‘Joker’ As Wannabe Scorsese Movie

Speaker 1: 00:02 Welcome to another edition of midday movies. Once again, we have KPBS cinema junkie, Beth DACA, Mondo and movie walls is podcast film critic Yazdi Pathar Villa on hand to talk about what's new at the movies. Welcome to you both. Thank you. Thank you. So, uh, this week we have the highly anticipated film Joker's starring Joaquin Phoenix as the title character. This is meant to be a standalone film that explores the origins of the infamous DC villain. Let's begin by listening to a clip from the trailer. Speaker 2: 00:32 My mother always tells me to smile and put on a happy face. She told me I had a purpose, Speaker 3: 00:47 laughter and joy to the world. Speaker 4: 00:58 [inaudible] just the corners. It getting crazier out there. Speaker 3: 01:07 Joaquin Phoenix steaks on the joker after Cesar Romero on T V and Jack Nicholson and Heath ledger on film. Uh, they tackled the role. So how does he do? Well, it's not quite successful. What King Phoenix as an actor that's really hit or miss for me. There are some films like, um, you are never really here and inherent vice that I thought he was brilliant in, but then there's stuff like I'm still here and her where I really felt he was just so self-consciously acting. So for this film I felt like half the film I was really frustrated with him. And then there was about a mid point where it takes a darker turn and kind of gets more focused and it became more interesting at that point. But it was kind of an unfocused film and performance. What'd you think Yazdi? Um, I think there isn't much with two is performance. Speaker 3: 02:00 There's a much mischief to this performance, which is kind of what we expect from joker as a character. There's just a lot of suffering with upper case S, you know, and well, what are, we might say he's very, very committed to it. You can give him that. Okay, well that's, that's a silver lining for you. You founded, uh, you know, DC does not have a great track record with their feature film. So how does this one stack up? Well, I have to say that of the recent DC films, this is sort of one of the better ones and I think it's better because it's a little more ambitious and at least makes an effort to create a film that has a personality to it, but it's still like D C still feels like it's struggling to find what it wants to do. It does say that this is a standalone film, but how does it fit into the DC universe in some way, shape, or form? Speaker 3: 02:56 I mean, if I was the Wayne state, I would be suing for slander because Bruce Wayne's dad comes across as kind of a like Trump and training. He's rich and he doesn't care about, he pretends to care about the poor, but he calls them clowns and he's out of touch. And it's a very strange universe. It creates, because there's nobody that you really care about and not that a film needs to have like a sympathetic character, but like you have to be engaged on some level with something. Right. And this one just feels like it's Mandering around, not quite sure of what it wants to do. Did you get the same sense? Honesty? Speaker 5: 03:36 I did. I mean I think, uh, the movie does have a personality in that, uh, it's very different from what you might expect from a comic book film, but I completely agree with, uh, but Beth that it's sort of a, you know, a cause which is looking for a point to make, which it doesn't quite, Speaker 3: 03:56 there was some early concern about the violence in the film. Is that concern warranted? Do you think the film on a certain level is like so close to being a really interesting and somewhat disturbing look at what goes into making these white male mass shooters? It looks too, what can alienate someone like so far that they feel their own death or the death of others doesn't mean anything. And it's like so close to kind of being this really interesting commentary on where we are right now, but it's not willing to go that far and it's not willing to kind of step into that kind of dangerous terrain I think. But, um, there are elements to it that are really intriguing. I mean it, it, it's been compared to taxi driver but taxi driver was Martin Scorsese and he had a very clear kind of point that he was making and how he was looking at the violence and this like there's some, a couple moments of shocking violence but I'm not sure to what effect and you know for me the joke has always been about chaos and he's been this kind of nihilistic character and here you have Joaquin Phoenix's joker. Speaker 3: 05:06 The chaos he creates is like accidental and he just, he kind of enjoys it but there's no sense this is not your typical DC super-villain. It's like all this stuff kind of happens by accident because he's kind of a pathetic, not too bright guy. And I felt like there should have been more of that nihilistic sense of like I'm doing this on purpose or after it accidentally happens that he somehow understands what that means in order for him to somewhat have been able to make a statement like give his character some direction. This is supposed to be like an origin story. Where does he go from here? I can't see where he goes from here. Yeah. Yesterday. Yeah. I think Speaker 5: 05:48 in a way the entire film sits at the intersection of mental health and violence. So when you, when you are in that territory, uh, it's very hard for it not to comment on what's going on right now in terms of mass shootings and so forth. And I think if you were to be really uncharitable you could say that the whole movie is a defense of people who do that. And I think that's where it gets into, you know, di gets on dangerous ground and this comes from the team that gave us the hangover, but it is considerably darker. Uh, how well do you think Todd Phillips handled the material and did he find a successful tone? Speaker 3: 06:25 Yeah, I think that's where the big failing is, is that he doesn't quite know. Does he want to make some of it funny? Does he want to make it shocking? Uh, he has a little bit of all that. And you know, you have Robert Euro playing this talk show host that kind of references to the Jerry Lewis character that was in King of comedy and now to Nero's in that role instead. There's like elements of this that I really like, Speaker 5: 06:49 but it never comes together for me. Yeah. I might've sounded very negative up to now, but I actually think is pure entertainment. You know, the movie does crackle and zinc and it has a, a sense of energy which drives a towards its inevitable conclusion. But I think that, you know, this, it needs to have a