1glitch0 posted:

Having read Todd Phillips bitchy comments about why he made this movie I don't think he realized what he ended up making.

moana posted:

The water trickling out of the flower in the first scene where he gets beaten up.

Robotnik Nudes posted:

It managed to be cinema, art even, which puts it head and shoulders above anything ever to come out of The MCU. It wasn’t brilliant but it was pretty good.

LORD OF BOOTY posted:

I feel like calling the Hangover movies endorsements of their characters' behavior is kind of reductive, the series is pretty blunt and clear that it's about huge pieces of poo poo and 2 actively tries as hard as it can to torch any shred of likability the audience might've seen

They're black comedy that got taken as straight frat-bro-comedy, essentially

Like I kind of get where Phillips is generally coming from because, like, "here's a terrible person, look how lovely they are" sums up most of his movies, people really should have assumed at least a little more good faith on this than they did

well why not posted:

Hangover 1 definitely wants you to like those characters. Bradley Cooper’s character at the very least.

LORD OF BOOTY posted:

I feel like calling the Hangover movies endorsements of their characters' behavior is kind of reductive, the series is pretty blunt and clear that it's about huge pieces of poo poo and 2 actively tries as hard as it can to torch any shred of likability the audience might've seen

They're black comedy that got taken as straight frat-bro-comedy, essentially

Like I kind of get where Phillips is generally coming from because, like, "here's a terrible person, look how lovely they are" sums up most of his movies, people really should have assumed at least a little more good faith on this than they did

Sleeveless posted:

Nonsense, I'm sure the guy whose comedy ouvre was dudebros saying things like "paging dr. [slur]" and pantoming a baby jerking off has an incredibly nuanced understanding of human psychology.

I, Butthole posted:

The other guy involved in writing those created and wrote a horrifying and nuanced exploration of the human and psychological cost of a disaster this year sooooo

adamarama posted:

I thought it was very good. Not a masterpiece by any means but Phoenix's performance is compelling and it's well crafted. To me, it's streets ahead of all the marvel nonsense. I don't see how critics could rave about endgame and deride this. This seems to be performing well at the box office, hopefully we'll get more character driven comic book films.

LORD OF BOOTY posted:

The thing is Hangover 2 was very clearly not an accident and was very clearly Todd Phillips going "what the gently caress you weren't supposed to like these people" as angrily as possible, and that strongly colors how I interpret the first movie

The first movie basically takes a typical bro-comedy "tight-rear end gets into wacky situation, his friends that he initially spurns teach him to loosen up to get out of it" plot, but plays it in a way darker manner than you'd typically see; Bradley Cooper is a "tight-rear end" in that he actually attempts to live up to his responsibilities and not drink his life away into a haze of abusing random people, and his friends are all absolute diarrhea people who largely just finish mutating him into one of themselves, rather than them being rough but largely decent people who cure him of being straight-laced through the power of bro-hood like usual

e: Like I think Phillips used basically the worst possible word choice to describe his situation but, when you look at his complaint in detail, he's basically griping that people won't give him the benefit of the doubt re: making something about garbage people that doesn't endorse garbage people. And most of his filmography has something to do with garbage people in some way or another, I mean dude came out the gate with a loving GG Allin docu, so it's reasonable for this to be a situation he's not exactly thrilled about even if you're on the opposite page.

I also gotta agree, for the record, that he's not really that smart and it's not really incredibly surprising that shitheads took The Hangover the wrong way because it's kind of... too subtle for its own good about this? And then 2 is just so unsubtle it's kind of a shock it actually got released, which is its own kind of impressive but also doesn't really make for an enjoyable movie since it's basically nothing but the cast being horrible people to each other and everyone else around them.

wyoming posted:

I feel Joaquin's performance as the Joker, I suppose as he was fully becoming the Joker on the talk show, was heavily influenced by Divine.
"They couldn't carry a tune to save their lives"

And like, his speech is like a whinier version of this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTOWIMJkKpc
and the whole, Live Homicide

The World Inferno posted:

It is what it is.

Does feel pretty drat tone-deaf nowadays to do a major release where the anti-hero vigilante only does just murders, continually expresses indifference or joy in murdering, and is shown triumphant at the end because of said murders.

Not that it's a requirement, but at no point does the film suggest what he's doing is wrong, or hurting innocent people. Heck, they even use the phrase "deserves it" repeatedly. It feels like they could have done something at the end to imply that. Or made the psychologist a well meaning but ineffective person.

wyoming posted:

I feel Joaquin's performance as the Joker, I suppose as he was fully becoming the Joker on the talk show, was heavily influenced by Divine.
"They couldn't carry a tune to save their lives"

And like, his speech is like a whinier version of this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTOWIMJkKpc
and the whole, Live Homicide

1glitch0 posted:

It's like when George Lucas started saying the prequels were made for kids. Nah, not really.

The World Inferno posted:

It is what it is.

Does feel pretty drat tone-deaf nowadays to do a major release where the anti-hero vigilante only does just murders, continually expresses indifference or joy in murdering, and is shown triumphant at the end because of said murders.

Not that it's a requirement, but at no point does the film suggest what he's doing is wrong, or hurting innocent people.

Stairmaster posted:

this movie makes crime look cool

Terror Sweat posted:

Crimes against the rich are cool, boring mundane white-collar crimes are not. Also this movie is definitely going to make some kids start smoking, joker made it look cool as hell

Blast Fantasto posted:

The score for this movie was very good and reminded me a lot of Johann Johannsson’s work - I looked it up and the composer for Joker, Hildur Guonadottir, actually played cello on a number of Johannsson’s scores.

Tart Kitty posted:

Okay, I've been thinking about the movie since seeing it earlier today and I just... don't dig it. Everything about it is good on a technical level; the acting is good, the cinematography is good, Hildur Guðnadóttir's score is amazing (albeit maybe a little derivative of Carter Burwell's work on Fargo?), but it just doesn't gel on a narrative level.

Despite it being a Joker "origin" story, I think it kind of does a bad job at executing that goal in that it feels like there is some significant character stuff missing in relation to how extremely different Arthur acts during the talk show at the end. It's the only time we get the full-on "Joker" Joker in the movie, but it seems to come completely out of nowhere. His inflection changes, the way he inhabits a physical space changes. He becomes sassy, sarcastic. He monologues about A Society or whatever. The Joker we see on the talk show feels like the Joker present in most Batman media, except... I'm not sure where it comes from. We never see those elements bubble up in Arthur earlier in the film, even as he begins to unravel. The closest we get is the "oh I forgot to punch out" bit at the Clown HQ, but... otherwise those personality traits are completely absent. I know somebody's gonna be all "hurrrr he isn't himself until he puts on the makeup" but I call bullshit. The switch flip from awkward, halting Arthur Fleck to Catty Bitch Joker is too clean and sudden. It feels like somebody was like "oh man you better get Joker as gently caress in the last twenty minutes-or-so."

Grizzled Patriarch posted:

The multiple "midget" jokes are pretty much the only ones aside from Arthur's intentionally bad ones. They got chuckles from my audience but it just seemed like crappy punching-down humor. Then there was the sliding door bit, which was just tonally bizarre.

Jascum posted:

Hopefully Hollywood wakes up and realizes that they should stop just making films for nerds and kids and start making movies for adults again.

Hollismason posted:

This movie is really great but problematic with them making Joker have a established mental illness and history of abuse because it kind of plays into the mentally ill and abused people can snap at any moment, when in reality most of the time they simply self harm.

CopperHound posted: