A director going back to his greatest hits is normally a sign of critical or commercial disappointment overriding their creative faculties. Although not if you're Martin Scorsese, it seems. After the mixed response to Shutter Island and box office bomb of Hugo he went back to his decade-spanning crime epics with The Wolf Of Wall Street, taking the obscene opulence baton from the likes of Goodfellas. While this take on the rise and fall of banker-cum-hustler Jordan Belfort could have looked like a diluted version of his masterpiece (a criticism Casino is often levelled with), thanks to fully embracing the ridiculousness of Belfort's lifestyle Scorsese delivered a spot-on black comedy that stands as his best film in over ten years. Many would claim that Leonardo DiCaprio was robbed when he didn't get the Oscar for the 'lude popping, wife-beating, sex-having-a-lot character, but that shows a gross misunderstanding of awards season. Belfort may "reform" in a legal sense, but at the end, with the general public still in awe of his financial position (regardless of how he got it) it's clear he's not really travelled that far, something that tends to be Oscar poison. Ultimately, it doesn't matter - the film may have been booed at an Academy screening, but, definitely moreso than Dallas Buyers Club or 12 Years A Slave, it'll be remembered as one of the decade's best director-actor combos.
