Before I suffer an injury patting myself on the back for coming out of retirement to actually review two films (Oppenheimer, May/December balconyblues.com), this year, I must apologize for being so late on catching up with 2023 releases. Below is just a partial list of films I still haven’t caught.
Three of my top ten films (Past Lives, A Thousand And One, American Fiction) are first films—indicative of 2023 heralding fresh new talent. And while more and more of us are streaming at home (I’ve enjoyed streaming from Sundance and other film festivals) let us not forget some films are essential to experience in a theater and many more simply come off better that way.
Poor Things …in theaters
Past Lives …streaming
The Taste of Things …in theaters
Killers Of The Flower Moon …streaming
A Thousand And One …streaming
Anatomy Of A Fall …in theaters
May/December …Netflix
American Fiction …in theaters
The Holdovers …streaming
Oppenheimer …streaming
The Blind Man Who Did Not Want To See The Titanic ..streaming
Master Gardener …streaming
Sanctuary …streaming
Mission Impossible – Dead Reckoning …streaming
Rye Lane …streaming
No Hard Feelings …streaming
I still need to watch: The Zone Of Interest, Ferrari, Beau Is Afraid, All Of Us Strangers, Fallen Leaves, Passages, Pacifiction, The Killer
Honorable Mention:
How To Blow Up A Pipeline …streaming
The Boy and The Heron …in theaters
You Hurt My Feelings …streaming
Afire …streaming
Tori and Lokita …streaming
Barbie …streaming
Teacher’s Lounge …in theaters
Best documentaries:
20 Days In Mariupol …streaming
Beyond Utopia …steaming
A Still, Small Voice …in theaters
The Eternal Memory …streaming
Immediate Family ..streaming
Little Richard: I Am Everything …streaming
Overrated (the overblown): Asteroid City, Saltburn, Eileen; (the tedious): All Dirt Roads Taste Of Salt, Monster
Best Actress – Emma Stone, Poor Things; Natalie Portman, May/December; Sandra Huller, Anatomy Of A Fall; Teyana Taylor, A Thousand And One; Jennifer Lawrence, No Hard Feelings; Juliette Binoche, The Taste Of Things,
Best Actor – Jeffrey Wright, American Fiction,; Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer; Paul Giamotti, The Holdovers; Leonardo DiCaprio, Killers Of The Flower Moon; Benoit Magimel, The Taste Of Things
Best Supporting Actress – Julianne Moore, May/December; Margaret Qualley, Sactuary; Sigourney Weaver, Master Gardener; Paula Beer, Afire;
Best Supporting Actor – Robert DeNiro, Killers Of The Flower Moon, Robert Downey Jr., Oppenheimer; Charles Melton, May/December; Ryan Gosling, Barbie
A warning of sorts: May/December is no picnic to sit through. No worries. If you happen to be a fan of absorbing, brazen filmmaking that is unafraid to tackle prickly moral ambiguity, while providing two of the finest lead performances in recent years, this new Todd Haynes gem is for you.
The film uses the real life story of Mary Kay Letourneau, a 36-year-old teacher who went to jail for her affair with seventh grader Vili Fualaao, only to bear his child in jail and marry him upon her release. What Haynes (the brilliant Carol, I’m Not There, The Velvet Underground) conjures up, along with screenwriter Samy Burch (she’s a first-timer), is a premise where TV actress Elizabeth (Oscar winner Natalie Portman) injects herself into the family of now long-married Gracie (Oscar winner Julianne Moore) and Joe (an effective Charles Melton, TV’s Riverdale) and their three teenage children. She imbeds herself in order to portray Gracie in a movie, the creation of which the family will have differing opinions.
Watching the two actresses interact is fascinating. It’s also often thorny and twisted, which only heightens the allure. Haynes, ever the stylist, loves shooting their side-by-side reflections discoursing in mirrors as their duel of wits ensues. Before we know it we’re looking at Gracie‘s serious lack of self-reflection, let alone the presence of anything resembling guilt.
