The Wolf of Wall Street

#53 at the time of writing.

I really enjoyed this film. It brims with relentless energy, wit and unfettered amorality. The mostly-true story of Jordan Belfort, an unscrupulous stockbroker who got phenomenally rich cooking the books in post 90's recession America, this movie is a tour de force.

The constellation of stars in this film deliver powerhouse performances, but Leonardo di Caprio particularly excels, delivering his wonderfully written lines with explosive yearning and gurning. Terence Winter's script, under Martin Scorsese's direction, is a masterclass in irony.

The film caters to a generation who grew up on Trading Places and Gordon Gekko, and has grown weary of stories about yet another rogue banker who has brought down yet another company too big to fail, with the main character more than once making a joke of skipping over the technicalities of his fraudulent activities - because we've heard it all before.

Greed, drugs, sex and debauchery are unabashedly glamourised (it has the dubious accolade of featuring the word "fuck" more than any other film in history), with the tone remaining comic and frenetic throughout the three-hour running time - no doubt masking considerable suffering and utterly failing to condemn some seriously bad behaviour. This analysis says it all.

Jordan Belfort, the real one, made $1,000,000 on the movie rights...

The Departed

#49 at time of writing.

Martin Scorsese's remake of Hong Kong gangster flick Infernal Affairs is epic, powerful, and only occasionally indulgent. There's a terrific cast (although it's tempting to imagine an alternative universe in which Pacino and De Niro 20 years ago starred), and a fantastic set-up: a gangster mole in the police force and an undercover cop in the gang are both trying to find each other out.

The tension is kept sky-high, the plot has more twists than a candy-cane, and the acting is second-to-none. Both the critics and the box-office loved it: It won the Best Picture Oscar (the movie with the most uses of the F-word to do so), and it's the highest-grossing Scorsese film.

A small gripe - I don't normally spot continuity errors, but it is hard not to in this film; there are little bits of sloppiness everywhere.