The last movie you saw Thread

[yovargas]

I agree with just about every word of that, from how great the movie is visually, to Phoenix's remarkable performance, to the feeling that the early parts of the movie starts off a bit slow and aimless, to the way it builds and builds to it's gut-wrenching climax. The only thing I would disagree with, semantically, is calling this a "superhero" movie, because even though it's creating a new version of a character from the Batman universe, it feels so totally different from everything else in that genre - like how there's certainly nothing here that could be called an "action" sequence in the usual sense of the word - that I don't think it can be classified with them. Certainly anyone expecting a superhero movie is going to be in for a major surprise at what they actually get.

[Túrin Turambar]

There’s an interesting question on where the boundaries of the superhero genre lie, because they’ve clearly been expanding in recent years into things like satire, comedy, high fantasy and hard science fiction. I’d almost expect that if Star Wars came out today it’d be called a superhero film. That said, Joker is being called a psychological thriller, so it may unambiguously be outside them.

I would say that Joker does have action scenes, but they accurately depict what happens when people attack each other with deadly weapons, so I agree they’re not what viewers of the genre are used to.

[Frelga]

I have, and need, absolutely zero context for this Russian meme, but it's titled "The ending of Joker is beautiful"

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[yovargas]

There's a scene at the end of the movie that resembles that image, but otherwise can't say I get it.

[Frelga]

Like I said, zero context.

I did look up the painting, which is called Lenin on the Armored Train by someone named Kovalenko. It's a 1970s depiction of an iconic moment in 1917 when Lenin snuck back to Russia from his exile in Finland and made a rousing speech, kicking off the February Revolution, which deposed Tzar Nikolai.

Check out this much cooler 1935 version by Staronosov

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[yovargas]

Ooh, that 2nd one is pretty cool.

Perhaps the connection is simply that Lenin and Joker are both, shall we say, not very nice people.

[Impenitent]

We watched The Big Short on Netflix - made in 2015 about the subprime mortgage crash which then led to the gfc.

Nice trio of leads in Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling (whom I don't usually find convincing), and Steve Carell, with Brad Pit taking an unassuming supporting role.

Good film, in that it made comprehensible to me the inner mechanisms of the mortgage bonds system, and the fraud and corruption in the banking system.

Odd juxtaposition of serious documentary content with satirical slapstick and frequent breaks through the fourth wall as characters stepped outside the action to address the camera directly. Some scenes made me laugh, though generally I felt appalled by the explicit self-interest and lack of ethics verging on the criminal.

We've had our own banking Royal Commission which found appalling criminality, systemic greed and exploitation and...well, greed again. As in the US, no real legal sanctions on the perpetrators have been forthcoming beyond a few high profile slaps on the wrist. It's enough to bring on spells of melancholy.

Now I'm playing a quiet game of mahjong on my phone, and the adverts coming up are hoping to tempt me into CFD trading. Feeling a little freaked.

Sent from my SM-G965U1 using Tapatalk

[RoseMorninStar]

I have, and need, absolutely zero context for this Russian meme, but it's titled "The ending of Joker is beautiful"

I've not seen 'The Joker' but I've read some reviews/synopsis. Both Lenin & Arthur Fleck (The Joker) were anti-establishment 'leaders' attempting to overthrow/tear down the wealthy establishment (yes?) At one point in the movie isn't the Joker spirited away by supporters from 'exile' in the police car? I'd add that with all of the propaganda Russia is known for one could be confused as to what is real and what is imagined.

[Frelga]

Impish, for a while, my Tapatalk alternated between ads for firearms and for cremation services. I'm not sure what the message was supposed to be there.

I saw Big Short. Some of their storytelling choices seemed odd to me, but it's the only film I know that exposed the corruption of the entire industry, not just individuals.



This is the Joker movie I could be persuaded to watch.

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[RoseMorninStar]

[Smaug's voice]

Barring the great performance and technical categories aside, I thought Joker was fairly average. Engaging and atmospheric, but that's it.

On a separate note, I really recommend Bong Joon-Ho's Korean film "Parasite", which I believe is currently in the theatres. It's one of the best and most accessible films I've seen in recent years.

[Frelga]

People talk about Joker in terms of technical achievement, like it's Triumph of the Will.

Meanwhile Walking Tall is not a good movie, but it does have a younger Dwayne Johnson.

PS: Yeah, no, not even Johnson can rescue that mess.

[Túrin Turambar]

I had been waiting for some time for The King to come up on Netflix. But I can’t say I was all that impressed, despite Timothée Chalamet’s impressive performance as Prince Hal/Henry V.

