Seems like every major showing of Joker in the U.S. has armed guards, and reportedly undercover cops are going to various showings. Some large theaters are refusing to show the film altogether. Liberal journalists and movie critics are calling it a nihilistic, shallow nightmare of a film that will trigger incels and make them kill people (except for the few ones that think it's a masterpiece), but, again, the audience is wholly embracing it, and it blew away Venom's record for the best opening night for a film in October, and it looks set to achieve the same with the opening weekend record.
Haven't heard about any attempted shootings, but a portion of the press is patting themselves on the back for sounding the alarm because, in some NY showing of the movie, a creepy dude that was spitting on people had to be taken out.
@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy At the big ones. They're apparently searching bags and purses at these opening weekend showings from what I've heard as well. I'll update if I have an exceptional experience getting into the film later today.
Yeah, Venom did really well. As did Suicide Squad. Popularity and quality often don't go together.
Speaking of poorly executed Marvel property movies, I rented X-Men: Dark Phoenix. I figured for $2, it was worth taking a chance.
Well, I fell asleep halfway through and didn’t feel the need to restart it after I woke up. Symbolically lighting my 2 dollar investment on fire, I returned the movie, wishing I had the money back for a bag of M&M’s instead.
Since I never saw the ending, I don’t really know if I can fully pass judgment, but the fact that I didn’t have the desire to sink another hour into it is telling.
It’s too bad, because I liked some things about the First Class crew. James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender have previously been good as Professor X and Magneto; and I usually like J. Lawrence in most of her roles. But even these top shelf actors really underperformed. I didn’t like the portrayal of any of the other characters either, such as Beast, Cyclops, or Storm. But above all, Sophie Turner just didn’t have the acting prowess to carry the movie in the central role of Jean Gray. Her performance was really flat. Of course, the fact that I didn’t care much about the characters and their plight probably has more to do with the poor script and direction of the film. I can’t put my finger on it, but it was not enjoyable, despite some pretty decent special effects and artistic design.
I don’t know how they are going to try to salvage the X-men IP and successfully integrate it into the MCU, but this is not a good sign. I wonder if they are going to reboot the characters all again, or use the same actors. Just please no Sophie Turner, please.
Sorry for the double post, but I just had to share this.
I did a quick internet search out of curiosity to see if my Dark Phoenix criticism was too harsh. This is my favorite quote I found:
Kurt Loder of Reason magazine wrote, "There are several things wrong with Dark Phoenix. I'm tempted to say everything is wrong with it, except that the picture is largely in focus and the credits appear to be correctly spelled. Other than that, though..."
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
Not directly related to the movie, but my theater thankfully was very light on police presence. No searching you before you went in the theater. Some people I know in other states weren't so lucky. I imagine location was important in my case.
Central performance was great, but I think everyone expected that going in. With that said, it wasn't great AS a Joker performance. Arthur Fleck isn't the Joker so much as he is a beaten-down maniac in clown makeup. Which is no surprise, as the director clearly had no interest in the comic book origins of the concept.
The movie is essentially a vehicle for that central performance. Almost every single frame of the movie is focused on Fleck in some way. It's practically a one-man show.
I'm a bit mixed on the movie around Joaquin Phoenix, though. Despite the movie's almost comical insistence on being misery porn for the first half, I don't think the director really had the chops to pull off a film that evoked intense negative emotions or a sense of gravitas. This is certainly Gotham at its slimiest, but this is so exaggerated that it feels more cartoonish than anything. If any of you have seen the TV show Gotham, it reminds me a lot of that. His history with comedy films kind of comes through in a lot of scenes, too, and I think this would have been more suited as a dark comedy.
The cinematography was great. Despite the objectively gross nature of the city (there's trash EVERYWHERE thanks to a series of strikes that have paralyzed the city's services), there's a dark, almost surreal beauty to it. It's a gorgeous looking movie.
This narrative about the film being incel bait is disingenuous. The film is concerned with the socially demoralizing effects of late stage capitalism and social/economic inequality, and depicts violence being committed against what might be termed 'cultural elites,' which is presumably why American corporate media is so intent on making it seem "irresponsible" and "dangerous." Anything that questions the basic morality of the oligarchic status quo in this country is probably going to get attacked in this same way. I also wouldn't say that the film celebrates his turn toward violence, considering its primarily spurred by forces beyond his control as opposed to a willful choice to strike back at society.
With that said, I do think the film could have been so much more subversive and interesting than it was. Despite the film's (arguably undeserved) reputation, the film frequently pulls its punches with anything that doesn't directly relate to the misery porn that is the main character's life.
Good movie, but the controversy that sprung up around it says a LOT more about the current state of American society than it does this film's willingness to be transgressive or shocking.
