Glenn Fleshler

Review of “Joker”

Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) lives a miserable life of failure and desperation. He’s a clown for hire, working out of a dingy office in Gotham City with several other men that dress up as clowns. On one of these jobs in front of a business that’s closing, Arthur’s “Going out of Business” sign is stolen by some teenagers. He chases them down an alley when they jump him and beat him up. Arthur lives in a small apartment in a rundown building with his mother Penny (Frances Conroy). Penny sends letters to her former employer, Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen) of Wayne Enterprises, asking for financial help to get out of their circumstances. Arthur meets a neighbor that lives on the same floor, Sophie (Zazie Beetz), and is immediately smitten by her, even following her to work the next day. Arthur and Penny like to watch a local talk/variety show hosted by Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro). Arthur is seeing a counselor and receiving medication to help his depression and a neurological condition that causes him to laugh uncontrollably at inappropriate times. Arthur is trying to become a standup comedian and performs at a local club. Between his laughter condition and his bad material, Arthur bombs. However, the club videotaped the performance and sent it to the Murray Franklin Show where Franklin mercilessly berates Arthur on the air. Arthur is performing as a clown at a children’s hospital when the gun he’s carrying for protection falls out of his pants. He tells his boss it’s a prop gun, but he’s fired. Arthur is riding home on the train laughing uncontrollably when he’s attacked by three Wayne Enterprises employees. He shoots and kills all three men and runs away. The police come to interrogate him as witnesses saw a man in clown makeup running away from the scene, but he isn’t home. They talk to Penny, but she has a stroke and is taken to a hospital. Thomas Wayne calls the person that killed his three employees a clown, starting a backlash against the wealthy and powerful of Gotham City, with a clown mask as a symbol of rebellion. So many people called the Murray Franklin Show about Arthur’s standup, Arthur is invited to appear on the show. Arthur’s mental state is deteriorating as secrets come out and revenge is planned.

“Joker” is that rare comic book movie that focuses on the villain. Back when Andrew Garfield was Spider-Man, Sony had plans to make a villain-centric movie about several of Spider-Man’s enemies called “The Sinister Six.” Spider-Man would have made an appearance, likely at the end to stop whatever nefarious plan the team had, but that movie was cancelled with the lackluster box office performance of “The Amazing Spider-Man 2.” What sets “Joker” apart is the lack of a hero to fight against him. The stage is all his and the Clown Prince of Crime does not disappoint.

Joaquin Phoenix is an actor that can wrap himself fully in a character, even disappearing into himself for his faux documentary “I’m Still Here.” In “Joker,” Phoenix nearly physically disappears as he lost over 50 pounds to play the role of a man invisible to society. His maniacal laugh and usually dead eyes show us a man with a short rope that got to the end of it a long time ago. Phoenix plays Fleck, and ultimately Joker, as a man from which one doesn’t expect brutal violence. Fleck’s killing of the Wayne Enterprises workers appears to surprise even him. The first time he fires a gun, by accident in his apartment, one could easily expect from his reaction that Fleck would swear off ever touching a gun. Violence becomes easier and easier for Fleck as the movie goes on and you can see Arthur becoming more comfortable with his brutality. Violence gives him power that he’s never had, and he becomes enamored with his death dealing. Despite the bursts of violence and uncontrolled laughter, Phoenix delivers a controlled performance, teetering on the edge of camp and madness, but pulling back to keep Arthur Fleck grounded, even as he’s losing his grip on reality.

The story for “Joker” is also very different from most comic book movies in that there are no heroes, and I don’t just mean no Batman. None of the characters are heroic in any way. Arthur’s mother is an unrealistic dreamer waiting on Thomas Wayne to rescue them. Thomas Wayne is a stone-cold capitalist with very little concern for the welfare of Gotham City’s downtrodden. None of Arthur’s co-workers are really his friends, apart from a little person that manages the office. Murray Franklin is only concerned about how Arthur can be used as a foil for his insult-based comedy. Even Sophie, who is friendly towards Arthur, isn’t exactly what she seems. With no Batman swooping in to save Gotham for at least 15 years (we see a young Bruce Wayne a couple of times), Gotham is on its own with apparently no one willing to save it.