Elizabeth’s method acting, which she seems to be learning on the fly, turns up a higher and higher notch until she eventually is even mimicking Elizabeth’s lisp. Elizabeth’s reaching out to Gracie’s former husband and their two children stirs up the intensity but with each added layer it becomes more and more possible that Gracie isn’t the only one guilty of self-deception.
Without giving up spoilers, I’ll also provide another warning of sorts: Haynes isn’t interested in providing the viewer with a roadmap. You’ll need to put on your adult shoes and be willing to do some of the work picking the film apart. Don’t look for a pat ending or any particular moral lesson that is able to stand up any firmer than alternate possibilities.
If the film does contain a character resembling a moral compass, can it be Joe? Did Gracie rob his childhood from under him? Is Elizabeth’s stirring the beehive bringing up possible long-suppressed resentments? In a movie where the two lead characters provoke a lot of squirming, Joe, from when we first lay eyes on him, gives rise to a sense that beneath his preternatural calm lurks something entirely different. Just when it seems the unease in watching Gracie and Elizabeth battle each other can be offset by shifting our gaze to the film’s peripheral characters in the hope of their providing an equilibrium, here comes Joe to make us even more unsettled.
Haynes also explores the question of exploitation and our society’s obsession not only with tabloid stories but tabloid stories that, however sensational, ultimately are designed not to offend. Borrowing the music theme from Michel Legrand’s score for the 1971 film The Go-Between, Haynes punctuates stirring musical surges throughout in order to lend melodramatic irony throughout the queasy proceedings. It’s as if Haynes feels the need to break up all the biting solemnity with a mocking lightheartedness that is no gimmick, but rather adds an additional dimension.
Just how good is the acting? Moore, who has long worked with Haynes, gradually embodies what first seems like a simple character with a complexity that freakishly sneaks up on the viewer—until before we know it she’s a full blown enigma. As is very often the case with Moore, she makes what must have been an arduous role look easy.
And Portman? Well Portman just went to the top my Best Actress of The Year list. She is at her strongest here when Elizabeth employs a brittle veneer that simultaneously struggles with and revels in the challenges brought by each new revelation she encounters with Gracie and the rest of her family. While she and Gracie’s lawyer are having lunch at a restaurant, the camera cuts to a scruffy singer and his band performing a bizarre version of a pulpy standard. The spiky-haired frontman stops the song in mid-performance, turns and tosses his drink in his drummer’s face. He then alarmingly runs over to Elizabeth’s table, smirkingly revealing himself to be Gracie’s son from her previous marriage. The lawyer recoils and starts asking for the check. Elizabeth, who by now is becoming more comfortable with not being able to look away from this bizarre family, begs to stay.
Elizabeth’s direct camera reading of a letter late in the film brings to fruition a realization of method acting that is unrestrained to the point of making Daniel Day Lewis look like a Bowery Boy. Her character, as well as Gracie and Joe, will long stick with you after this deranged and beautiful film is over.
May/December is streaming on Netflix.
Burch and Melton won prestigious NewYork Film Critics Circle Best of the Year awards for, respectively, screenwriting and best supporting actor.
I know you can’t hold musical artists to a higher standard after a very keen album and expect the moon from a subsequent release. Yet on the heels of 2015’s “Bloom Late” Steve Oakley not only doesn’t disappoint, but he burrows deeper into roots genres, brings a whole bunch of sturdy hooks and honed lyrics, and delivers a knockout new collection, “Lost and Found.” Its been worth the wait.
Beats me how he does it. Just listen to “Two Days” where he collaborates with the lovely-voiced Irene Lambrou, and try not to conjure up remembrances of that long lost gal friend who you wish hadn’t put up such a shield. It’s stark and gorgeous with overlapping passions of fervent longing. The album has a naturalist heft—both emotionally and musically. Its characters’ personal demons shine through unencumbered Iby extraneous elaboration.
