And just to make things worse, he suffers from a Pseudobulbar affect, which results in uncontrollable episodes of hysterical laughter (he carries a laminated card that he hands out to apathetic strangers who look at him askance, a ritual that would make anyone feel sorry for themselves). He’s one of the downtrodden - one of God’s unfortunate creatures. Emaciated and rippling at the same time, Arthur looks like a werewolf who got interrupted mid-transformation (which might explain his stringy mop of wet black hair).
Living in the margins of an early ’80s Gotham City that was rotting long before the garbage workers started their ongoing strike, the Pagliacci-esque Arthur is first introduced as he stares into a mirror and paints on the makeup that he’s forced to wear for his miserable day job even in a room full of self-loathing clowns, this guy still feels like a special kind of sad. If Freddie Quell and Theodore Twombly stepped into the teleportation machine from “The Fly,” Arthur Fleck is who they would mutate into. It’s nothing less (and nothing more) than an agent of unbridled chaos.Īnd we haven’t even gotten to Joaquin Phoenix yet, whose hypnotic and inimitable performance would feel completely new if it didn’t borrow so much from his past work. Phillips, whose cinematic legacy was previously defined by the “Hangover” trilogy and that scene in “Road Trip” where he cast himself as a random creep who sucks on Amy Smart’s toes, has made a film that is somehow all of these things at once: It’s a visionary, twisted, paradigm-shifting tour de force and a bar-lowering mess of moral incoherence. It’s also a movie about the dehumanizing effects of a capitalistic system that greases the economic ladder, blurring the line between private wealth and personal worth until life itself loses its absolute value. “Joker” is a movie about a homicidal narcissist who feels entitled to the world’s attention - a man who’d rather kill for a good laugh than allow the world to treat him like its punchline.
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New Movies: Release Calendar for April 22, Plus Where to Watch the Latest Films The next “Lost in Translation” will be about Black Widow and Howard Stark spending a weekend together at a Sokovia hotel the next “Carol” will be an achingly beautiful period drama about young Valkyrie falling in love with a blonde woman she meets in an Asgardian department store.
“Joker” is the human-sized and adult-oriented comic book movie that Marvel critics have been clamoring for - there’s no action, no spandex, no obvious visual effects, and the whole thing is so gritty and serious that DCEU fanboys will feel as if they’ve died and seen the Snyder Cut - but it’s also the worst-case scenario for the rest of the film world, as it points towards a grim future in which the inmates have taken over the asylum, and even the most repulsive of mid-budget character studies can be massive hits (and Oscar contenders) so long as they’re at least tangentially related to some popular intellectual property. It’s possessed by the kind of provocative spirit that’s seldom found in any sort of mainstream entertainment, but also directed by a glorified edgelord who lacks the discipline or nuance to responsibly handle such hazardous material, and who reliably takes the coward’s way out of the narrative’s most critical moments. It’s also a toxic rallying cry for self-pitying incels, and a hyper-familiar origin story so indebted to “Taxi Driver” and “The King of Comedy” that Martin Scorsese probably deserves an executive producer credit.
Todd Phillips’ “ Joker” is unquestionably the boldest reinvention of “superhero” cinema since “The Dark Knight” a true original that’s sure to be remembered as one of the most transgressive studio blockbusters of the 21st Century.