Performances, Themes and Imagery Make Up for Being About 40 Minutes Too Long
Between “The Substance,” “Megalopolis,” and this, the last 3 weeks have been fuckin weird for movies.
Only one of those three was more of a controlled and disciplined strange with “The Substance,” while “Megalopolis” was a true rollercoaster of quality.
“Joker” falls somewhere in the middle for me. Know some people are really bashing it, and it does suffer from being way too long (I don’t think an editor was truly hired for the movie, like every scene is 2 minutes longer than it needs to be) and the first half is pretty wandering and monotonous.
But really, I kinda dug it? It’s beautifully shot (there’s an awesome one shot later in the movie that’s legit impressive), Joaquin rocks it, Gaga is great (although not truly in the movie enough) and there’s actually something valuable being said here about the erosion of individualism surrounded by noise and sensationalism and how the public’s mob mentality just swallows people up.
Definitely not perfect, and, like the first one, the themes and performances are valuable but the storytelling is eh. But personally don’t think it deserves to get roasted how it is, and that’s coming from a dude that thinks the first one is way overrated.