penny stocks and got really great at it, opened his own boiler room turned firm, and proceeded to screw his clients while making millions and millions and millions of dollars for himself … but of course you can only do that for so long before someone catches you. 

Belfort is the best salesman you’ve ever seen, which makes it easy for him to take people’s money. Also making it easy: the mountains of cocaine, 5-martini lunches, and the bottles and bottles of qualudes he’s consuming every day. Not to mention the strippers and the hookers, and more likely than not, those things are all mixed together. 

Scorcese captures Belfort’s rise, fall, and paranoid delusions much the way he captured Henry Hill’s, but while Goodfellas mixed in some pretty gruesome scenes with its comedy, Wolf if almost non-stop funny business. And it’s good. I mean, really really really good. It’s fun and funny and brilliant and hilarious and just kills it with THE EXCESS. I can't even explain it to you, except to say: It’s just f*cking perfect.

I can’t wait to see it again.