Get ready for the bold imagery of “Irish Whiskey,” an elegy to a deceased friend (where Oakley’s daughter Ava lends backing vocals); the clever catchiness of “Delco Girls,” an unexpected spoof on the distinctive traits of the fairer sex that hail from a certain area in the blue collar near-suburbs of Philly; and “Laredo,” a blistering ode to a hellbent badass who finds himself on the wrong side of the law.
“Las Vegas” permeates the early going and it’s a testament to co-producer (along with Oakley) Ted Karapalides, whose guitar bracingly propels a kickass buildup of an opening song. And just when you think “Irish Whiskey” may be the best ballad on the album, here comes the hauntingly evocative “Meat On The Bone.”
I played Lost and Found for my girlfriend and asked her to guess who was performing. As each of the first six or seven songs went by, she went on to name yet another major 70s alt country musical act. I bring this up not because Maple Shade, N. J.’s Oakley is mimicking anyone, but it just goes to show you how prime talent may be lurking right before your South Jersey eyes.
Buy this album for your favorite someone for Christmas or Hanukkah. You won’t need mistletoe after they hear it.
Steve Oakley, Lost and Found…available on all digital platforms.
Suffused with enough gonzo journalism to bring Hunter S. Thompson back to life, Telemarketers sasses and swaggers its ass off en route to a defining expose of “the biggest telemarketing scam in history.”
In episode one of three-part HBO documentary series airing at 10 p.m. on consecutive Sundays and streaming on Max, co-directors Sam Lipman-Stern and Adam Bala Lough convey Lipman-Stern’s employment with the now shutdown Civic Development Group (CDG), where he started as a mere 14-year-old after dropping out of high school.
What Lipman-Stern found at the company was an abundance of derelicts and ex-cons who were hired without background checks or drug tests. As one employee states, “Every other person was a drug dealer.” Though the job paid no commissions, it offered ex-cons a place to get hired.
Telemarketers is all sauciness and self-effacing honesty. Part One plays out as a compendium of naturalist footage mostly from around 20 years ago and is shot to allow the viewer a “you are there” experience of a company that keeps 90 percent of the proceeds from heavily scripted phone calls. Organizations like the Fraternal Order Of Police typically received 10 percent. The burned-out callers also got to practice “putting more bass in your voice,” so they could emulate cops while often implying that a donation would earn the giver an FOP sticker that would preclude a traffic ticket were they to be stopped.
Eventually, other organizations such as fireman groups were spotlighted. In an uncanny march toward the greed that will eventually spell the company’s downfall, one week‘s phone solicitations would be on behalf of the firemen, the next week a retired firemen group, the week after a firemen chiefs’ group. Then the 90 percent take wasn’t enough for the company’s owners. They wanted 100 percent and when they were finally closed by the Federal Trade Commission’s efforts, they paid a paltry $19 million fine and agreed to close down. The fine paled in comparison to earnings that were estimated to be in the $250 million range
The first episode’s cliffhanger promises a pair of walloping followups since Lipman-Stern and memorable supersaleman Patrick J. Pespas (aka “Pat The Smack”) say to themselves, “Let’s take down the whole industry” after copycat groups emulating CEG immediately began to proliferate.
Lipman-Stern and Pespas vow to “take them down from the inside.” If the forthcoming episodes are as daunting and compelling as this one, I can’t wait. At a time when many documentaries feel overly wooden and careful, Telemarketers is splendidly unrestrained and garishly amusing while still aiming its vigorous ire at a sub-industry run amuck.
There are moral dilemmas and then there are existential crises. For Robert Oppenheimer, ethical certainty over the wisdom of developing a doomsday weapon of mass destruction to extinguish a rampantly out of control fascism gives way to haunting trepidation after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Coupled with the death of Hitler and subsequent German surrender, the more than 100,000 deaths and 100,00 injuries that occurred in the immediate wake of the bombs dropping presented additional complexity and eventual arms control activism from the “father of the atomic bomb.”
