Joker: Folie à Deux (2024)

Director: Todd Phillips

Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga, Brendan Gleeson, Catherine Keener

Have I Seen it Before: I can’t say I’ve ever even heard of a film like this one. Which, I suppose, with that sentence taken on its own truly counts as something of a course correction for the original Joker (2019), which can’t help but recommend better, more original films at its core.

Did I Like It: Now the question really remains: should this film exist? As I type this there seems to be a growing consensus around single answer to that question, with a seemingly infinite number of reasonings to get to the answer that this film should not have been made.

None of those reasonings matter, really. Nor would mine, except for my inescapable conclusion that the filmmakers themselves really would have preferred that the film wasn’t made in the first place. I have never seen a film try desperately to be some many different types of films, and yet somehow be desperately ashamed of each attempt.

In its opening minutes, it tries to be an anarchic sequel, almost calling to mind Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990) with an animated opening. This is abandoned as rapidly as possible.

As the film progresses, it occasionally—and under protest—does some things that one might expect from a sequel to the original film. We get a layer or two more awareness of the characters from the original film, both those that survived and otherwise.

It understands—or at least acknowledges—that there is a DC logo at the top of the film and continues to try to give us a take on Gotham City, and an origin story for characters we’ve already seen have their origins displayed on film. Harley Quinn (Gaga) is here, and their deeply unwell romance might light up a movie—and have a fair shot at reclaiming what went wrong with Suicide Squad (2016)—but when the runtime gets a little long, even she anxiously waits for the next train out of the film. We also get Harvey Dent here, and sure enough half of his face is blown off by film’s end, but how can we care when the film is desperate not to dwell on the fact?

It tries to be a commentary on serial killer celebrity in the 1980s (I get notes of the Gacy capture and trial). That’s probably where the film is it’s most interesting, but guess what? It’s barely about that.

Yes, Virginia. Despite what you might have seen in the film’s trailers, what you have heard is correct: This film is a musical. Sort of. It flails at attempting to be a musical, before quickly giving way to the film(s) Warner Bros. probably thought they ordered. Following up the Taxi Driver (1976) and The King of Comedy (1982) of it all with a little bit of New York, New York (1977) might have been the exact thing that the glassy-eyed fans of the first film deserved for their trouble. But that didn’t happen. They lacked the gumption here.

It is a court drama. A psychological drama. A dark comedy. A prison movie. All of these it tries, but abandons before we the viewer can decide if Phillips succeeded or not.

What else is left? Can the film just be about the Joker? Who he is and how he came to be? Maybe, and maybe that film might be released one day, but not to spoil the ending of the film, but as a “rise of the Clown Prince of Crime” film, it almost forgets to be that, and rushes that note in at the last moment. We wouldn’t have a hope to assess (to say nothing of enjoy) a film like that if it adds things like that in the last minute.

Synecdoche, New York (2008)

Director: Charlie Kaufman

Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Samantha Morton, Michelle Williams, Catherine Keener

Have I Seen it Before: I’m not entirely sure I’ve stopped watching it at this point. The film is so amorphous that I seriously wondered if Kaufman was still shooting the film, years after Hoffman died, and with a ten year head start, is still sending reels to upload to Netflix. 

Did I Like It: After saying something like that, I have to say no, right?

There are a lot of interesting visuals in this film, and they illicit a lot of feelings ranging from melancholy to deep melancholy. Some may say that Kaufman—a screenwriter making his first, and to date only directing attempt—is a gifted storyteller in need of a visual stylist like Spike Jonze to complete the package. This isn’t the problem here. He needed a tighter screenplay, which, honestly, he has provided other directors with far less effort.

That crack about melancholy above is maybe unfair, but only just so. There is much to identify in here. At it’s core, it deals with the blurring of lines between fiction and reality (I think) and that is a topic I have spent at least a little bit of time working out myself. The yearning for some kind of human contact beyond simply the romantic (again, I think) cuts deep with anyone on the north side of thirty and has spent a goodly chunk of their life in the same committed relationship.

Even the image of the schlubby Hoffman wandering through his life trying to write something real, while trying to find the right person to play himself (again, I can only guess) feels like I’m personally being called out, but that can’t be universal, right? It even took me most of the first forty-five minutes of the film to get over the fact that Hoffman and I essentially have the same haircut.

I just wish all of that could have fit into something I might understand as a story. I know Kaufman can create brilliantly structured stories, and that makes whatever I just saw all the more disappointing.

Get Out (2017)

Director: Jordan Peele

Cast: Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Bradley Whitford, Catherine Keener

Have I Seen it Before: Yep.

Did I Like It: Double yep.

I don’t know if it’s worth having a discussion of diversity in film in the context of a review, but if it ever would be, this would be the film in which to have that conversation. Some might complain about increases in representation. I do not understand these people, and find no other explanation for their attitudes than some degree of prejudice. Truly, a diversification of the types of stories we are exposed to only increases variety. How many more horror movies do we need to see with white guys at the center of the goings on? John Carpenter already mastered that. Let’s try something new.

Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest…

Peele brings every skill to bear that he harnessed in giving Key and Peele a cinematic literacy that one would not expect from a sketch comedy show. While the playing with tension and thriller tropes in this film put him in serious contention as the next Alfred Hitchcock, he now may be angling for being the second coming of Rod Serling, balancing on the line between those two lofty peaks is a worthy endeavor, and Peele is accomplishing the task with an astonishing level of skill. That he has this innate level of talent at the beginning of his feature career hints that we may have already been robbed of years of terrific films. Assuming that he continues to build on those skills in ways that I can’t at this point wrap my head around, promises that we will have a number of years of even greater films left to enjoy.

The more I gush or try to deeply think about this film, the more I start sounding like Dean Armitage (Whitford, channeling just enough of Josh Lyman to keep me eternally unsettled), so I almost wonder if I should keep this simple. This is brilliant, thoughtful, thrilling film executed with profound skill. If you’ve seen it before and loved it, it only gets better with repeat viewing. If you haven’t seen it, you should rectify your error. If you saw it, and weren’t on board with the film, you may need to re-think your life far more aggressively.