dazed
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Post by dazed on Oct 9, 2019 12:55:36 GMT
Sitting at #9 on IMDb top 250 Honestly, I’m not surprised. Everyone I know has loved it/had mostly good things to say. This board is much more divisive (hell, it even seems like quite a bit more hated it than liked it) than the general public is.
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Post by RiverleavesElmius on Oct 9, 2019 21:31:57 GMT
Joaquin is fucking awful in the movie btw. The worst performance of his career. You were born for the IGNORE button!!
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eliuson
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Post by eliuson on Oct 10, 2019 3:57:03 GMT
Arthur´s arc towards becoming the Joker is the arc towards realizing the world doesn´t have to be so miserable if you learn to laugh at your own misery.
The greatest quality of the movie is how it turns comedy into a device of absurdity. Both through bizarre and violent situations and the way it deals with the backdrop of mental health.
The film is not exactly a comedy, but it does propose ambiguous extreme situations in which the viewer´s laughter turns out to be a possible escape. It is as if he integrates some of the character´s own disturbance into his narrative. Laughter is a kind of pathology (the disease that makes the protagonist laugh)and is not directly linked to a funny situation, but to an extreme and unexpected resolution.
As Robert de Niro´s character says, "I´m waiting for the punchline". It is a work that delays this punchline in general, which works with its irony through grotesque and self-deprecating relationships as a response to this meaninglesness that culminates in the meaninglessness of existence in general. The character himself says he feels like he ever existed.
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Lubezki
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Post by Lubezki on Oct 10, 2019 5:05:02 GMT
Bonafide masterpiece.
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Post by DanQuixote on Oct 11, 2019 0:26:16 GMT
I wish Phillips would have more confidence in his audience. We don’t need the characters to relay the movies’ themes to us at every opportunity, we do not need to be shown the true nature of the relationship between Arthur and the Zazie Beetz character and we don’t need the Batman origin story thrown into there for good measure.
There is an interesting film in there somewhere. At the hands of a more capable director, I think it could’ve been quite special. What we have is quite a shallow film that thinks it’s way deeper than it actually is. It tries to delve into themes such as class disparity, the pain of mental illness and the general brutal indifference of society, but it only ends up skimming the surface. This is most evident in the final scene between Arthur and his social worker. She informs him that funding for the program has been cut, and she will no longer be seeing him. This opens the opportunity for a very interesting look into the indifference and failure of our institutions in their treatment of people of lower social classes and the mentally ill, instead the film plays this scene as an indictment on the Social Worker for not listening to him and not taking the time to understand him, thereby justifying his hatred and his violence.
It’s not without its pleasures. It looks and sounds amazing. The score by Hildur Guðnadóttir is wonderful and Joaquin Phoenix is astonishing as ever.
The treatment of the little person character in this film is absolutely horrendous. It seems he was only cast for an absolutely disturbing gag.
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The-Havok
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Doing pretty good so far
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Post by The-Havok on Oct 11, 2019 19:09:30 GMT
I wish Phillips would have more confidence in his audience. We don’t need the characters to relay the movies’ themes to us at every opportunity, we do not need to be shown the true nature of the relationship between Arthur and the Zazie Beetz character and we don’t need the Batman origin story thrown into there for good measure. There is an interesting film in there somewhere. At the hands of a more capable director, I think it could’ve been quite special. What we have is quite a shallow film that thinks it’s way deeper than it actually is. It tries to delve into themes such as class disparity, the pain of mental illness and the general brutal indifference of society, but it only ends up skimming the surface. This is most evident in the final scene between Arthur and his social worker. She informs him that funding for the program has been cut, and she will no longer be seeing him. This opens the opportunity for a very interesting look into the indifference and failure of our institutions in their treatment of people of lower social classes and the mentally ill, instead the film plays this scene as an indictment on the Social Worker for not listening to him and not taking the time to understand him, thereby justifying his hatred and his violence. It’s not without its pleasures. It looks and sounds amazing. The score by Hildur Guðnadóttir is wonderful and Joaquin Phoenix is astonishing as ever. The treatment of the little person character in this film is absolutely horrendous. It seems he was only cast for an absolutely disturbing gag. He probably doesn't even care given the popularity of the role that would've been given to him
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Post by bob-coppola on Oct 11, 2019 20:23:52 GMT
