Joker - Folie à Deux

Great Fleckspectations

Joker - Folie à Deux
Directed by Todd Phillips
Canada USA 2024
DC/Warner Brothers
UK Cinema Release Print.

Well this was an unexpected, surprisingly brilliant movie. I admit I was going in with pretty low expectations but Joker - Folie à Deux, the sequel to the same director’s Joker (reviewed here) is a pretty marvellous film and far superior to the flawed and derivative first movie. Now, that being said, I had one big problem with this movie and it’s the exact same one as I had with the prior film. But also having said that, it really is the only problem I have with this one because, it’s one of those rare, damn near perfect concoctions that Hollywood manages to pitch up every now and again.

So that particular problem... and it is admittedly a huge one... is this: What the heck does this character and movie have to do with the DC character The Joker? Answer, like the first one, almost absolutely nothing. The Joker personae is very different, shares no similarity to the character’s background in the comics and doesn’t even have the tenuous connection to Bruce Wayne that the first film has (indeed, the Wayne family don’t even appear in this one except as a blink and you’ll miss it presence on a billboard). And frankly, name checking Harley Quinn and Harvey Dent as main characters and then having a set prop pushing the idea of Arkham Asylum... that does not a Joker movie make. So to say this is in the same universe as the characters which it exploits to get people into cinemas is a little cynical and misleading, at best, I would say. To their credit, DC are labelling this as an Elseworlds movie (in line with their very bold comic book strand of the same name) but they could have easily have called these two movies something else entirely and not had the links to the comic book universe clumsily used as a marketing proposition at all.

All that being said... I don’t really care because this film is an absolutely magical time at the cinema and is easily, at this point in the year, one of 2024s best movies. Not the best, certainly but, it’s on that list.

This one, once again, top lines Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck (aka The Joker) and he’s joined in this one by Lady Gaga as Lee Quinzel (aka Harley Quinn) who also, it has to be said, has very tenuous links to her comic book alter ego. They are also joined by such luminaries as Brendan Gleeson, Catherine Keener and, briefly, Steve Coogan too. And if you’re expecting more of the same of the first film I’m delighted to be able to say, you may be disappointed. I’m not the biggest fan of Phoenix but I’ve warmed to him in roles like this the last few years and his tender portrait of Arthur once again makes this a memorable movie. And, honestly, Lady Gaga is right there matching him with an equally solid performance all the way. Their respective characters’ love holds the movie together and, alas, I can’t comment on that too much for fear of spoilers but, it’s an interesting dynamic, for sure.

And, as I said, it’s not like the first movie... especially in terms of story. This just covers Arthur’s lead in to and eventual appearance at his trial for five of the six murders he committed in the last movie. But this is also an example of what has come to be known, over the last decade or so, as a Jukebox Musical. There are loads of songs, some of which even I could sing along too (mostly from the 1960s) and some of these transpire in what are the naturalistic settings of the movie and, others of them take place inside Arthur Fleck’s head, where the colours are wild and the glamour comes to the fore. And it’s good stuff. I loved Lady Gaga’s rendition of If They Could See Me Now from Sweet Charity (the Gwen Verdon stage show flagged, as opposed to the Shirley MacLaine movie version of Fosse’s remake of Fellini’s Nights Of Cabiria, both of which I talk about here) and, well, all I will say is, even if it’s just a clip from The Bandwagon, seeing Oscar Levant on the big screen again is awesome. That’s certainly entertainment, if you catch my drift.

Hildur Guðnadóttir’s score once again keeps the visual images and the musical interludes effectively threaded together and the cinematography is all levels of gorgeous, especially when utilising the MGMified colours of the 1950s and 60s musical palette. Plus, the brand new Joker themed Looney Toons short which starts off the movie is a wonderful piece of work too, it has to be said. So, yeah, that’s me pretty much done on Joker - Folie à Deux other than to say, I was genuinely impressed and riveted by the whole film as it slowly played out and I can’t wait to grab this one on Blu Ray when it gets a release. Definitely see this one on a big screen if you can.