In the lusciously opulent yet persistently cultured Oppenheimer, director Christopher Nolan intertwines Oppenheimer’s mad rush to deploy an atomic bomb with flash-forwards depicting his post-war adamant skepticism over these unacceptable deadly weapons ever being used again. Further hampering Oppemheimer’s deep concern to make his voice heard on nuclear arms agreements is a lurking persecution made workable by the prevalent Red Scare paranoia of the 1950s.
Cillian Murphy masterfully portrays Oppenheimer as both charismatic and frustrated, alternately bold and introspective. We encounter him engulfed in a myriad of quantum physics when he’s not conversing in multiple languages or reading Hindu scripture in Sanskrit or promoting greater justice for trade unions and Spanish Civil War rebels. In an early scene he meets Albert Einstein, who he has known for some time and while dismissing Einstein as more or less a relic of the past, he has a dialogue with him that is left silent yet will be addressed in one of the film’s closing scenes
The film’s most impactful moments border on the surreal: Oppenheimer receives a roar of approval from a crowd he awaits to address upon the successful deployment of his creation. Suddenly the base of his podium transforms into a pile of smoldering nuclear ash as the same group of onlookers now weep and moan in pain. In another scene Nolan builds menacing background music as Oppenheimer is being grilled by his hearing inquisitor, Roger Robb (Jason Clarke), until the thundering dissonant music overwhelms any conversation.
Such eloquent scenes along with a bracing depiction of the launching and explosion of the bomb’s climactic test, alternate with a sometimes dialogue-heavy account of Oppenheimer’s political oppression. Figuring as a key player here is Lewis Strauss (he insists on pronouncing it “Straws” ) who Robert Downey Jr. portrays as a relentlessly smooth politician who at first as commissioner of The Atomic Energy Commission butts heads with Oppenheimer during the Manhattan Project over development of the still more lethal hydrogen bomb. After the war Strauss inveigles Oppenheimer into accepting a post as director of Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study and then eventually rankles Oppenheimer into personal turmoil with an ego-derived manipulation.
Downey isn’t the only heavyweight included in this all-star cast. Matt Damon is here as Lt. Col. Leslie Graves, the breezy yet flinty military authority who both selects and supervises Oppenheimer throughout the top secret Manhattan Project in secluded Los Alamos, New Mexico. The ever-resilient Gary Oldman provides a short yet riveting scene and I’d consider it a spoiler if I told you who he portrays. Emily Blunt, as Oppenheimer’s rundown, unhinged yet loyal wife who by the fifth or sixth time she implores him to fight back against his tormentors, finally throws a glass at him.
And then there’s Florence Pugh, Oppenheimer’s headstrong yet brittle communist mistress, who later appears in a compromising position in another of those compelling surrealistic scenes. Kenneth Branagh, Rami Malik, Benny Safdie, and Matthew Modine are also aboard.
Nolan is to be commended for illustrating one of the most insane times in history with these side excursions into a magical realism of sorts. Whether he reins in the side trips a little too soon in a nod to tastefulness is a matter of interpretation. My take is he could have elaborated on these more symbolic representations that plumb the depths of this grim and vital subject matter and concurrently spared us some of the bordering-on-tedious talking heads scenes.
Getting into the weeds with both nuclear physics and the intrigues of political ones-upmanship may be unavoidable here, but I came away wishing for more on the large scale end, and less chit chat. Nonetheless, Oppenheimer is a whale of an achievement, even when it finally arrives against a backdrop of hype greater than that awaiting any movie in some time.
Mark Glassman is in a bind. While a serial purveyor of drop-dead dread, he assures his first person narration is made only sweeter by injecting a dark delight in his depiction of an assuredly fraught condition:
Sexual anxiety.