Saw it for the second time yesterday. It's not a masterpiece, but it's quite good. After reading David Ehrlich's piece on it, I realized how much - for better or worse - it reminds me of Fight Club. It gets mental illness and the isolation that comes with it mostly right, but it lacks Fincher's/Palahniuk's bite when it comes to the social clash of classes commentary. I loved how Arthur Fleck was delevoped, it was an intimate and scary character study. I liked that it managed to show how mentally fragile that character without leaning on the incel sentiment. I was really worried that it'd be a mysoginistic piece of male-rage celebration. It is a male-rage celebration, but I relieved that women didn't get the worst of it - of the two women who die, one wasn't due to its femaleness, and the other was implied to happen off-screen and wasn't painted as the villain for rejecting the Joker . I felt really sorry for Arthur, he was a pitiful person. If he should've been portrayed more assertively as a villain is a whole other conversation. My problem was how surface-level was the depiction of the class clash and its repercutions into Arthur's life. I kept thinking about Durkheim's Suicide, in which he argues that suicide and depression are signs of society's failure as a whole - we weren't supposed to let a peer fall into madness like this, we were designed to act better as a community (I'm being very simplistic and trying to reduce a whole book into one sentence, but that's pretty much the point). Thing is: Joker's social commentary was written by someone who probably never read anything of social science, so all it has to say about the larger picture is "poor people suffer because the rich think they're clowns". It doesn't make the movie bad, but it's a very shallow way of approaching something that's integral to the movie's point. Compare it to Fight Club, a movie that might not be the deepest in film history, but makes an assertive and specific point that capitalism as a monetary and social way living life has ruined relationships because it isolates people via consumerism. Joker misses the chance to make a statement that actually says something about society, about how for example an ultra money-driven society is more likely to treat poorly its mentally ills because they're outsiders that will not "pay" for their being in the city, or how the lack of jobs and overall opportunity for the working class will more likely make some of them aggresive or lead into crime. There are so many specific ways to speak the Joker into politics (which is what the movie tries to do in so many moments), but it opts to just create a Occupy Wall Street by the way of Incels "social movement". Despite my huge ranting, I thought it was a very good movie and rate it 8/10 for being well-crafted, for dealing well with Arthur's state of mind and for Phoenix's incrible performance. It's a must-see piece of pop cinema.
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Post by Joaquim on Oct 12, 2019 4:14:56 GMT
While watching the scene where he can't hold his laughter while doing his stand-up routine, couldn't help but think Arthur Fleck is literally Dee Reynolds
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Post by alexanderblanchett on Oct 13, 2019 0:05:39 GMT
What an awesome experience and a very old fashioned kind of film. Films like they are only rarely done these days. Also it works perfectly as an homage to Martin Scorsese. It is not your typical kind of comic book adaption and neither does it intend to be. No its a bleak psychological thriller that shows the development of a mentally disturbed person into a dangerous psychopath. Joaquin Phoenix is brilliant in the leading role and delivers one of his finest performances. He is in line with Heath Ledger when it comes to the most perfect portrayal of that character and it Is unlike anything he has done before. Fantastic development and a truly scary and bothering performance. It screams Oscar. Robert De Niro was the most perfect casting coup for the film. He was also very decent, especially in his last confrontation with Phoenix Joker. Zazie Beetz and Frances Conroy give great support. The atmosphere is stunning and the directional effort of Todd Philips is absolutely outstanding. He perfectly crafted the story as a writer and even more unexpectactly and unique executed it. Great dark cinematography and a very bleak score sum it up to a masterpiece about a very dark and disturbed soul. Critizing the film that it symphathises with its hero? Well I did not feel it... but the film does give a great criticism about society in general and this is something that really worked for me rather than idolizing the lead protagonist.
Nominations for:
Best Picture Best Director: Todd Phillips Best Actor in a Leading Role: Joaquin Phoenix* Best Actress in a Supporting Role: Frances Conroy Best Adapted Screenplay * Best Editing Best Cinematography Best Score Best Make Up Best Ensemble
Rating: 9/10
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Post by Ryan_MYeah on Oct 13, 2019 1:54:52 GMT
I wasn’t sure how to feel about this movie. I’m not sure Todd Phillips was either. I’ll probably write a longer take on this, but I really don’t know how to feel about the movie making Joker sympathetic. The entire point of Joker is that he’s not a sympathetic character. He’s the very embodiment of chaos without reason. Conceptually speaking, he’s not a complex character, but it’s the spirit of anarchy that he embodies that make him such a great character.
Yes, you can make the argument that it doesn’t “sympathize” with him, but merely “empathizes” with them, but with how often it goes on about society mistreating people with mental illness, and how often Arthur is subjected to cruelty, it did feel like it was expecting us to root for him. It walks a shaky line between writing him as a tragic figure, and as a full on villain.
Phoenix gives it his all, and is practically hoisting the movie on his shoulders at points, but there is a point where the movie starts to lose itself, and fall into a certain nihilism.