“Joker” is rated R for strong bloody violence, disturbing behavior, language and brief sexual images. Three men are shot to death with significant blood. A character is stabbed in the eye with a pair of scissors. A character is smothered to death. Another character is shot in the head and chest. A mob overwhelms and attacks to police detectives. Arthur’s fits of laughter can be very uncomfortable to watch. He visits Arkham Asylum for information and rides an elevator with a person strapped to a gurney, screaming and struggling. I don’t recall anything sexual in the film unless they are talking about when Arthur goes to Sophie’s apartment and kisses her. Foul language is scattered.

“Joker” premiered at the Venice Film Festival where it received the Golden Lion, the festival’s highest honor. There was talk of Phoenix winning a best actor Oscar for his portrayal of a man that’s sinking into madness. Then the fear of violence similar to the Aurora, Colorado shooting at a midnight showing of “The Dark Knight Rises” began to surface (Note: Joker isn’t in that movie but the mentally ill young man that killed 20 people and injured 70 more appeared to be emulating the character with his orange-dyed hair). Then there were comparisons of Arthur Fleck to incels. Then an email to Army members warned them to be careful if they went to see the film and make sure they were prepared should violence occur. Then some critics began to pan the film for what they considered its sympathetic portrayal of a killer. Then director Todd Phillips made a statement that he gave up making comedies because it was so easy to offend people and social media’s cancel culture. Things spun out of control and most of it had little to do with the movie. It’s a good movie that mixes a classic comic book character with real world issues of socioeconomic inequality and a lack of mental health care in this country. I realize in the world of getting clicks and driving traffic to an advertising-supported website, there’s a pressure to post things, write things, print things that are designed to create controversy and encourage arguments. If there was ever an example of that kind of journalism and criticism, the writing about “Joker” is it.

“Joker” gets five stars.

Three new movies this week are hoping you are in the mood for animated Halloween-adjacent fun, some clone action and smartphone operating system that runs your life even more than the one you have now. I’ll see and review at least one of the following:

The Addams Family—

Gemini Man—

Jexi—

Listen to Comedy Tragedy Marriage where my wife and I take turns selecting movies and TV shows for the other to watch then talking about how much we love or hate them. Get it wherever you get podcasts. Follow me on Twitter @moviemanstan and send emails to stanthemovieman123@gmail.com.

Review of “Suburbicon”

Nicky Lodge (Noah Jupe) is an average kid living in an average house in the average neighborhood of Suburbicon. His father Gardner (Matt Damon) works in insurance. His mother Rose (Julianne Moore) is in a wheelchair after an automobile accident. His Aunt Margaret (also Julianne Moore) is visiting overnight when two men, Ira and Louis (Glenn Fleshler and Alex Hassell) enter the home, tie everyone up and kill Rose with an overdose of chloroform. It seems Gardner owes the men money and hasn’t paid it back yet so the murder of Rose was a warning. Aunt Margaret moves into the Lodge home to help Gardner raise Nicky. Officer Hightower (Jack Conley) tells Gardner to come down to the station and look at a lineup based on his description of the robbers. Margaret brings Nicky to the station because he doesn’t want to stay at the house alone. While Ira and Louis are in the lineup neither Gardner nor Margaret tells police who they are. Nicky is confused and wonders what his father and aunt are up to. Meanwhile, the Mayers family has moved into Suburbicon and caused quite a stir with the neighbors as they are black and this is 1959. The Mayers house backs up to the Lodge house and Nicky and Andy Mayers (Tony Espinosa), a boy about Nicky’s age, have become friends. Crowds gather at the Mayers house, making noise, banging drums and yelling at the family inside to move as they don’t want their kind in Suburbicon.

Whenever Joel and Ethan Coen are involved in the making of a movie I get excited. “Suburbicon” is a script the brothers wrote back in 1986 but it has only now been turned into a film by frequent Coen Brothers collaborator George Clooney. Clooney, along with writer Grant Heslov, added some story elements and Clooney directed. Perhaps George and Grant should have left the script alone because “Suburbicon” feels like a two different stories that have been forcefully fused together against their will.