Mark has it in spades. Written by Steve Oskie, of ghostwriter-to-Jerry Blavat fame in the autobiography “You Only Rock Once,” “Glassman” is a late 1970s/early 80s coming-of-age tale of this peculiar affliction—its manifestations, possible causes, and oddly comical side effects. The reader can’t help but not feel superior to Mark since Oskie hits on a number of universal truths in his exploration of a subject that in lesser hands would have provoked a “Hey, what the hell do I have to learn from this character?” reaction.
Sparked by the painful divorce of his Jewish parents and relayed through Glassman’s resultant rebellion against nearly any and all parental expectations, Oskie isn’t shy about the sheer volume of punch lines as he carves a portrait of a perpetual worry wart. His unwillingness to forfeit sarcasm in no way impairs the ability of serious psychological insight to stand alongside the guffaws that recall Woody Allen and Bruce Jay Friedman. The humor can be unsavory, the drama terse. Yet they reside in a meaty coexistence. The novel’s handling of family dynamics often hits a raw nerve:
“There were other connections to my dad as well, in addition to doing my paperwork on Sundays. My aversion to following in his footsteps had softened considerably, and I actually went out of my way to identify similarities that increased my fondness for him. He had spent the better part of his life climbing in and out of cars, showing his wares in a succession of rinky-dink towns, and depending on his powers of persuasion. Ultimately, he was at the mercy of the decision-makers, as salesmen have been since the beginning of time, and it required a marketable product. But without a certain toughness, a thick skin, and a lively personality, it would have been hard to sell anything. Once I realized that I was getting to know him better by following in his footsteps, the act of selling took on a filial importance. Before long, instead of being defensive about it, I gained a sense of pride from my success as a salesman and the connection to my father, and I started to look for additional similarities between us since the first few I identified were so pleasurable to me. I even found my way to the discovery that my left arm had a darker tan than my right after resting it on the open car window while driving. My father’s arm had been the same way for as long as I could remember.”
But serious analysis is careful to give way to lighter passages like this excursion on an ambivalent encounter with celebrity:
“I experienced the profound confusion of whether I should have sex with a man’s sister or ask him for his autograph.”
Before long Teresa—a free-spirited enchantress who will be remembered long after finishing this novel—becomes the center of what can only be described as a bizarre love triangle. Here’s she is examined through a keen discerning lens in this passage regarding her mom, Lorraine:
“Lorraine’s love for Teresa was a dotted line and men like me were given the task of filling in the blanks.”
Mark Glassman’s calling card, his go-to defense mechanism and his eventual Achilles heel, is none other than sarcasm—a blistering quick wit that both soothes him through rough spots and undermines him. Relayed through enough often fascinating female characters that it was tempting to grab a notepad to keep track, Glassman not so subtly upends any stereotypes one may wish to hold onto about a man afraid of sex. The nonnormative performance anxiety put on view by Mark Glassman spews forth a bottomless bounty of black humor and equally dark insights while still holding forth a benign view of the simplicity inherent in redemption.
“Glassman” is published by Open Books and is available on May 23, 2023.
Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney makes it rather easy for viewers to determine whether the severity of the Coronavirus crisis has been grossly exacerbated by Trump administration malfeasance or whether they have been the victims of largely unpreventable circumstances.
In Totally Under Control (its title taken from a phrase Trump once uttered about the virus) Gibney provides the overwhelming answer. Using as an opening framework the apt comparison of U.S. and South Korean responses (the initial instance of Corona-19 occurred on the same day in both countries), Gibney gives a comprehensive account of the early days of the onset of the virus in both countries.
Essentially in South Korea politicians stayed out of the response and left it to professionals who quickly developed comprehensive testing and tracing, aided by a cooperative public willing to be summoned by their cell phones without undue concern for privacy (while far too many American get in hissy fits over mere mask wearing). South Korea as of this writing has suffered 439 deaths (out of a population of 51 million) from the virus while the U. S. is well over the 200,000 mark (population 328 million). That’s a death rate roughly 100 times higher.
