I appear on “CTV News at 11:30” with anchor Andria Case to talk about the best movies and television to watch this weekend, including “Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist” on Amazon Prime and Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga in “Joker: Folie à Deux.”
Watch the whole thing HERE! (Starts at 14:29)
I join “CTV News Toronto at Five” with host Sean Leathong, to talk about the musical psychological drama “Joker: Folie à Deux” and the comedy bio “Saturday Night.”
Watch the whole thing HERE! (Starts at 15:51)
I sit in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with host Bill Carroll to talk the new movies coming to theatres and streaming including the musical psychological drama “Joker: Folie à Deux,” the comedy bio “Saturday Night” and the drama “White Bird.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
I wrote about the fantasy, obsession and the ordinariness of evil in the new, tuneful “Joker: Folie à Deux” for CTVNews.ca.
“After 2019’s “Joker” nabbed $1 billion box office dollars and a Best Actor Oscar for Joaquin Phoenix, a sequel was certain. What form that sequel would take, however, was less certain…” Read the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In “Joker: Folie à Deux,” the musical sequel to 2019’s Oscar winning “Joker,” and now playing in theatres, Joaquin Phoenix stars as failed-comedian-turned-murderer Arthur Fleck. Incarcerated at Arkham State Hospital, he awaits trial for his crimes as Joker, when a chance encounter with Harleen “Lee” Quinzel (Lady Gaga) gives him a chance at finding true love.
CAST: Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga, Brendan Gleeson, Catherine Keener, Zazie Beetz. Directed by Todd Phillips.
REVIEW: After 2019’s “Joker” nabbed $1 billion box office dollars and a Best Actor Oscar for Joaquin Phoenix, a sequel was certain.
What form that sequel would take, however, was less certain.
In the risk averse entertainment landscape that is 2024 Hollywood, one would have expected a continuation of Joker’s reign as Gotham City’s most unhinged agent of chaos.
Well, no one will accuse director Todd Phillips, and stars Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga of being risk averse.
For better and for worse, “Joker: Folie à Deux” mixes romance and show tunes with law and order in what may be the bleakest jukebox musical ever made.
Question is, Is the risk worth the reward?
From its animated 1950’s Looney Tunes style opening—a recap of the Joker’s killing of talk show host Murray Franklin (Robert de Niro) on live television—to its starkly staged musical numbers, it is a study in fantasy, the ordinariness of evil and obsession that is sure to deeply divide audiences.
Phillips, working from a script he co-wrote with Scott Silver, wedges big ideas about the commodification of Joker as an entertainment celebrity—underlined by the use of the tune “That’s Entertainment” from the 1953 musical “The Band Wagon”—obsession/delusion and betrayal, into a film that blurs the line between reality and fantasy.
It’s ambitious, like Bob Fosse’s “All That Jazz” filtered through a funhouse mirror, but it’s also frustrating. Frustrating in the sheer volume of underwhelming musical numbers that feel jammed into the story, in its laboured courtroom drama and its underuse of Lady Gaga.
The musical numbers are mostly fantasy sequences and vary from full production numbers to intimate renderings of love songs. Each tune acts as a substitute for dialogue or an inner, emotional soundtrack that only the characters can hear. When it works, it’s a neat trick, but often the songs feel a bit too on-the-nose, as in Gaga’s performance of “(They Long to Be) Close to You,” sung during a prison visit as a thick plate of plexiglass separates them.
The musical numbers are plentiful, performed with a lack of polish—because, the press notes say, neither Arthur or Hartley are professional singers—that works for the authenticity of the characters, but is less interesting for the audience. It’s a device, and, if used sparingly, it could have been a nifty one. As it is, however, when Arthur says, “I don’t wanna sing anymore,” near the end of the film, it seems like the best decision he’s made all along.
As Arthur/Joker, Phoenix transforms himself physically; his slight, bony frame a testimonial to the years of abuse Arthur suffered at the hands of his mother. However, when he puts on the Joker outfit—the garishly coloured suits, shirts and make-up—his shoulders square up and he becomes a different person. It’s an interesting shift and Phoenix embodies it, creating two characters from one source.
Unfortunately, Lady Gaga is given less to do.
The film’s broken heart is Lee’s attraction to Joker. In the film’s first hour, she’s a compelling character, a kind of Mansonesque follower whose curiosity with Arthur/Joker as a rebellious folk hero blossoms into the shared delusional disorder of the title (Folie à Deux). It’s a shame then, when she fades from view during the bulk of the courtroom scenes, discarded in favor of a focus on Arthur’s antics.
“Joker: Folie à Deux” is a bold comic book movie that breaks free of the shackles of the comic book genre, but in doing so blunts the power and the danger of its title character.
Richard joins Ryan Doyle and Jay Michaels of the NewsTalk 1010 afternoon show The Rush for Booze and Reviews! Today he talks about how Mick Jagger singlehandedly made the Tequila Sunrise a staple on drink menus everywhere. Then they talk about “Dune” and “The Harder They Fall,” now playing in theatres.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
In the annals of the lore of the American West the names of Black cowboys like Nat Love and Rufus Buck don’t loom as large as Billy the Kid or Wyatt Earp. A new movie, “The Harder They Fall,” starring Jonathan Majors and Idris Elba, and now playing in theatres, aims to change that.
“While the events of this story are fictional,” reads an opening title card, “These. People. Existed.”
