“[Martin] Scorsese didn’t make The Wolf of Wall Street because he loves Jordan Belfort and wants us to drool over his money and drugs and women. He made it because he loves making movies, and Belfort’s story is great movie material. At its best, which is often, The Wolf of Wall Street reminds you not just of the glories of movies, and the sometimes false splendor and inner tawdriness of life itself, but the glories of other arts as well. I’m hyperbolizing, I guess, but for me the best of Wolf is not some glossy men’s magazine orgy but an attempt (mostly successful, I think) at a true work of art — a work visually dense and full of lif, like a painting by a Brueghel or a Bosch, rocking and propulsive like a big beat classic by the Rolling Stones (or the Ronettes), crammed with humanity like a novel by Balzac or Dickens, literate and street-smart like a play or a screenplay by Ben Hecht and Charlie MacArthur, tough and snazzy and stylish as a classic gangster movie or film noir by Hawks, Curtiz or Walsh. It killed me.” — from Michael Wilmington‘s brilliant review/analysis on MCN, dated 1.22.