When he interviews insider professionals and whistleblowers, Gibney often penetrates the deep recesses of their damaged psyches. In the U.S. the opposite response from South Korea’s took place, and scientists were shunned. More than once in the film, dedicated career health professionals like former director of Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority Rick Bright break up emotionally on camera over what delay and distortion have wrought once their advice was ignored.
It’s all here—Trump’s initial ignorance of the 20-50 million who died during the 1918 pandemic, claiming “There’s never been anything like this in history.” Mitch McConnell’s lies about The Trump administration’s knowledge of the Obama Response Playbook that they tossed aside. The FDA putting the breaks on the approval process of The CDC test that lie dormant for a month before it was eventually adopted when they knew earlier how to adapt it and refused. The firing of the CDC’s Nancy Messonnier once she spoke up about the risks of the virus and the need to shut down. The refusal to consider Bright’s request for $10 billion to mount an early start to fighting the virus. Bright’s eventual firing once he felt compelled to blow the whistle. Blaming the states for failure to acquire their their own PPE while FEMA drove up the price by irrationally bidding on private sources and federal stockpiles were also withheld without explanation. Trump on April 3 conveying the recommendations of scientists to wear masks while proclaiming “I’m choosing not to do it.” The hydrochlorothiazide debacle. The administration’s continual failure to invoke the Defense Production Act, instead offering “Let the market do its magic.” And for all of the talk about “the China virus,” Gibney reminds us Trump initially encouraged the sale of PPE to China, which the U.S. was forced to buy back at a rate 10 times more expensive.
The sheer lunacy of Trump’s responses quickly lose their humor once the realization sets in in they’re the work of a sociopath with an irrational disdain for science. Frequently willful and often pecuniary or spiteful, they can claim very little innocence. Totally Out Of Control rides through the debris of lost opportunities with an admirable dispassion. Heinous breach of responsibility speaks for itself. In one of the film’s final scenes we see hospital workers donning PPE while watching astonished as the scroll on a TV monitor unveils Trump’s words in admitting his full knowledge of the threat of the virus to Bob Woodward.
This film could piss you off to the point of befuddlement, especially if you’re among the countless number of Americans who previously had no, or barely any, awareness of what is presented here. Have no fear. Gibney closes by posing the question of citizens having to decide what new actions they might do in that figurative future time when they finally remove their masks. As the soundtrack beats The Chambers Brothers’ “Time Has Come Today,” we realize hope is resolutely rearing its heroic head. As long as people give a shit.
“Totally Under Control” — More Like Totally Out Of His Mind…5 stars (out of 5)
Steering clear of any cheerful wrap up to his vaunted oeuvre of mob movies, Martin Scorsese gathers his major players and rolls out a masterful, defining epic that often hovers on the dark side.
A combined 307 years old, Scorsese and his stars Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci, render an enthralling tale that seemingly disaffirms its three-and-half hour running time. Ever the swami of controlled shots and adroit filmmaking, Scorsese tracks, pans, zooms, and cuts his way to what feels more like a lean two hours. When a creatively long dormant Robert DeNiro and a long-retired, stunning Joe Pesci are on the screen together, time flies as we watch two of cinema’s all-time greatest actors. And by the way, it is not only DeNiro’s incredible acting that is revitalized here. Due to CGI technology, his physical presence is also nicely rejuvenated to de-age him through much of the film. (Equally tricky, Philly’s favorite red gravy classic Villa di Roma shows up twice in the film, its interior curiously reimagined.)
The Irishman is based on a true crime memoir by Frank Sheeran (DeNiro), whose book claims a certain knowledge of the disappearance of larger-than-life union leader Jimmy Hoffa (Pacino). While Al Pacino of late often seems to be shooting the works and acting in broad outline, here he absolutely controls Hoffa’s brazen preening and hotdogging. His deft etching of Hoffa’s quirky mannerisms remains vivid in my memory days after screening the film. It’s DeNiro’s ninth collaboration with Scorsese, Pacino’s first.
