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“To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but, since it was directed by Erich von Stroheim and since it was available on YouTube, I thought I might as well check it out. Well, like all the movies directed by von Stroheim, there was something terribly decadent and yet fascin” read more
Cast : Joaquin Phoenix, Brendan Gleeson, Catherine Keener, Steve Coogan, Zazie Beetz
What was it about?
Struggling with his dual identity, failed comedian Arthur Fleck meets the love of his life, Harley Quinn, while incarcerated at Arkham State Hospital.
My two cents:
Maybe due to the fact that I seriously lowered down my expectations but I don't think it was so bad after all. The fact that 'Joker' didn't really blow me away in the first place also probably helped. Anyway, it turned out to be a sweet love story involving two really messed-up up individuals and I really enjoyed that Arthur Fleck finally managed to connect with someone which was actually really sweet. Furthermore, Joaquin Phoenix was again really good, I wouldn't expect less from him, Lady Gaga also delivered a solid performance and they had a nice chemistry together. However, I have to admit that the damned thing still had some issues though. First of all, the musical angle was just a rather useless gimmick to add some buzz and, this way, since they hired Lady Gaga, they had seemingly a good excuse to have her delivering some songs. Furthermore, it was fine to have Joaquin Phoenix destroying a song but to have him doing it again and again was more cringe-inducing than actually entertaining. However, what really derailed the whole thing was the approach they took for the 3rd act though. Indeed, sure, Arthur Fleck had pushed back his Joker personality and you had to wait for a while to see him again but it was fair game. However, when this demented personality was finally back, they should have gone all the way. Indeed, when he escaped, the city should have gone in flame and total mayhem and they should have given us the Joker and Harley Quinn holding hands and riding into the sunset, that would have been a nice ending. However, instead, they completely backtracked, Arthur somehow cancelled and even repudiated the Joker which was weird but, above all, seriously anticlimactic and, quite frankly, rather frustrating. Anyway, the enormous bashing against this movie turned out to be seriously exaggerated, in spite of its flaws, it was actually a decent watch.
My rating: 06/10
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“Even though this movie turned out to be a huge critical and commercial misfire, since I'm a huge fan of Joaquin Phoenix, I thought I might as well check it out anyway. Well, maybe due to the fact that I seriously lowered down my expectations but I don't think it was so bad after all. The fact that '” read more
Notes: It was apparently a big success when it was released and it’s because it was so successful that Dreyer would manage to make later on ‘La passion de Jeanne d'Arc’, obviously his magnum opus. Unfortunately, to be honest, I actually had a hard time to really care about the damned thing though. The fact that it took me 3 attempts to watch it until the end maybe didn’t help but, with each session, it never really interested me. Sure, it was technically well made, especially for a movie made 100 years ago, and it was a nice time-capsule showing how people lived back then in Denmark. However, I never really cared for any of the characters involved and what they were going through. I mean, the way Viktor treated his wife but also the rest of his family was of course rather deplorable but you might wonder if it was really uncommon back then (even nowadays some guys are pretty nasty with their partners). As a result, you might wonder how the audience back then thought about a movie about a man showing typical dominant, or even tyrannical, being actually corrected by the women around him. Still, this setup never really intrigued me though and, to make things worse, the way they completely infantilized Viktor to make him change his ways was, in my opinion, rather pathetic. Seriously, they even brought his childhood’s nanny who treated him again as if he was 12 years old.
“I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but, since it was directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer and since it was available on YouTube, I thought I might as well check it out. It was apparently a big success when it was released and it’s because it was so successful that Dreyer would manage” read more
“To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but, since there was a decent cast involved and since it was available on Netflix, I thought I might as well check it out. Well, the most annoying thing about this movie is the way it displayed how the film industry (at least, in th” read more
