The San Diego Film Critics Society and the Phoenix Film Critics Society have presumably seen Martin Scorsese‘s The Wolf of Wall Street, and yet they’ve excluded it from their best-of-the-year lists. In my book this suggests a lack of insight and sophistication. I’m presuming they’ve rejected Wolf because of the debauchery — too vulgar, sleazy, outrageous. Did a portion of the San Diego and Phoenix voters equate it with The Hangover Part III or something? Because this is an extremely moral film that operates in the realm of Fellini Satyricon with a nod towards any scholastically respectable study of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The debauchery is a metaphor. The Phoenix and San Diego film connoisseurs are entitled to vote for whatever and whomever they want, of course, but there’s no legitimate excuse for not at least acknowledging Wolf as one of the year’s finest.