@RogerRoger It's really not that bad. There's only one scene in the film I'd characterize as being "brutal," and, while it is quite visceral and horrible, most of what you see happens just off-screen or is obscured by the actors' bodies. Fleck does get the snot beaten out of him a lot by various residents of this evil city, but there's not a lot of blood involved, and I guess they don't injure him too seriously, because he apparently survives them easily enough.
Otherwise, a few people get realistically shot, and someone gets shot in the head in the film's climax, which throws them back in their seat.
Maybe I'm just desensitized, but it didn't seem overly violent to me. I mean, there definitely IS violence, but it's not exploitation film level violence or anything. One ought to have gone into the film expecting people to get shot and beaten up in the first place. Nothing in it was as violent as the climax of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood..., for sure.
You saw that one really violent trailer for TLOU Part II, right? That trailer was way more violent and hard to watch, imo, than anything in Joker.
What really stuck out to me is the paternalistic moralism that seems to be infecting the Academy. People keep saying there's no "message," but the film clearly deals with specific themes; it just doesn't function as propaganda. They also talk about social responsibility, as if they should be recommending films they think people ought to be watching for ideological reasons instead of honoring excellent cinema and allowing audiences to sort out their own feelings about what messages the films are sending out.
I was kinda expecting close-up, sustained torture and gore based on the impressions some reviews had given; that would've really put me off, as I can kinda only deal with one uncomfortable thing at a time and am already bracing myself for the "misery porn" elements (and no, whilst I did see the latest trailer for The Last of Us, Part II during its State of Play, I never watched the first E3 one specifically because people said it was brutal).
Oh, yeah, no, nothing like that. No torture. Very little of anything is close-up. And, again, while it's quite violent in spots, I wouldn't characterize it as gory at all.
Honestly, the hardest parts of the movie for me to watch were when Arthur Fleck tried to come out of his shell a bit and it wouldn't... go well. When he breaks bad later in the film, it's honestly a bit of a relief, because you don't have to worry about seeing Joaquin Phoenix look like a wounded puppy quite as much as before.
Those quotes from Academy members betray a lot of what Hollywood has become of late, as well as the divided state of America at the moment. Awards ceremonies are now as much political platforms as they are genuine appreciation of the arts, and the results of that are worrying. As you say, it's a sad state of affairs when the only pieces of art that are deemed to "mean something" are the ones that go "Look at us, we mean something!" as though everybody walking out of a cinema immediately takes to Twitter and complains that the film they just watched didn't tell them what to think. I reckon I'd much rather just be asked a question and left alone to answer it for myself.
You could call us the... Divided States of America. Badum-tish!
But, yeah, I've noticed the majority of bad press this film is getting is American in origin. Foreign critics seem to be able to appreciate the film on its own terms, whereas our own people can't view it through anything other than a pure Culture War lens. It's pretty bad when a good half or so of the reviews I read mentioned President Trump at some point or another, when the film isn't even set in a contemporary American social context. Films have also gotten increasingly politicized reactions over here through the years, with stuff like Joker, Rambo: Last Blood, Ghostbusters 2016, Captain Marvel, The Last Jedi, etc. polarizing audiences along ideological lines. And this is all very symptomatic of a society that is deeply dysfunctional, one that is edging toward the point where internal strife becomes the norm.
@Ralizah It's even creeping into reviews of video games on some sites. I recall Far Cry 5 I believe got criticised for not being political enough and not having the so called balls to be anti-Trump. Or something along those lines.
Life is more fun when you help people succeed, instead of wishing them to fail.
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.
I'll see Joker at some point - it is very interesting to see the established entertainment (and wider) media try so hard to insist that the film is dangerous - or even just not very good.
The gulf between what a lot of media sources say is all right and good and what audiences (informed fans or not) actually go out and enjoy is growing increasingly wider. Every time I think we've reached 'peak woke' - they do go and prove me wrong.
PSN: KALofKRYPTON (so you can see how often I don't play anything!)
Twitter: @KALofKRYPTON (at your own risk, I don't care if you're offended)
"Fate: Protects fools, little children, and ships named Enterprise." - Cmdr William T. Riker
@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Here's a big one this year that doesn't appear to have any politics behind it - Godzilla: King of the Monsters. Audiences enjoyed it for the spectacular, beautiful, dumb kaiju film that it was, but reviewers apparently weren't satisfied with the story and characters and couldn't appreciate the film on its own merits.
And yeah, Ghostbusters 2016 was a spectacularly bad film. And the funny thing is that a lot of critics who were carrying water for it have since admitted that it's a bad film. I remember a piece where one critic even basically said: "It wasn't a good film, but because of where the culture was at the time, I couldn't admit that."