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Post by countjohn on Oct 13, 2019 4:24:33 GMT
A lot of the criticisms of this are just stupid. This does not in any way justify the Joker's actions and I find it highly unlikely that a writer is going to use an insane clown as a vehicle for his own opinions. I'm not surprised because everyone is so banal and literal nowdays, but it's still annoying. I'm assuming there's a bunch of internet critics bent out of shape about the "you get what you fucking deserve" line supposedly being a justification of mass shooters or whatever. But The Joker says it. Of course he feels that way. That's why he shot him. Everything a character says isn't intended to be the writer's actual opinions being preached to the audience. With that out of the way, the movie was good. Phoenix is not as good as Ledger but is still very good and deserves a nod. Wouldn't mind a BP nomination either, I expect it to be somewhere in my top ten at the end of the year. De Niro is also good and I wouldn't mind a nod for him either but of course he also has The Irishman coming up. Probably my second favorite Batman related thing behind TDK. It really wears its influences on its sleeve (of course Taxi Driver and then Network with the media commentary and of course the shot of all the TVs at the end) and isn't as good as them but it still works. My expectations weren't even that high, I didn't think you could center a film around the Joker, but I'm glad to be wrong. I think a lot of the negative critic reviews are from people who decided they wouldn't like it in advance and are afraid people will think they're a sociopath or something if they give it a good review. Heard it was getting much better reviews in Europe which might tell you something. 8/10Spoilerific thoughts that really get into the meat of the movie-
Batman really looms large over the movie. As others have speculated, his showing up in the Pattison Batman would work perfect with it being set in the 80's. The movie really draws the parallel between the Joker and Batman. The reason some people might find him killing the guys on the subway entertaining is the same reason people like Batman, Batman just doesn't take it as far. Then there's the parallel with the radio broadcast criticizing Joker for attacking people behind a mask.
One of the keys here is that The Joker is essentially serving as an unreliable narrator. Would have been better if they hadn't spelled it out so much, but since it's a popular IP they have to make it idiot proof I guess. I think there's a lot in the movie you can take as just being the Joker's imagination. I think in the aforementioned subway scene he could have just shot random guys and imagined a situation similar to his getting beat up earlier in the movie to let off steam, there's all kinds of stuff like that.
Another thing is that I'm not sure the Joker is as insane in this as he lets on. When the cop asks if the laughing is part of his act he says "what do you think?" and then does a slapstick gag where he bumps into the door. I don't think the movie is trying to write him off as just a mentally ill guy who needs help. He knows the consequences of his actions and does them anyway because he's evil.
He's a bad person from the get-go. Everyone viewing this as "society made him do it" excuse making for mass shooters isn't paying attention. Going back to the "you get what you fucking deserve line" the Joker obviously means that they really deserve it, but you can look at it as "deserving" in the sense of being a logical outgrowth, not morally deserving something. That's not any kind of defense for the things those people do, but an indictment of everyone feigning shock when it's a natural outgrowth of things being the way they are.
Nice use of Modern Times for absolutely no reason, though. I think the point that the Wayne's and all the rich people are enjoying laughing at the movie but oblivious to the social commentary which is an indictment of people like them.
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Post by TerryMontana on Oct 13, 2019 11:32:20 GMT
Nominations for: Best Picture Best Director: Todd Phillips Best Actor in a Leading Role: Joaquin Phoenix* Best Actress in a Supporting Role: Frances Conroy Best Adapted Screenplay *Best Editing Best Cinematography Best Score Best Make Up Best Ensemble Sorry if I'm missing something here but, isn't that considered an original screenplay??
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Post by bob-coppola on Oct 13, 2019 12:51:35 GMT
Nominations for: Best Picture Best Director: Todd Phillips Best Actor in a Leading Role: Joaquin Phoenix* Best Actress in a Supporting Role: Frances Conroy Best Adapted Screenplay *Best Editing Best Cinematography Best Score Best Make Up Best Ensemble Sorry if I'm missing something here but, isn't that considered an original screenplay?? It uses characters/settings from previously existing IP, therefore it'd be considered adapted by AMPAS.
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Post by TerryMontana on Oct 13, 2019 12:55:19 GMT
Sorry if I'm missing something here but, isn't that considered an original screenplay?? It uses characters/settings from previously existing IP, therefore it'd be considered adapted by AMPAS. Ok, I wouldn't know that...
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Post by Pittsnogle_Goggins on Oct 13, 2019 14:42:03 GMT
It is a male-rage celebration, but I relieved that women didn't get the worst of it - of the two women who die, one wasn't due to its femaleness, and the other was implied to happen off-screen and wasn't painted as the villain for rejecting the Joker . Wait, are you saying that the film implied that Zazie Beetz’s character was killed?