Stan And Ollie

Lorra Laurel Laughs

Stan And Ollie
UK/Canada/USA 2018
Directed by Jon S. Baird
Entertainment One
Blu Ray Zone B

I skipped Stan And Ollie when it came out in cinemas... primarily because I knew I’d probably end up watching it with my dad on Father’s Day and I wasn’t so sure it would be any good, or at least not good enough to sit through a second time. As it happens, now that I’ve done exactly that on Father’s Day, I have to say that this is a beautiful movie, both in content and on a technical level too.

The film hasn’t made a huge amount of money given its budget but it has more than doubled it on worldwide box office and so, honestly, the film has not done that badly. It could... and certainly should... have made considerably more but I can understand why fans of both Mr. Stan Laurel and Mr. Oliver Norvell Hardy would be somewhat horrified that anyone would try and catch their particular brand of lightning in a bottle these days. Also, I’m pretty sure that not enough kids nowadays know about this dynamic, comedy duo who made a gazillion silent movie shorts followed by about another gazillion talkies (and the odd feature film), many of which were remakes of those early shorts, if memory serves.

When I was a kid, Laurel And Hardy shorts were playing on TV pretty much all the time throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. It was almost impossible not to catch at least one Stan And Ollie movie a week and, frankly, that was no bad thing. Everybody loved them. They were as much a fixture of daytime/early evening TV as the abundantly aired Tom And Jerry cartoons which also seemed to have disappeared from our screens around about the same time. And that’s what happened to Laurel And Hardy... they disappeared and suddenly stopped being broadcast due, I believe, to complicated legal wrangling about who owned the rights to the transmission of their films and it’s been only up until recently that they’ve started to be televised again. Alas, modern TV is not the beast it used to be and rather than be bombarded with these wonderful little films like I was when I was growing up, you have to go out of your way to look for these now and get lucky if you want to see one... although there is still the wonderful world of physical media such as DVD and Blu Ray if you want to do them right.

So most of the intervening generations between the 1980s until now just wouldn’t have had too much of an opportunity to be exposed to their films and I suspect this sad fact also played a role in the box office performance of this movie (although personally I think more than doubling your money is more than enough of a good thing).

The film had me right from the opening, it has to be said, with a beautifully designed shot after the opening credits which starts out as a static composition of Laurel and Hardy on the two sides of the screen in front of their make up mirrors during the making of Way Out West, with a void of dead area at the centre of the screen. As the two converse with their backs to the camera, we can see each of their faces reflected in their mirrors talking across the screen from each other. It’s a dazzling shot set up which completely threw me off listening to the content of their conversation at this point but then the shot doesn’t remain static, as the two get up and walk out of their dressing room... and then out and then back in through a studio for a long tracking shot as the conversation keeps going. It’s a gorgeous opening and it all just works really well because... not only is it technically brilliant and more than easy on the eye... it’s also wonderfully performed by the two actors. I’ll get to the performances in a little while.

The film then, after Stan has a brief run in with Hal Wallis (played by Danny Huston), who kind of put the two together in the first place and produced their films, shows us a little of the making of the film’s famous dance scene and then gets a little darker as Stan’s contract runs out and he tries to get Ollie to break his contract and come over to 20th Century Fox with him.

The story then jumps the 1950s and the rest of the movie concerns the two’s originally shaky but ultimately successful triumph on their last theatrical tour of the British Isles, before ill health forces Oliver Hardy to retire, a few years before his death.

The beauty of that first shot is built on throughout the course of the film and there are certain echoes in other shots as the director sets up a few things where reflected surfaces feature heavily in the way you watch the two interact, from time to time. It’s almost voyeuristic in the way it sometimes uses reflection as a distancing device but the ultimate expression of the strong sense of ‘fly on the wall’ effect you get here is in one of the last scenes in the movie, where Stan and Ollie are once again re-enacting the little dance they performed at the start of the film on the stage in Ireland. The director brilliantly keeps panning back from their feet to dwell on the shadows of these two projected behind them before coming back to them and then doing this a few times. It’s amazing how much tension this creates in the movie because, each time the camera slides back to the dancing silhouettes, you feel like this could be the moment Oliver Hardy takes a fall and it would be just too horrible to watch as anything but the visual metaphor of a projected shadow. As it happens, things don’t play out exactly the way I thought they would but, obviously, I’m not going to spoil that experience for you with this review.

