Lucybespro It is a performances centric movie

Ceticultsot Beautiful, moving film.

FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Leofwine_draca THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES has gone down in history as one of the worst movie flops ever made and I'm inclined to agree. I have no interest in the material and I only watched this because De Palma directed; the director does his best to keep things interesting but unfortunately he can only do so much with the material and other than the opening tracking shot there's nothing very impressive here.The story is slow and long-winded and full of unpleasant characters. Bruce Willis is in it for name value but feels badly miscast in the role of the writer. Tom Hanks looks uncomfortable throughout and his character comes across as false and artificial. The less said about Melanie Griffith and her dreadful performance the better.The film just sort of drags on and on without ever achieving anything. I understand how it's supposed to be a satire of wealth and fame and the yuppie culture but the humour falls flat and the whole courtroom drama thing is dragged out to the degree that it becomes really boring. Other than the novelty of seeing Morgan Freeman in an against-type role this really is a pointless exercise.

jeff-41910 This will be a short review. I had not watched this movie for over 20 years. When I originally watched it I thought it was a fair to good comedy but way over the top. Watching it in 2016 it no longer seems way over the top but a movie grounded in today's reality.Network, The Hospital, and The Bonfire of the Vanities are all movies that are 25+ years old. Yet all 3 of them seemed over the top when they were released but now they all seem clairvoyant about what would become the reality of 2016.It is interesting how at times life ends up imitating art. One wonders what other movies will be seen as over the top today but in 20+ years clairvoyant...

SnoopyStyle Sherman McCoy (Tom Hanks) is a big time Wall Street trader and considers himself one of the Masters of the Universe. His wife Judy (Kim Cattrall) is angry with his cheating. He goes to pick up his mistress Maria Ruskin (Melanie Griffith) from JFK airport. They get lost in the Bronx. They get frightened by two black men and Maria drives over one of them. Drunken reporter Peter Fallow (Bruce Willis) writes up the hit-and-run. D.A. Abe Weiss (F. Murray Abraham) is facing re-election and needs a white man to convict. Judge Leonard White (Morgan Freeman) sees through it all. Jed Kramer (Saul Rubinek) is the assistant D.A. Reverend Bacon (John Hancock) is agitating.Tom Hanks is wrong. He's a boy scout. He's the every man. He's no Wall Street man. He's not Charlie Sheen and he's definitely not Michael Douglas. The movie works too hard to make him the good guy and it doesn't feel right. Brian De Palma does a lot of interesting camera moves. The start is an impressive tracking shot. There are the umbrellas. The sets and locations look terrific but it also feels fake. This should be grittier, darker and harder. Every character is a caricature. Lastly, the two black guys need to be more definitive. They should be bringing out their guns to rob them or be two younger kids looking to help them. It would make whatever the movie is trying to do that much sharper. With the central character being so wrong, it's hard to make this movie right.

rzajac In one sense, TBotV is "The Wolf of Wall Street", done right the first time.There's a manic unhingedness about Wolff's writing, and the scenario/writing in the movie courageously tries to capture that. It's a broad and multi-dimensioned exposition on the excesses of success. Huzzah for that!But translating it to the screen is also a juggling act--and other balls get dropped in this flick.By way of one example, I cringed during each and every one of the the courtroom scenes. While I applaud the film's effort to show the multifarious tentacles of the monster of excess, the writer(s) overstepped--or perhaps just misapplied the tone--when they attempt to show what it looks like when one of those tentacles slithers into a courtroom.Y'know, the more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that part of what niggles at me about TBotV is its nonstop cavalcade of exposition. These expositional freight trains, in general, tend to be tiring; film needs to "breathe" a little. It reminds me of what Wolff says about Chomsky in "Manufacturing Consent"; academics seize upon politics as an opportunity to act "like clergy". Well, TBotV sometimes comes off like a liturgical treatment of its subject matter. Perhaps Wolff didn't like Chomsky treading on his turf!Anyway, the film sometimes seems on the verge of drowning under the weight and viscosity of its own expressionism. But I still feel it's worth watching for how skillfully the actors acquit themselves to the task of hammering out that expressionism, as well as marveling at the dedication of the director to unstintingly wielding that hammer, and the courage of the producers for budgeting this off-kilter merry-go-'round.