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Post by Joaquim on Oct 13, 2019 14:54:07 GMT
It is a male-rage celebration, but I relieved that women didn't get the worst of it - of the two women who die, one wasn't due to its femaleness, and the other was implied to happen off-screen and wasn't painted as the villain for rejecting the Joker . Wait, are you saying that the film implied that Zazie Beetz’s character was killed? I would assume it was the therapist in Arkham at the end. Note Joker's bloody footsteps as he walks out of her office.
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Post by Joaquim on Oct 13, 2019 14:55:21 GMT
Can we just appreciate the fact that he actually said society?
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Post by TerryMontana on Oct 13, 2019 15:09:33 GMT
It is a male-rage celebration, but I relieved that women didn't get the worst of it - of the two women who die, one wasn't due to its femaleness, and the other was implied to happen off-screen and wasn't painted as the villain for rejecting the Joker . Wait, are you saying that the film implied that Zazie Beetz’s character was killed? The way I see it, it was implied both the therapist and Beetz were killed
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Post by bob-coppola on Oct 13, 2019 15:47:19 GMT
Joaquim Pittsnogle_Goggins TerryMontanaOk, so it might be three dead women, I'd forgotten about the therapist. But yeah, I understood that Zazie Beets was killed after Arthur's visit. The sudden cut to Arthur alone in his apartment while you can clearly see the lights and hear the sirens of a police car through the window.
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Post by Pittsnogle_Goggins on Oct 13, 2019 16:32:17 GMT
Joaquim Pittsnogle_Goggins TerryMontana Ok, so it might be three dead women, I'd forgotten about the therapist. But yeah, I understood that Zazie Beets was killed after Arthur's visit. The sudden cut to Arthur alone in his apartment while you can clearly see the lights and hear the sirens of a police car through the window. Interesting, that wasn’t my take I came away with. Will pay attention more in depth to that scene on rewatch.
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Post by PromNightCarrie on Oct 13, 2019 19:34:12 GMT
I really want to see this film, but I'm unwell at the moment, so will probably stream it when it's released on video. I keep reading that this movie could be triggering for certain people. Is there any credence to that?
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Post by mikediastavrone96 on Oct 13, 2019 19:42:17 GMT
I really want to see this film, but I'm unwell at the moment, so will probably stream it when it's released on video. I keep reading that this movie could be triggering for certain people. Is there any credence to that? There's bullying and mention of child abuse, but honestly don't think it'd be any more triggering than any other film that mentions such things.
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Post by ibbi on Oct 13, 2019 20:26:28 GMT
A lot of the criticisms of this are just stupid. This does not in any way justify the Joker's actions and I find it highly unlikely that a writer is going to use an insane clown as a vehicle for his own opinions. I'm not surprised because everyone is so banal and literal nowdays, but it's still annoying.
I think you're giving the writer(s) an incredible amount of credit. Have you not watched his other movies, have you not listened to him talk in the promotion for this movie? He is comically petulant. On the Waterfront was a similar work of directorial self-defence, and this is totally the same kind of thing. It's Taxi Driver with all the characters redrawn in black and white, King of Comedy without the mournful remove from the central character. This film is in LOVE with its subject, just look at the way it frames and shoots him. I don't know that this is a major issue for me anyway, more so the juvenile simplicity with which it throws all these ideas up on the screen and gets next to nothing out of them. It reminded me a little of like... Killing Me Softly, Guadagnino's Suspiria, movies that garland their movie with all these specific little details that are supposed to make them deep or complex, but nothing they do other than paying this simplistic lip service builds on that. I think Lawrence Sher and Joaquin Phoenix are both doing phenomenal work, and while Hildur the Hottie's work may be Glass-ish in its brazen brashness, it's gorgeous too, but Todd Phillips... Man, what a clown. He doesn't like comic book movies but he's told a story that's whittled societal issues down to their most banal and simplified. What could be more 'comic book' (to use the term in its modern derogatory way, apologies to Alan Moore) than that?
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Post by stephen on Oct 13, 2019 20:31:14 GMT
I really want to see this film, but I'm unwell at the moment, so will probably stream it when it's released on video. I keep reading that this movie could be triggering for certain people. Is there any credence to that? No more than your average dark arthouse film. It's just because it's open to mainstream audiences that it's getting magnified.
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erickeitel
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The beauty of life is in small details, not in big events.
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Post by erickeitel on Oct 13, 2019 22:19:37 GMT
Nice use of Modern Times for absolutely no reason, though. I think the point that the Wayne's and all the rich people are enjoying laughing at the movie but oblivious to the social commentary which is an indictment of people like them. The same would be true of Todd Phillips, then. I wish a rich man like him would have more a perspective about his role in Joker's society.
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