Tag Archives: joaquin phoenix

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 455 – Eddington

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Most film and TV has quietly agreed to pretend that the Covid pandemic never happened. Perhaps it’s too awkward to discuss it. Perhaps it’ll date your work. Writer-director Ari Aster doesn’t share these worries, telling a story about the days of lockdowns, mask mandates and conspiracy theories – days of particular hostility and division in the USA, in which individual freedom does constant battle with the greater good.

Eddington is an ambitious attempt at the state-of-the-nation film: a darkly comic thriller with wild tonal shifts, a mass of interwoven themes, uneven pacing, and an eventual climb out of reality into absurdity. José finds much to dislike, particularly its dismissive attitude towards the young people it depicts supporting the Black Lives Matter movement; Mike is surprised at how much he likes it, given how let down he felt by Hereditary. Eddington is certainly a mixed bag, but we’re glad to have seen it.

Listen on the players below, Apple Podcasts, Audible, Spotify, or YouTube Music.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

 

The Gus Van Sant Podcast 5A: To Die For (1995)

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The first of two podcasts on Gus Van Sant’s TO DIE FOR (1995), this one with Matt Hays, journalist, co-editor with Tom Waugh of McGill-Queen’s Press’ QUEER FILM CLASSICS series, and a professor of film at Concordia University and Marianopolis College. Matt’s reviewed Criterion’s recent edition of the film for the current CINEASTE and I wanted to pick up on some of the excellent points he raises there: how is the film a turning point in Van Sant’s career? What is this shifting of gears between Van Sant’s more commercial and more esoteric works? Was the film prescient? What does it tell us about celebrity culture, the media and politics? What is the film’s view of heterosexual relations? Is there a ‘gay gaze’ on the male bodies? What does it tell us about race in America? What are the formal tensions running through the film? It’s structure has been compared to that of CITIZEN KANE and RASHOMON. How so? We agree that Kidman gives one of her greatest performances but have Matt Dillon and Joaquim Phoenix been overlooked? All this and much more can be heard here:

 

The podcast may also be listened to on: Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2zWZ7Egdy6xPCwHPHlOOaT

and on itunes here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/first-impressions-thinking-aloud-about-film/id1548559546

 

Matt’s article and the list of questions that arose from it:

José Arroyo

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 429 – Joker: Folie à Deux

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2019’s Joker, which gave the iconic supervillain an all-purpose mental health disorder, a tragic origin story, and a name – Arthur Fleck – was never meant to have a sequel. But it made a billion dollars, so Joker: Folie à Deux is here. And, being a jukebox musical based primarily on show tunes from the mid-20th century canon, we ask who it’s for. The first film took risks in eschewing so many trappings of the comic book genre; did the filmmakers hope that their audience would respond similarly to further experimentation? Or is it a means of punishing an audience they attracted but loathe?

If the film hates its audience… well, so does Mike, which might explain why he got on with it. José, on the other hand, liked the first film, and is happy to see more of Joaquin Phoenix and hear those classic songs. Joker: Folie à Deux is far from a great film, not that close to a good film, and doesn’t have much of interest or intelligence to say about its themes – but it’s fascinating that it exists.

Listen on the players below, Apple Podcasts, Audible, Spotify, or YouTube Music.

 

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 405 – Napoleon (2023)

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For our discussion of Ridley Scott’s new historical epic, Napoleon, we have the privilege of being joined by Paul Cuff, a film historian and expert on the Napoleonic era in cinema, including and especially Abel Gance’s Napoléon from 1927, about which he wrote A Revolution for the Screen: Abel Gance’s Napoleon. Together, we ask whether Scott’s film has anything to say about the man whose life it depicts – and if so what? – whether its ahistoricity matters, and how substantially it fleshes out its characters and the events and relationships dramatised.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

Listen on the players above, Apple Podcasts, Audible, Google Podcasts, or Spotify.

Listeners may be interested in Paul Cuff’s book:

Paul Cuff adds: ‘the New Yorker piece I mentioned: https://www.newyorker.com/…/ridley-scott-director-profile “Ten days before filming, Phoenix went to Scott and said, ‘I’m agonizing over this. I don’t know how to do it.'” The article also briefly mentions the Gance film, about which Scott said, “I couldn’t get through it, honestly”. (In a piece I saw in Empire, Phoenix also said much the same thing about the one biography of Napoleon he had tried to read.)

 

José Arroyo

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 180 – Joker

 

It’s as though we’ve seen two different films, with José bowled over by Joker‘s social commentary, Mike bored and annoyed by its perceived self-satisfaction – not to mention an audience that applauded at the end. Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker is explored to be a product of an uncaring, broken society that reaps in him what it sows, in a 1981 Gotham City that is the New York City of the era in all but name. José argues that the film will become a bellwether of the time, depicting the anger of the oppressed and downtrodden – Mike suggests, though, that in demonising them and aligning them to villainy, it gives the right-wing what it wants, in a vision of antifa, the enemy it believes it faces.

We discuss issues of race and representation, Mike seeing similarities between some of the film’s scenes and real-life historical crimes to which they may refer, and in observing racial components and changes to them, asks what the purpose may be, though, struggles to work towards an answer. And José remarks favourably upon everything aesthetic, including the way in which poverty is written into Phoenix’s withered form, the expressiveness and grace of his movement, and the film’s use of shallow focus.

There’s a lot going on in Joker, both on its own terms and in the cultural conversations it has ignited, and it may be worth a second go.

 

The film is just out and has already incited interesting debate:

 

from Jason Jacobs:

Jake Rutukowski:

David Sims in The Atlantic: 

Glen Weldon:

Yet another good essay, this one from Leslie Lee

and many others

The podcast can be listened to in the players above or on iTunes.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film