So let’s get to those all important performances...

I’m not exactly the biggest fan of Steve Coogan so consider me doubly impressed with his performance here. Yeah, everybody will say it’s easy to ‘do Stan’ but it’s really not going to be as easy as people think. Coogan looks, sounds and acts so much like the real Stan Laurel that it’s almost impossible to tell them apart. This way of giving the ‘real life’ Stan characteristics which he may or may not have had in real life but certainly had in his on screen characterisations (so probably did, I guess) pays dividends when we get to the actual drama and dark sections of the picture. He’s as believable as you could ever hope for and the same can also be said of the great John C. Reilly. Reilly is always watchable but here he’s also unrecognisable as himself and there’s very little you could latch on to, to try and distinguish him from Oliver Hardy. He’s played absolutely perfectly here by Reilly. Well... wait... my dad did make the comment that he couldn’t look at the camera and treat it like an intimate friend in quite the same way as Oliver Hardy could but, frankly, it’s more than good enough for me to complete the illusion and nobody is ever going to get these things 100% right... that would be impossible.

So yeah, these performances are tip top, as are the more caricature-like cameo performances of past actors such as James Finlayson and Harry Langdon. However, let’s not stop there because, although there’s not much to compare them to, the wives of Laurel and Hardy are equally impressive, with the always wonderful Shirley Henderson playing Mrs. Hardy and the equally enthralling Nina Arianda as Mrs. Laurel. Frankly, it would have been easy for either or both of these two characters to be upstaged by Coogan and Reilly here, given the nature of their performances but... these two do a fantastic job of portraying two wives who don’t really get on that well but who are an absolute rock for their respective husbands. There are so many good acting turns in this movie but these two are definitely two of the best.

The film also has a pretty nice score by Rolfe Kent which does some interesting things. I wasn’t sure about it first as, although the main Laurel and Hardy music that everyone associates with the two characters (The Cuckoo Song) is used only sparingly throughout the film and, pretty much, only as source (or diegetic) music, Kent goes off on a different tack. However, it’s pretty good and what he seems to be doing... and I’m not great at analysing music or expressing it in words so go easy on me here if I’m saying this the wrong way... but he takes the base rhythm of the famous music in a much understated orchestration and weaves that into the fabric of the score to give it a lighter touch than you would expect but, as it happens, it works beautifully and is never heavy handed or inappropriate throughout the film.

So yeah... that’s me done with the Stan And Ollie biopic and, frankly, it’s a great one. Fans of Laurel and Hardy should definitely brave this one, I think, as it’s never once disrespectful of the great men being portrayed and performances, sets, lighting, editing, music and cinematography all come together to compliment each other nicely here. Definitely one for all the family and a very moving film too, as it happens. A wonderful job here by everyone involved.

Mindhorn

Mann Of Action

Mindhorn
UK 2016 Directed by Sean Foley
UK cinema release print.

When I first saw the trailer for Mindhorn some 6 to 8 weeks ago I looked at it and thought, yeah, looks like a film with a really strong comedy premise but the trailer really isn’t all that funny. Then, however, I remembered back to 1988, when I was almost dragged kicking and screaming to a film I didn’t want to go and see, Terry Gilliam’s remake The Adventures Of Baron Munchaussen, because the trailers had been so awful and offensive. That was the year I realised how misleading some trailers can be because Gilliam’s film, despite a much troubled shooting history, was an absolute instant classic. So I thought, yeah, Mindhorn... how bad can it be? After all, I’d sat through the truly terrible Johnny Depp movie Mordecai and lived to tell the tale (which I tell right here) and I was pretty sure that it couldn’t possibly be any worse than that.

