If you want to reward a movie that boldly mixes the dark and the light, vote for Jojo Rabbit. Academy members, heed my plea: If you want to reward a movie about the rage of the underclass, vote for Parasite. It is a Scorsese homage that the actual Martin Scorsese thinks is “fine.” It is a profoundly, gloriously dumb movie that somehow has made its way into serious consideration as the best of the year.īut it ends here, folks. It is a comic book movie whose star thinks he is too good for comic book movies. In fact, Joker is merely the fourth-best movie to feature this extremely popular cartoon villain. We, too, are unafraid to skate close to the edge. Get it?! Phillips is asking, nudging us in the ribs. Todd Phillips trains the camera on the movie screen as the Little Tramp roller-skates closer and closer to a steep drop. There’s a scene in Joker when Arthur Fleck sneaks into a fancy benefit screening of Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times.
This, in the end, is what I find stupidest of all about Joker: how convinced the movie seems that it’s daring, that it’s showing us something we’ve never seen before. Joker is 122 minutes long, yet somehow contains 183 minutes of Joaquin Phoenix laughing uncontrollably. Eighteen years later, if your movie shares its big twist with Last Christmas, it is neither smart nor Best Picture material. Either way, it was annoying way back when A Beautiful Mind won Best Picture for recycling this trick. Or are we meant to believe that the filmmakers intended, all along, for us to know we’re watching Arthur’s delusions? Well, that would be even dumber, considering how big the movie plays its dramatic Tyler Durden–esque reveal that actually she was never there. Are viewers seriously meant to believe that Arthur’s cute and funny neighbor, played by Zazie Beetz, actually enjoys his stand-up routine and welcomes him into her life? We’d have to be idiots to think so. The film’s many fake outs? Dumb, dumb, dumb. “Send in the Clowns”? In case you didn’t catch the reference. “Smile,” as in “though your heart is aching”? Come on. “Rock and Roll Part 2”? No more aggressively inane song has ever been recorded.
Let’s take a moment to note the music cues in Joker.
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