thesis to make. And at the end of the, at the end of the movie, you're not left with anything and it almost seems to leave you with the world on fire and not having said much about this character other than how he came to be who he is. But isn't that the purpose of an origin story though? Yeah. The boat doesn't come until the end of the series. Speaker 3: 07:30 Right? It's, it's like you need to have some sort of understanding, I think, of the character. So to me, when you get to the end, you don't have the joker of what you remember in like the DC comics or in the Heath ledger film or in the old Batman TV series. Like he doesn't feel like he's any kind of a character that has a future. I don't know. I just didn't know like where this film was going and what they wanted to say Speaker 5: 08:00 with the character. I think if you're going to go there, if you're going to go in that space of mental illness and violence and so forth, then you need to have a point to make. And I think one good thing which can, which might come out of the movies that it might cause people to have serious discussions about this topic, which the country needs, but as it is, I think the movie just cannot stave off this wreak of irresponsible pro vocation. It's just there to provoke I think, and it doesn't know what it wants to provoke about. Basically y'all have told me that we have may ham and also commercials, you know, dark movie. That's why yes, Speaker 3: 08:38 you could've been an interesting reflection of our times being this sense of we all feel like there's a sort of chaos going on that there's things we can't control, that there's this like just under the surface, this kind of undercurrent, you know, violence and, and dissatisfaction and rebellion and all like all this that's going on. But I just don't feel like they knew what they wanted to say about it. Like they show it but they're not sure. You know, are the rich people, the villains is this guy a victim that we need to feel sorry for and cheer on whose the badge? I know the good guy. Yeah. And it doesn't even have to be like baggy. Like there's just no sense. And if they want to have just an entire sense of total chaos and nihilism where nothing matters, then they have to commit to that. And I don't think they committed to that dark vision either. Hmm. Interesting. I guess the big question is how do you think audiences will respond to it? I think some of the, you know, people who are fans of the comic may be a little frustrated with some of the direction that they take the character, but I don't think it's opening up against anything else. There's a lot of anticipation at won an award at Venice. So I think it's probably gonna attract a lot of attention. Speaker 5: 09:59 Yeah, I think it'll do very well. I think in spite of all these hot button issues that it raises, I think, again, as just an action movie or an origin movie, it has a really good sense of energy. It kind of keeps moving from, you know, it, it, it's, it's breathless almost in terms of how it rushes towards its eventual outcomes. So I think, I think the, the pure comic book, uh, lovers will, will get a lot out of it. I, I think it'll do well commercially. Hmm. All right. Switching gears just a little here, since this is a, the month of October, we are also going to ask our critics to pick some films suitable for the Halloween season. So, Speaker 3: 10:37 Beth, this is your favorite time of year. No question about it. Uh, what do you recommend? Well, you know, there's such a huge ocean of films to choose from. So I decided I had to kind of narrow it in some way, shape or form, but I thought I would recommend a pair of silent films that are available for free on the internet. You can search for these movies, but they're both from 1922 and one is Nosferatu, which is really like the first vampire undead film and max Schreck who plays the character of count oral like is so creepy that you can't believe that he's not a creature of the night and the undead. And then another one that's fascinating is Hacksan, which is a S a a sort of a documentary on witchcraft made by the Swedish and Danish filmmakers, but they use special effects to try and create all this folklore and it's amazing and the effects are really stunning for 1922. So I would recommend those two that you can find anywhere and then add a bit of shameless self promotion. I'm going to be showing Island of lost souls and old pre-code Hollywood horror film with lot and Speaker 5: 11:54 at digital gym on Sunday. And it's just a beautiful, bizarre, creepy Speaker 6: 12:05 [inaudible] Speaker 7: 12:06 Oh, convinced. Here's the thing on this table isn't he'll know it's cries to him. Do you know what it is? What I began with? No, an animal. Well we might as well discuss this bank thing now that you know the thing I wanted to prove how completely she was a woman. Speaker 5: 12:23 Yeah. Steve, what do you, what do you have? So I'm going all the way on the other side of the time. So I'm going to be picking a few films which were released this year. And uh, two of them that are the top of my list are us and Midsummer. And I think they're both from directors who are interested in making more ambitious, more complicated material. And I think both of these films are very, very ambitious. They're both also very messy. But at the end of the day you feel like you've watched something and they both are, are open to a lot of detection and interpretation. And you'll be talking for hours afters. So definitely recommend those two. There's a family in our driveway, Speaker 8: 13:09 uh, Speaker 5: 13:09 who is that [inaudible] and if you want something lighter, I would recommend a double feature of the movies, Gretta and ma, which came out, which kind of have a lot of fun being campy and silly and funny within the horror genre. Interesting. All right. I us as in my, my bucket too. I like the conjuring for going for something more recent and then, uh, from, from my childhood Poltergeist and the Exorcist. Just the first one though, I don't like the followups. I like the psychological thrillers and things that make you think and scared to go to sleep at night. Yeah, that makes a great movie to me. I was raised Catholic. I stayed away from the exercise for like 20 years. That's what made it so [inaudible] just ruined my childhood proper properly yet it was so scary. Speaker 1: 14:03 All right, well thanks to KPBS cinema junkie, Beth DACA, Mondo and movie Wallace, his podcast or Yazdi pathoglobin. We will all be back next month to talk about new releases and films that we are all thankful for.