Gladiator, The Last Duel, Blade Runner, or Alien, it is not. Ridley Scott’s Napoleon was my most anticipated movie of 2023. The elements were in place. It had the director. It had the actor (Joaquin Phoenix – Walk the Line, Joker). It had the story. Yet, the pieces never came together. Instead, it was a two-hour and 38-minute chaotic mess that offered no logical transition of scenes, little connection between characters, and easily forgettable battle scenes that left much to be desired. This film was a catastrophic failure in many ways.
Category Archives: Joaquin Phoenix
Joker (2019)
A movie that didn’t need to be made often will benefit from the doubt if that same movie pays due diligence and does the movie right. Those wondering why we need a Joker origin story when there is a perfect origin story in The Dark Knight (one of the 25 best movies ever made) should find some relief in knowing that the Christopher Nolan trilogy story will not be confused with Todd Phillips’ (War Dogs, Old School) Joker. This film never mentions the word Batman nor refers to anything related to, perhaps, the most iconic comic book franchise of all time other than references to Gotham City and a billionaire businessman named Thomas Wayne.
The Sisters Brothers (2018)
My first impression of the trailer of Jacques Audiard’s (Dheepan) The Sisters Brothers was that it too quickly and too easily reminded me of a Quentin Tarantino movie. The trailer teetered the line of whether it was a drama or a comedy, a comedy masquerading itself as a drama, a drama trying to go for so much dark humor, or a variety of other techniques made famous by one of our generation’s most recognized and revered directors. But, honestly, to compare Audiard’s film to one of Tarantino’s would be doing a disservice to Audiard because this movie is better than anything Tarantino has directed since Pulp Fiction, except for 2009’s Inglourious Basterds. This Tarantino was one that I liked, but one, like each of his movies, had more than a few scenes that were difficult to watch.
Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot (2018)
What a year for Joaquin Phoenix (Walk the Line, Her) will have. With four movies set for release in 2018, Phoenix is an early favorite for a Best Actor Academy Award for the critically acclaimed and still under-appreciated You Were Never Really Here. Say what you want about that movie if you’ve seen it, but you can’t knock on his amazingly even performance. The highly anticipated The Sisters Brothers (fall release) has also received some early Oscar buzz. As good as he was in You Were Never Really Here and as good as he probably will be in The Sisters Brothers, his performance of the year will be as John Callahan, the quadriplegic cartoon artist in the biopic Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot, a movie that many moviegoers will forget because of its title, but not because of its story or the performances of its lead. I was skeptical of the title and the trailer because you never know if a Phoenix movie will be great or terrible. But I trust director Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting, Finding Forrester). I felt invested in the story and the characters. It reminded me a lot of The End of the Tour, a movie which, admittedly, I enjoyed slightly more than Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot. But it had that same sort of vibe with me.
Continue reading Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot (2018)
You Were Never Really Here (2018)
I’m conflicted. Lynne Ramsay’s (Morvern Callar, We Need to Talk About Kevin) You Were Never Really Here is not a great movie. Yet it received an 88% on Rotten Tomatoes and four stars on Roger Ebert’s website. A few times during my viewing, I wanted to say aloud, “This movie sucks,” but, of course, that is something I would not do. But you can imagine how surprised I was when the movie received applause after its conclusion. I was flabbergasted, but I was in an art theatre (this was the only place it was showing). It had been a good year and a half (Arrival) since the audience had last clapped after a movie. So, I decided to read a little about this movie and see what I missed that others saw. First, Joaquin Phoenix’s performance (Gladiator, Walk the Line) was excellent. He was so even and heavy as a down and outgun for hire suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) from what he witnessed while serving in the military and from suffering from events of his childhood he was never able to process.