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

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

Even though he kills kids on the subway while wearing clown makeup hours after being fired for bringing his gun to his clown gig.

The detectives have motive, placement at the scene, circumstantial evidence, yet just let the dude go about his business, politely letting him blow them off, not making an arrest or even holding for 48

It should not in any way be controversial to say that Black Panther is a bolder political work than Joker. As is Aquaman, for what it's worth. Not much, really, in the case of Aquaman...

why do you post so much about aquaman

Wants2smash

https://i.redd.it/f9j41lvcqmq31.png

why do you post so much about aquaman

I watched it a couple of days ago. It's a work that really sticks with you.

for a couple of days

Eh. The scene where a merman dives head first into a toilet will haunt my dreams for a long time.

thats trainspotting iirc

It's kinda Gravity's Rainbow, but the thing is that this guy has gills, so he is breathing piss.

the worst TOILET in Gotham

Wants2splash

the worst TOILET in Gotham

― just another country (snoball), Saturday, October 5, 2019 7:27 AM bookmarkflaglink

And we're back to Sweeney Todd

the weirdest stat about JOKER opening to a $90m+ weekend is that it’s broken Robert De Niro’s long-standing opening weekend record, held by SHARK TALE ($47m)

— David Sims (@davidlsims) October 5, 2019

saw this earlier, it was... okay, obvs its politics are all over the place but it looks pretty good and Phoenix is excellent. The "is it all in his head" stuff is kind of infuriating. It woefullly fails the Bechdel Test, of course.

The first instance of "is it in his head" is completely obvious immediately but that doesn't stop Phillips from his cloying reveal scene that explains it like you're an idiot.

He must have been a real joy on April Fool's Day growing up

Also Alfred Pennyworth is a dick in this

Wayne Manor has very bad security as well

yeah far too much "DO YOU SEE???", which is totally unnecessary and serves to undermine Phoenix's performance.

it had the positive effect of making me want to watch The King of Comedy again, so we'll be doing that this weekend

I cannot imagine wanting to see this shit a second time. It's Polanski's "Repulsion" levels of ugly and the last five minutes were overload for me.

But i didn't dislike it? Just didn't go in expecting any real philosophy which helped

must remember to set my concerns over bechdel criteria aside also before prepping for evaluation of this piece

Yeah, the 'it was in his head!' reveal was hilarious in how unnecessary but then after that we're never told what he does to Sophie, which is infuriating.

Worse than bad, this movie is baggy and boring and its problems are not interesting. Joaquin’s performance is incredible as expected but fuck me running this movie could’ve been so much better OR a disaster, which at least would’ve been entertaining. Dropping the gun in the children’s hospital was hilarious tho

it had the positive effect of making me want to watch The King of Comedy again, so we'll be doing that this weekend