I dare you to anticipate Joaquin Phoenix in Todd Phillips's JOKER (now with something that may or may not be a SPOILER)

blanchett as the ventriloquist's homicidal dummy scarface imo

Steve Buscemi as a variation on Killer Croc where he's just a regular human who kills people while wearing nothing but Crocs.

Or kills people with Crocs? In either case, it's Steve Buscemi and he's naked.

crocypath killers

By the end he’s a celebrity villain, sparking a violent uprising of people who copy the hair and makeup that previously made him a target for bullying. He’s also embraced his true identity as a dangerous, misunderstood outsider.

8 Mile did it better

guys keep it in the impeachment thread

The weirdest thing to me is that this is a major studio release. If this had been an indie release with all the Bat-IP extracted, nobody would've batted an eye at its existence.

if this had been an indie movie without the Bat-IP injected, Todd Phillips would not get the 200-million-dollar box office to which he and his scarves are rightfully entitled.

This is a good review.

Just saw this tonight.

Easily the most important movie ever made about how crazy the Joker is. You will not leave this movie thinking he’s just a normal guy. It’s a much-needed message in this day and age.

Good career move for Maron to be the normal one in the room.

Who did Maron play in this?

Unrelated (spoilers): there is a scene where Joker crawls into a refrigerator. That was very clever foreshadowing about Mister Freeze.

Also at the end when Thomas Wayne gets shot, that was an Easter egg about Batman, if you know his origin story from the comic strip

per WTF this week, most of Maron’s scene was cut bcz it was just him & DeNiro, so it got in the way of really delving into the psychological framework of Joker.

Would have loved to see both of those comedy legends riffing for hours, but the Joker’s journey from sad crazy party clown to sad crazy murder clown is too crucial to the story to interrupt.

5 stars to that 10daily review lol

Turns out Cuck is the apparent corrective:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/oct/04/cuck-review-rob-lambert-joker

Just saw this. Oy!

If anything proves Phoenix can carry any old ponderous and unoriginal bullshit on his very skinny, very talented shoulders. Some nice shots. Too much droney sad synth cello in the score. Samuel Morse should sue.

That “cuck” movie sounds even dumber than the joker

Just you wait 'til you see the Joker/Cuck crossover film(s)!

Its title will be Soy Boy.

Riddle Me this Beta-Man... can you stare down the conservative comedy that is... The Cucker!?!?!?

won't even need a cod piece.

Why would someone make that cuck movie? And why is it considered good just because it depicts a racist mass murderer in a bad light? What kind of a bar is that for cinematic achievement?

Sounds like 2 hours of bathing in misery. Why not justbread 8chan for that amount of time? PS the Guardian, hire me as a film critic and i can provide more takes like this

Google, or don't, the new movie from the human centipede dude, about women who get off on poverty and misery.

Do you not think it's a subject at least worthy of exploration, whether the film's any good or not? Or as a corrective/reaction to campy incel porn like Joker?

I don’t think there is anything left to say about the alt right trolls and the more extreme version of them, these shooters. They have a worldview that is entirely built on self pity and resentment. If you care only about yourself, sooner or later your mind will devour itself—this can happen to anyone. They’re fools.

I feel angry that such an “ideology” can find a foothold in my country, and that people are being murdered because of it.

xpost One might almost opt to call them...jokers.

And exhausted of it. These people all remind me of Trump because all they care about is their own injured sense of entitlement.

Lol yeah, they’re jokers for sure.

The Cuck movie doesn't sound like it has anything to do with Joker, though that's a decent hook for the review. It does sound like a modern equivalent to a late 70s Paul Schrader project, though. I'm kind of interested to see it.

I don’t think there is anything left to say about the alt right trolls and the more extreme version of them, these shooters. They have a worldview that is entirely built on self pity and resentment. If you care only about yourself, sooner or later your mind will devour itself—this can happen to anyone. They’re fools.

On the contrary, there's a lot left to explore. You should see the movie Standoff at Sparrow Creek.

Ok just read the synopsis of that one. It sounds pretty good.

I have no interest in seeing Cuck but I do take issue with the notion that its lack of moral ambiguity makes it a better film than The Joker, which I have no interest in seeing either.

Yeah i thought that was dumb and it was what annoyed me about the review. Making a bad guy look bad shouldn’t be grounds for praise.

not a fan of brody but if you want scathing, he's got scathing
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/joker-is-a-viewing-experience-of-rare-numbing-emptiness

Not arguing that Cuck or Joker are good or even valuable to the discourse around MRA/incels/alt-right types, I haven’t seen them and I doubt I will gather the patience. But there should be space in cinema for storytelling around these types of characters or general phenomena, and sometimes it may mean bad films.

https://kotaku.com/the-joker-sucks-1838777579

xpost Not a fan of Brody, generally, and indeed I found that review as tough to parse as he is obviously incensed.

I found it very easy to parse.

Unless I am reading him completely incorrectly, I guess

I thought his biggest complaint was that the film's fictional world fictionalizes and therefore insults the real world it draws from and reflects too much? And that the movie also insults ... Black Panther?

well thats one good mark so

fictional world fictionalizes and therefore insults the real world it draws from and reflects too much?

Phillips attempts to steal valor draw gravitas from real life events without actually achieving resonance, or examining (or understanding, or caring) how those events effected people and the real world. This seems a plausible criticism of Phillips based on prior work and statements.

I liked that brody review. He’s great—even when his opinions are off the wall, which they’re not here.

he's doing some reaching

it's bad that the joker gets beaten up by POC youth in this movie because this is an allusion to the crime the central park five were wrongly convicted of

it's bad that the joker pulls a gun on some white guys on a train in this movie because this is whitewashing a guy pulling a gun on some POC on a train

The black panther part is weird.

I think it is probably true that Philips is evoking the texture and mood of new york in the 80s—a period that still looms large in everyone’s minds here, even people who weren’t there for it—without saying anything meaningful about it. So its oppoetunistic as a period piece.

But the crucial parody, the crucial mockery, the work of which “Joker” comes off as a callously commercial imitation, is “Black Panther”—a comic-book-based movie that infuses its framework with rigorously conceived and boldly assertive political visions to go with its elaborate world-building.

I don't think you need to have seen Joker to be certain this is batshit crazy

Yeah but it’s in a tradition of highly idiosyncratic New Yorker film critics.

The worst part of the movie is you can tell Phillips thinks he's saying something. But he uses the Reagan-mentally ill trope as a cheap device - as a result of going off of his meds and losing his therapy, he becomes a cause celebre in Gotham, gets an infamous TV appearance, becomes the unwitting face of movement.

He's not like other real life victims who wound up homeless and abused, he just gets to be a reckless criminal, only not apprehended due to the Keystone Kops of Gotham