@RogerRoger lol After the 2016 election, there was a period where you could tell all of the big liberal Hollywood writers were processing their grief, because there were storylines and references to the president and the election everywhere (references even ended up in one of my Danganronpa games!). The American Horror Story that next year was nakedly ABOUT some alt-right sociopath trying to upend the social order after the election, for example; the ending was practically 2016 fanfiction, and involved the main character, as a stand-in for Hillary, shooting the Trump-ish alt-right dude on-stage after making a "nasty woman" quip.
But, yeah, I'm shutting up now. American media is 100% Trump, 100% of the time. I'm not infecting this place with that mind-virus, too.
It's a pity how far the Wolfenstein reboot series seems to have fallen. The New Order was a legitimately fun game. But the games just seem to keep getting worse, with the most recent, multiplayer-focused entry getting almost universally panned.
@LN78 Yeah, that's the sense I got, too: Joker's deconstruction of late-stage capitalism made the corporate-funded media nervous, so they're attempting to make the discussion about incels and white terrorism.
@RogerRoger Are you telling me that you don't need the big, strong critics to bravely shield you from bigotry by propping up a bad film as an act of progressive activism?
The dumb thing is that, for all the "support women" energy they put into it, the film was directed by a dude known for directing gross-out comedies. And, in that light, the real villains come to light: the idiotic executives who thought assigning a guy who specializes in sex comedies to direct a big-budget family-focused comedy was ever going to end in anything but disaster. And that's entirely on them and the director. I'm not a huge fan of the cast of that film, but you could absolutely make a decent Ghostbusters reboot with that same cast. Just... give them a good script. Actually respect the tone of the source material. Give Leslie Jones something to do other than yelling like a maniac (not sure when it became progressive to write a character that leans so heavily into the loud black woman stereotype).
@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy It's telling that they advertised the previous American Godzilla film with Bryan Cranston front and center. Absolutely false advertising, but imagine a real "honest trailer" for that film instead. 90% of it would be that generic military dude, and nobody would have seen the film.
If you ever get the opportunity, you should at least see the original 1954 Gojira (not the American localization that added in American characters who had no business being there) and 2016's Shin Gojira, which was directed by Hideaki Anno, of Shinseiki Evangelion fame.
I do hope Godzilla vs. Kong turns out well, because Skull Island and King of the Monsters were both very fun American kaiju films. Finding that out about the director doesn't fill me with hope, though.
@RogerRoger Oh man, what a time capsule that reference was! I haven't even thought about that film since before graduating High School.
I actually liked the movie. But I'll admit Gyllenhaal trying to be a cowboy, with the mustache and the phony accent, always came off as a bit ridiculous, from what I remember.
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Joker is good. Worth a watch and obvious that the critical response is predictably sensationalised.
The leap from watching this (or any) film to going on to try and emulate it is one is one of deliberate malice or the sort of mental imbalance that requires very little spark to get going.
At worst, there is one passage of dialogue that could be considered inflammatory( Joker's rant before he shoots Murray ) but that is delivered to a character who hasn't been particularly antagonistic and in a way that doesn't inspire sympathy.
The running 'eat the rich' theme is nothing new either, so for the generally rich(er) entertainment media/sjw crowd to have such an issue with it is perfectly telling.
I've seen it said that this is the best portrayal of the character; It is a fine film, and Phoenix will undoubtedly take home awards, but I couldn't disagree more. A brilliant take for sure, but proto-Joker isn't quite The Joker.
PSN: KALofKRYPTON (so you can see how often I don't play anything!)
Twitter: @KALofKRYPTON (at your own risk, I don't care if you're offended)
"Fate: Protects fools, little children, and ships named Enterprise." - Cmdr William T. Riker
Groundhog Day, just saw that for my first time on TV. It's about a man who keeps waking up to the same day over and over again. Good film, I rather enjoyed it.
@KALofKRYPTON I almost felt the same with 1922 on Netflix, but managed to stick it out till the end!
Think the last time I gave up watching a film before the end was Nymphomaniac. I didn't even make to to the second disc!
Life is more fun when you help people succeed, instead of wishing them to fail.
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.
Anybody watched Parasite (Korean movie)? It's getting rave reviews. I'm a big fan of the main actor Song Kang-ho so I'm hoping it'll be on Netflix eventually.
Alien (Blu-Ray) - Although I've seen bits & pieces of it in the past, this is the first time I've fully watched this sci-fi classic.
Pros:
It's a marvel in practical effects work. I mean, sure there were times when something showed it's age, but man was everything meticulously put together for the most part. The eggs & facehugger in particular gave me a believably squeamish reaction.
Tense & moody atmosphere that made it a perfect evening watch, with a genuine narrative twist or two. I never expected Ash would be an android.
Cons:
A small complaint in the grand scheme of things, but I didn't care for the incessant strobe light effect during the climax.
I can definitely see why this is a classic. It certainly holds up.
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