Russell Bufalino (Pesci), an eerily self-restrained mob boss who oozes gravitas, takes World War II veteran Sheeran under his wing and Frank soon is doing much different jobs than driving a meat truck. Pesci headlines a terrific supporting cast. An excellent Stephen Graham plays Anthony Provenzano, a union rival to Hoffa and it’s worth the price of admission to witness the two of them having it out in a prison cafeteria. Comedian Sebastian Maniscalco portrays the waggishly swaggering Joey Gallo, Ray Romano a mob lawyer, and a mesmerizing Anna Paquin is Sheehan’s grown daughter who practically without uttering a line, expresses a remorseful resentment toward her dad.
Sheeran’s rise up the ranks, from the meat delivery guy to Jimmy Hoffa’s right hand man, provides the arc of the film. Its dual framing devices are a car ride taken by Bufalino and Sheeran and their wives (Bufalino hates flying) from Eastern Pennsylvania to Detroit which in turn is framed by a much older Sheeran reminiscing in a nursing home. The mission in Detroit is to settle down an out-of-hand Hoffa, who, desperately going after regaining his lost union power, has proceeded less than cautiously in stepping on toes of those known for providing dire outcomes for their opponents. It’s not long after Sheeran starts doing some jobs for mobster Felix “Skinny Razor” DiTullio (Bobby Cannavale) and his boss Angelo Bruno (Harvey Keitel) that Scorsese begins to suddenly pause the action with onscreen footnotes foretelling many of the film’s characters’ eventual fates, usually methods and dates of death.
If hardly anyone seems to get out of this messy business alive, it’s often not much better for the living if Sheeran is any example. While he takes it all in stride, the price he eventually pays for a life of crime is not what is usually depicted in films of this nature. Scorsese is putting out a warning but it’s a cautioning so wrapped in an unconditional compassion that it renders itself judgement free but hardly devoid of mournfulness. Made to look like a physically much younger Robert DeNiro throughout much of the movie, is this final, older Frank Sheeran also refurbished spiritually or is it much too late?
5 stars (out of 5)…A very much on his game Scorsese thumbs his nose at a resistant Paramount, joins the Netflix bandwagon
Yeah, it’s a flimsy conceit—multitudes in Gotham adopting clown dress to line up with a populist revolt against those of means, spurred on by a subway murder of three young Wall Street guys. Sure Todd Phillips’ Joker contains clumsy social commentary, facile plot advances, and is as dark and unsettling as a moonless, starless night on a rowboat at sea.
Have no fear. Joaquin is here. Fresh on the heels of the sadly underseen You Were Never Really Here, Joaquin Phoenix does an about-face from all the weight gained in that compelling film. In Joker, he’s skin and bones, looking nearly as gaunt as Cristian Bale in The Machinist. And Is it me or does Phoenix seem to channel the rousing Iggy Pop circa 1980 in his preening, distorted dances? His masterful squirming, both physically and psychically, pepper a performance that, quite frankly, is unlike any other I have witnessed in six decades of film watching.
Phoenix gets to the core of his character Arthur Fleck’s mental illness with a finesse and an acumen that is often breathtaking. At first blush, it’s more than a little startling to witness the approach Phoenix takes. Sporting an involuntary laugh, ostensibly a result of a neurological condition, he forces the viewer to at once have a lusty if nervous laugh on his affliction and simultaneously, er, approach an uneasy empathy with it. When have we seen a screen crazy guy reveal himself this starkly? Or this chillingly waggish?
As Arthur tries to keep it together taking care of his unstable mom, or advancing a “career” as a would-be stand-up comic while all the while making ends meet with commercial clown gigs, he comes across as a sincere innocent who, despite juggling “seven different medications” (they’re soon taken away via government belt-tightening) manages to largely keep himself out of trouble.
Until, after becoming the victim of vandalism while doing a sidewalk, placard holding “going-out-of-business” clown gig (“It’s getting crazy out there,” he states), Arthur’s given a soon-to-be tragic gift.