In real life Nat Love (Majors), Rufus Buck (Elba), Bill Pickett (Edi Gathegi), Cherokee Bill (LaKeith Stanfield), Stagecoach Mary (Zazie Beetz), Jim Beckwourth (RJ Cyler) never crossed paths, but writer, director Jeymes Samuel imagines a revenge story that brings them all together in wild and increasingly violent ways.
The film’s story is put into motion when Love, as a child, sees Buck kill his parents. To finish off the heinous act, they let the youngster live, but carve a cross into his forehead.
Cut to years later. It’s the late 1800s and Love is now an outlaw, and gang leader. He’s a kind of Robin Hood who only robs people who rob banks. When he and his gang steal $25,000 Buck planned on using to fund a town for Black Americans, it puts the two men (and their gangs) on a bloody collision course.
As the final showdown between the hunter and the hunted nears, the film flips back-and-forth between the two groups, introducing the characters and, of course, gun fights, bank robberies, and bar fights.
Remember when you first saw “Reservoir Dogs” and it felt like you had entered a parallel universe? It felt familiar, yet new and exciting. That movie was a reimagination of what a gangster movie could be, and the first forty-minutes or so of “The Harder They Fall” gave me the same rush. It plays with many of the same elements we expect from a revenge style Western, but it feels fresh and daring. The cutting and pasting of styles, from classic Hollywood and bloody b-movies to the anachronistic dialogue and music and charismatic cast, it’s an exciting eyeful. Director Jeymes Samuel has reinvigorated the genre by telling the story through a Black lens, with plenty of stylised spaghetti western action and humour.
The rest of the film is a bit of a mixed bag. The story telling bogs down slightly in the middle leading up to the final shoot out, which has a body count that would make Tarantino proud. Keeping things interesting are the cast.
Cherokee Bill played by Stanfield, has a long scene on a train that makes you wish there could be an entire movie about this character alone. Stanfield’s laid back take on the stone cold killer who claims to abhor violence, but is quick on the trigger, is worth the price of admission alone.
Danielle Deadwyler as the androgynous Cuffee also warrants further exploration. A loyal sharp shooter, they get the job done, but there is a great deal of humanity tucked away under their thousand-yard stare.
At the center of it all is “Lovecraft County’s” Majors. He’s the engine that fuels the action, and it is his story that provides the emotional undercurrent beneath the bloodshed.
There are no actual heroes anywhere here, just interesting actors inhabiting outsized characters.
“The Harder They Fall” is a crowd pleaser that mixes and matches real life with fiction, tradition with innovation and does so with blood splattered panache.
“Lucy in the Sky” is the only movie I can think of that would have been improved by the addition of adult diapers. Loosely based on the exploits of former naval flight officer turned NASA Astronaut Lisa Nowak, the new Natalie Portman movie recreates the troubled astronaut’s cross-country drive minus one juicy detail—the diapers she allegedly wore to eliminate the need for rest stops.
Portman plays Lucy Cola, an astronaut having trouble to adapting to life on terra firma. After being in space, witnessing the vastness of the world while floating far above it, her eager-to-please husband (Dan Stevens) and teenage niece Blue Iris (Pearl Amanda Dickson) seem hopelessly earthbound. “You go up to space and see the whole universe,” she says, “and then you come back and everything is so small. What are you supposed to do? Go to Applebee’s?”
She finds a kindred soul in Mark Goodwin (Jon Hamm), another NASA vet described as “a divorced action figure who likes to go fast.” Casual chats soon turn into an affair, although while Lucy falls deeply head over heels, Mark sees it as a fling and continues to date other women, including new recruit Erin Eccles (Zazie Beetz).
As her mental state erodes Lucy throws herself into training for a new mission until she becomes a danger to herself and others. Cut loose from the only job she cares about the frantic Lucy drives cross country to confront—or worse—Goodwin. “You’re going to lose,” she shouts, “because I’m a winner.”
“Lucy in the Sky” is a character driven drama that offers up only the scantest insight into Lucy’s psychosis. Director Noah Hawley plays around visually, changing the aspect ratio and focus to convey Lucy’s loosened grip on reality but it is all surface and while there are some striking images, the insight never transcends cliché.
Portman isn’t given much to work with. She’s a walking cliché, a character who ticks a number of “interesting” traits off a check list only to have them add up to a less than compelling character. She isn’t aided by a script that requires her to say things like “All systems go!” when asked about her mental state.
The supporting actors don’t fare much better. As Lucy’s husband Stevens is a one note goody two-shoes, annoying to the point where you begin to understand why she wandered away from the marriage. Ellen Burstyn is a bit of fun as Lucy’s potty-mouth mother, but she seems to have drifted in from another movie. Only Hamm emerges more or less unscathed, handing in the kind of tortured leading man performance that allows him to have moments of introspection, like when he watches footage of the Challenger explosion over-and-over before heading to space, and be a bit of a playboy. There’s not much to his character but at least Hamm breathes some life into him.
The story that inspired the film is ripped straight from the tabloids, all lurid details, but “Lucy in the Sky” glosses over most of them (i.e.: the adult diapers) in favor of an oversimplified look at mental illness that never takes flight.
Richard and “CTV News at Noon” anchor Michelle Dubé discuss the controversy surrounding the new DC Comics film “Joker.”
Watch the whole thing HERE! (Starts at 31:26)
