Joker (Todd Phillips, October 4, 2019) Movie • Page 30

weird thing to focus on but I also feel like it sums up the movie as a whole: there was a painfully long unbroken shot of him removing all the shelves from his fridge, hopping in the fridge and closing the door behind him while the phone rang for like 5 minutes. I have absolutely no idea what this scene meant, why it was in the movie or indeed a clear memory of how it actually ended or if it just abruptly cut to the next scene

 

Thought this was odd too. Wasn’t sure if there would be a point like he’d get accidentally stuck in there or something but maybe it was just to show just how ~weird and quirky~ Arthur was or something

 

Bold move to try to challenge Indiana Jones for the best refrigerator scene in movie history

 

making light of suicidal tendencies to show how weird and quirky a mentally ill man is... seems pretty on brand for this movie yeah

 

Thought this was good, mostly because of Phoenix's performance and the movie takes on really intense energy in the final act in a way that a lot of the films it intimates don't.

Not a masterpiece by any measure but I find a lot of the criticism of how dangerous it is or how it's a sympathetic incel rallying cry to be really overblown.

 

I thought this was pretty good, and Phoenix was great as expected. From a technical aspect, it's really well made. Thematically, it brings up some interesting questions but doesn't really attempt to answer any of them and is a bit messy as a result. Like a lot of reviews have said, it's giving you a lot but not saying much. Still, I liked it.

Also, as I initially thought, Joker is clearly the villain and not someone the movie asks you to root for. The movie doesn't really even challenge you on that front imo. It's telegraphed in the way he's shot/framed and the literal "villain" music cues throughout.

 

I couldn't help but notice the roles of African American females in this.

 

lol am I reading the spoilers correctly that Joker is Batman's brother?

 

surely that can’t be correct lmao

 

Arthur steals a letter that his mother wrote to Thomas Wayne which alleges he is Wayne's illegitimate son

 

lmao now i want to see this trainwreck

 

i thought this was fine?

i admire the cinematography, score and the performance.

but the script is just uneven and painfully doesn't know which theme it wants to play up.

 

i liked when joker made an insensitive joke and a humorless woman scolded him saying "you can't joke about that" and then he went on a rant about how comedy is subjective and "you all" decide what's funny or not

 

I thought it was alright, kind of a downer overall (not that I was expecting sunshine and rainbows by any means). If it wasn’t the Joker, there wouldn’t be all this media panic though.

 

because people wouldn’t see it

 

Saw it last night. Loved it. I appreciate that it is more of a portrait of someone dealing with mental illness than a superhero flick.

 

also enjoy seeing justin theroux continue his random cameo streak

 

PLOT SPOILER:

They go on later to explain that the mom had her own mental health issues, was delusional, and said Thomas Wayne was the father. Once Joker confronts him, Thomas Wayne explains it's simply not true. It would be up to the viewer who's telling the truth.

 

This was not my interpretation of the ending, but I appreciate learning a different take on it.

 

BELIEVE WOMEN

 

This movie is about mental health in the same way that, like, Split was

 

Oh c'mon, the issue of the mental health of the main character in JOKER takes on a much larger focus than Split.

 

Yeah but it has about the same amount to say about mental health as Split

 

In both movies the vague, ill defined mental health of the character is used to make them into something “exciting” cinematically. Yeah Joker gives some lame platitude about how society doesn’t care about people like him, and the Public Health service he was going to is ended by budget cuts, but the movie isn’t about mental health. It uses it to try and make its character more “crazy”. There’s literally a scene where he tells a guy “I haven’t been taking my medication, I feel great” and then brutally murders him with a pair of scissors. This is a movie about mental health if it was written by a 15 year old.