The Great Gatsby

This is the fourth screen version of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, with Leonardo DiCaprio in the title role, and the production is not insipid, let's give it that. As an exercise in absurdist excess, it means to dramatize the excesses of the Jazz Age. But that's a banality by now, and it's as far as Luhrmann goes in making sense of the book. The film's only governing principle is maximalism - everything has been made as big as possible.