In this prediction, at least, I was more or less right. It’s still not as bad as Mordecai.

Mindhorn is written by, and stars, Julian Barratt (who was so good in the absolutely brilliant Aaaaaaaah! which I reviewed here), playing fictional ‘career on the rocks’ actor Richard Thorncroft, who was best known for his cheesy, Isle of Mann based TV show in the 1980s called Mindhorn. In that show he portrayed the eyepatch wearing title character who had an advanced eyeball that could see into the truth of a person’s soul. However, cut to more or less modern times and a psychotic killer also based on the Isle of Mann, known only as The Kestrel and who thinks Mindhorn was a real person, will only negotiate if Mindhorn is brought in and so the police call in Thorncroft, who goes there with a mind to getting himself some much needed publicity for some kind of comeback or deal further along the road. However, all is not what it seems and there are bigger things afoot than the majority of the supporting characters are aware.

That’s pretty much all I’m giving away of the plot but the film takes Thorncroft through a minefield of ex-colleagues and co-workers from the show as he tries to figure out what really lurks behind the unusual request of The Kestrel and uncover something far more sinister lurking in the shadows. And it’s not without it’s entertainment value, to be sure.

The cast who, in addition to Julian Barratt, include the lovely Essie Davis, Jessica Barden (who was so good in Season Three of Penny Dreadful, reviewed here soon), Russell Tovey and even Steve Coogan are all pretty good. In fact, they’re more than good, they’re brilliant, especially when it comes to finding the little quirks and traits to their characters which tell a lot about them in a very short time. With a special heads up to Simon Farnaby as Thorncroft’s former stuntman who has since, in the fictional 'real life', stood in for him in every other way. Farnaby being the one who kind of steals the show with a couple of laughs here and there but, well that’s the problem with this movie right there...

Mindhorn is engaging, filled with some marvellous characters and is extremely clever. The plot sucks you in and I, for one, found myself really wanting to get involved in it more. I’m sure it must have looked really good on paper and I bet the script reads much better than it’s presented here because... and this is a crunch thing for me... it may be a cleverly concocted comedy but it’s just, really, not very funny. And there’s not much worse than a comedy which works on every possible level apart from the one creative element it needs to succeed as a comedy. In this way, Mindhorn reminded me more of last years spectacular but, ultimately, unfunny Ghostbusters reboot (which I reviewed here ). It’s exactly the same problem because Ghostbusters, too, had some great actresses in it with a lot of good chemistry who you really wanted to like... if only they had remembered to write some actual jokes in it.

And, like the aforementioned Ghostbusters reboot, this is pretty much the only thing which doesn’t work about the movie... but it’s such a crucial element that it causes the whole thing to fail. And it’s such a shame because its a very well observed movie which takes aspects of the human condition and kind of holds them up to the audience and says... look how ridiculous we are as a species. And I just loved things like the various Mindhorn merchandise and packaging such as the toxic truth powder and the different action figures. The music by Keefus Ciancia and David Holmes is appropriate to the images and captures the spirit of both Thorncroft as he is now and the kind of music being written for the fictional TV shows that were being spoofed. There’s a brilliant shout out to the varied and notorious drunken interviews given to Oliver Reed on various chat shows of the 1970s and 80s which was quite cool and there are even some memorable cameos from Kenneth Branagh and Simon Callow where they are playing themselves. But, yeah, you know... it’s just not funny.

And that’s about all I can really say about Mindhorn, at the moment. I rolled the dice on whether I should go and see this one and, unfortunately, the numbers didn’t come up lucky for me. If you are looking for a laugh out loud comedy then I think you might be looking in the wrong place when it comes to this one. That being said, if you are interested in some ingenious acting and are studying the way in which you can pull a character together in broad strokes and make things come alive for an audience then, you know, you might want to take a look at this one before it goes. Not my cuppa tea though, to be sure, so I wouldn’t be recommending it to anyone I know... alas.