A co-worker fellow clown gives him a gun to protect him from further incidents. Not a good idea. Arthur’s new toy first goes off in his mother’s apartment, piercing a hole in the wall. Arthur covers the incident up by raising the TV volume and yelling out to his mom in the next room that it was “only a program on television.” Later, the gun proves to be his employment downfall when it accidentally falls out of his clown outfit and onto the floor of the hospital where he is entertaining a room full of ill children.
Then there is the blustery TV talk show host Murray Franklin (Robert DeNiro in yet another role he can do with his eyes closed), nicely named after the legendary local New York TV host Joe Franklin (who was by the way much more down to earth than the character here.) Arthur’s mom really likes Murray and Arthur cuddles into a mutual Murray-watch with her, setting off an Arthur fantasy where he is called onstage by the unctuous Murray. That this turns out to be prescient is less a matter Phillips lifting riffs from Scorsese’s The King of Comedy, and more about his tying a bow around his film’s insistence on going over the top in bringing its mytho-political themes full circle. I figure let him have his fun as long as he doesn’t think we’re going to take this stuff seriously—at least this isn’t another Hangover sequel.
If it’s taken me this long to acknowledge Joker is a DC production, it’s because it sure as hell doesn’t feel like one—except maybe until its closing scenes where it does sort of revert to the exaggerated, large-scale excess that plagues most of the DC films.
Give Joker kudos for choosing to skirt away from many comic book movie cliches, despite often falling into its own set of hackneyed choices. There’s a distillation of an often unforgettable horror fairy tale here that transcends flaws that were probably inevitable in such a project. But let’s not forget that picturing this film with anyone other than Phoenix in the tile role is not a particularly pretty sight. Better to explain away the film’s many shortcomings with the welcome news that no matter what goes wrong, Phoenix manages to save it. And then some.
Joaquin saves the day in a performance for the ages. 4 stars (out of 5)
Unfortunately amoung naysayers the highly entertaining Green Book has gotten a bad rap. In certain critic circles it has been reduced to a misguided artifice that boosts debate on the unnecessary presence of a white savior. It seems the unsettling nature of a long-standing racist white man having a changeover and helping out his black brother, even in the service of a comedy, or perhaps especially in the service of a comedy, is, to some, going over the line of good taste.
Inserting farcical elements inherently not meant to completely bear the scrutiny of plausibility does indeed potentially present problems of tone shifts. Making historical points about a matter as important as racial tensions in the early 1960s and fancying it up with a few laughs on the side is admittedly additionally risky territory, even before we add fried chicken plot points (don’t ask).
Yet Green Book’s biggest success is exactly its effortlessly sliding back and forth between dramatic social criticism of an era steeped in racial bigotry, and the comedic lampooning of opposite archetypes. Tony Lip (an engrossing and hilarious Viggo Mortensen), a streetwise Italian-American hustler, takes a job chauffeuring for Dr.Don Shirley, a rather dandy black jazz musician played with aplomb and sensitivity by Academy Award-winner Mahershala Ali.
The two prepare to tour The South, so the tough Tony is hired as much as a protector as a driver. Racism both subtle and blatant follows them from town to town. In one hotel Dr. Shirley is denied seating for dinner in the very room he will soon play that night. The dramatic turns as they avoid–and more often thwart–the prejudice, are mostly convincing, even if the comedy of their interactions is never far behind.
It’s a match made to rival all the buddy movies over the years that thrive on the banter of odd couples. Oscar and Felix are reimagined here as a contemporary version of In The Heat of the Night with a comic twist that you’ll either love or resist. The talented Linda Cardellini plays Tony’s wife, who adds to the blue-collar Italian-American 1960s family vibe, a milieu this writer can vouch from experience that Peter Farrelly absolutely nails. Farrelly, of There’s Something About Mary and Dumb and Dumber fame, does justice to material that feels light years away from those films.
4 stars (out of 5)…There’s Something About Tony//A highly entertaining dramedy that knows its own limitations