It has a lot going for it – two and a half hours of run time, a very strong cast, great production values and Shakespeare’s Henry tetralogy as its source material. And it’s a well-made and visually-interesting film. It starts as an adaptation of Shakespeare but wanders off, perhaps realising it can’t fit everything from the start of Henry IV, Part I, to the end of Henry V in two hours twenty minutes. It takes liberties with both history and Shakespeare (and Shakespeare took liberties of his own) but I don’t feel that the story is improved in any way from either the real events or Shakespeare’s re-telling of them. The time constraints are serious and force a lot of simplification – Hotspur goes from a pivotal character and a foil for Hal to little more than a walk-on walk-off role. I kept finding myself thinking of other films which had covered the same material more effectively, like Kenneth Branagh’s brilliant realisation of the scene where Henry uncovers the Southampton Plot (one of my favourites). The Dauphin of France, played by Robert Pattinson in a not-always-convincing heavy French accent, is cast as a bizarre sadistic villain like some sort of fifteenth-century serial killer.

The dialogue is also oddly modernised in some places but not others. Shakespeare’s line “Send me your prisoners with the speediest means, or you shall hear in such a kind from me as will displease you” is replaced with “send me your prisoners or I’ll hang you by your f------g neck”. Which, I suppose, would displease someone.

In the end, I wasn’t sure what I’d just watched. It didn’t really work for me as a medieval epic, nor as a historical war film, nor as an adaptation, nor even as an innovative re-creation of familiar events. If you’re setting out to tell a story which Shakespeare already covered in some of his best and best-known works, you’ve got a slope to climb as steep and treacherous as the muddy field as Agincourt. And while I admire the effort I don’t think The King manages it.

[Alatar]

So I finally watched Joker. My 2c for what they're worth. Its a good movie with a great central performance, but its not a Joker movie. All of the Bruce and Thomas Wayne stuff feels tacked on and superfluous. There's no attempt to make this feel like Gotham. Its NYC. And this isn't Joker, its Taxi Driver. Joachim's performance is great, but these are not the characters of the DC Universe. Thomas Wayne was a philanthropist, not an opportunistic politician. Alfred Pennyworth was a dedicated butler, not a hired thug. And most importantly, Joker was a disturbed criminal mastermind, not a fragile unfortunate.

The Killing Joke is 100 times superior as a Joker origin, because it goes somewhere, and asks the most important question, what happens when a good man gets tested and why the good man does not break. There's a decent anime version that I would recommend, but the original graphic novel is still superior.

[yovargas]

I mean, I don't necessarily disagree.... but I don't really agree either. In the world of comic booking, there are about 1000 different versions of every major character, so it's hard to say "this is what this character is".

Personally my favorite part of the movie is how it doesn't feel like it has anything at all to do with Gotham or Batman.... until it does, and the way they end up tying them together is IMO amazing and ingenious. By the end, I was 100% on board that, yes, this is the Joker, even if it's a new version than the one we've known.

[Alatar]

I don't think I've ever seen a version of Joker who wasn't a criminal genius. Or a Wayne family that weren't noble.

I mean, sure, you can make your own version where Joker is sympathetic and the Waynes are jerks, but its not Batman and Joker anymore. Its your own thing.

[yovargas]

Joker wasn't born a criminal genius, he becomes one. It's very easy to see the man at the end of the movie become the madman criminal we all know.

I certainly didn't think Joker was sympathetic or that Wayne was a jerk. Just that, rather brilliantly IMO, nobody is *always* just perfectly good or perfectly bad. Wayne can still be the generally good and generous man he's always been portrayed as, while still reacting like a normal person and getting pissed or losing his patience when a crazy man approaches his son or randomly confronts him in a public bathroom. It doesn't contradict the classic version of the character, but it does bring in the idea that someone like Joker may see someone like Wayne differently than we've always seen him. Which I think is a brilliant new way to shade their shared mythology.

[Alatar]

Have to say I can't see it. He's not smart enough. YMMV

[Inanna]

Maybe he will make up for it with EXPERIENCE!

(Sorry, joke from another thread).

[Túrin Turambar]

Have to say I can't see it. He's not smart enough. YMMV

This was probably my one criticism of Todd Phillip’s interpretation of the character – he provides a very plausible pathway for the Joker to become a psychopath, but not for him to become a genius. That said, it is difficult to envision how someone could be both a criminal mastermind and a raving madman – real-life genius psychopaths tend to be calm and in control of how they present themselves (e.g. Ted Bundy). But I suppose a pathway could have been found.

Otherwise I thought Joaquin Pheonix’s character was a recognisable Joker – given that the character covers everything from the 1940s serial killer to the 1960s buffoonish trickster there’s a lot of leeway.