The trailer for “Suburbicon” makes the movie look like a madcap crime caper and parts of the film have that tone; however, much of what is suggested in the trailer misrepresents what happens in the film with clever editing suggesting one thing is in reaction to another when the events are unrelated. Anyone walking into the movie expecting a somewhat more violent version of “Raising Arizona” is going to be disappointed. “Suburbicon” is far darker than the trailer suggests.

It is also uneven with a subplot about the community trying to force a black family to leave feeling very shoehorned into the film. It is a ham-fisted attempt by Clooney to make us see that what is the focus of public anger usually isn’t the real problem. While everyone in the neighborhood believes the black family is bringing in an unsavory element, the nice white family across the way is being terrorized by thugs because of the actions of the father. It screams hypocrisy and intolerance in a very clumsy way. Clooney has proven he is a very good movie director so it puzzles me why this effort is so uneven. I would like to know more about the creative process to put this film together because large parts of it are really good. That’s not to say the sections involving the black family isn’t good; but it just feels like it’s from a different movie.

It’s a shame the film is a bit of a mess since Matt Damon is so good as the morally corrupted Gardner Lodge. Lodge is a man that thinks he’s far smarter than he actually is; however, he quickly shows he’s quite dumb by not paying off the loan shark. Perhaps that is part of a larger plan; but even so, it spectacularly blows up in his face. Lodge is pushed further and further into bad decisions as the story progresses and is always trying to solve problems caused by other efforts to solve problems. Damon plays Lodge constantly seething with anger and on the verge of exploding. Like a good person of the period, he stuffs his rage down deep in his soul and tries to keep it bottled up. Should it be released well, people might talk and think poorly of him down at the lodge or church. Damon is infuriating as Lodge since most of his issues could be solved with one call to the police; but we know he’ll never make that call as he is a coward looking to avoid as much trouble as possible. Damon gives Lodge a boyish charm that gives him at least one redeeming quality, keeping the audience from hating him totally.

Julianne Moore is both Rose and Margaret but since the former is killed early in the film I’ll be talking mostly about her performance as the latter. Moore is stunningly creepy as the surrogate mother and wife. There is a streak of cruelty that runs through the character that turns what could have been a throwaway role into something meaningful and dangerous. Margaret is clearly mentally ill and is teetering on the edge of a breakdown throughout the film. Moore is masterful at portraying damaged characters and this one is clearly broken from almost the first time we see her.

The performances are somewhat hampered by a plot that moves at a leisurely pace. It takes too long to introduce the meat of the story after the misdirection of the black family’s arrival in town and the full story of what’s going on is never fully explained. We know Lodge owes money to the thugs but we don’t know what he got the money for. Are the thugs small time players or are they more heavily connected? Are Gardner and Margaret involved prior to the events in the film or only after? Gardner was driving the night of the car accident that put Rose in the wheelchair but did he do it on purpose to try and collect on her life insurance? There are a great many loose threads dangling by the end of the film with no satisfactory answers for any of them.

“Suburbicon” is rated R for some sexuality, language and violence. There is poisoning, strangling, stabbing and other violence shown with some of it being very bloody. There is a riot that breaks out at the Mayers’ home with windows shattered and fires set. The sexuality is limited to a scene where Nicky walks in on Gardner and Margaret having a mildly kinky scene. Foul language is scattered.

There’s a really good movie embedded in “Suburbicon” that could have been the dark and violent domestic drama that the Coen’s made famous in “Fargo” and “Blood Simple.” Sadly, the addition of a needless subplot about racism and a languid pace put “Suburbicon” on the lower end of “Best Coen Brothers’ Movies” scale. Great performances from Matt Damon and Julianne Moore almost are wasted. It isn’t the best movie but it does have its redeeming qualities. If you have the patience check it out.

“Suburbicon” gets three stars out of five.

This week, there’s a rare Wednesday opening for a sequel and the arrival of the next Marvel flick. I’ll see and review at least one of the following:

A Bad Mom’s Christmas—

Thor: Ragnarok—

Listen to The Fractured Frame podcast where ever you download your podcasts. Follow me on Twitter @moviemanstan and send emails to stanthemovieman123@gmail.com.