#3) The Wolf of Wall Street, by Martin Scorsese (2013)
I don’t think Martin Scorsese was ever satisfied that he had a working formula. He’s an artist in the truest sense, continually outdoing himself film after film, seeking the higher question: how can I do this better? After wowing us with 2011’s 3D epic Hugo , Scorsese went back to the drawing board, venturing down the road fellow NYU alumnus Oliver Stone twice rode with his Wall Street series. Wolf of Wall Street showed this world from a different angle, focusing on the interior of it’s Gordon Gekko counterpart, Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio), an ambitious con artist who starts a brokerage firm that grows into a success, illegally. Jordan starts out as ‘pond scum,’ working as a stockbroker for L.F. Rothschild on Wall Street, when the infamous Black Monday hits, the largest one day stock market drop in history, leaving him and countless others jobless. He gets employed at an unregulated penny-stock boiler room, using his savvy New York salesmanship in a suburban shoppin...