Joker: Folie à Deux (2024) (Watched October 4, 2024)

★★

Joker = Taxi Driver + King of Comedy + Death Wish

Joker 2 = Titicut Follies + Moulin Rouge + Lady Gaga & Beyoncé's "Telephone" music video

To be honest, this is just as good as the first movie, which is bad.

I looked away in embarrassment for over half of the run time. Every time Joker started singing I wanted to throw up. Shoutout to the Honorable Judge Martin Scorsese presiding during the court scene. Harvey Dent's actor was definitely British and doing an American accent, calling it now before I look it up---this is no shade by the way; he was still great. I actually didn't hate the ending, except, you know, the guy was doing too much. Still, Joker dialogue is always bad and embarrassing to me, yet bizarrely endearing like a picture of yourself from when you did your own makeup for a middle school dance. Gaga was amazing. 

This is also Andrea and my big screen debut (we were in the park across the street while the NYC court scenes were filmed), but we sadly got killed offscreen in the courthouse bombing, and our deaths were only briefly mentioned (on the police car radio) for the dedicated fans.

Despite everything, I thought the was fun (sometimes), and not just because I was in it. I would rather be waterboarded for around 10-15 seconds, possibly up to thirty, than ever watch this again, so don't ask me to stand by this review. I'm never ever touching this movie for the remainder of my whole life because even though I think I liked it, it makes me nauseous and queasy with secondhand embarrassment to think about.

But some parts I really genuinely liked. The costume design was excellent, everyone acted their ass off, and the cinematography was quite nice (if everyone involved was embarrassingly trying very hard; which, effort is a beautiful thing...). Huge big weird terrible movie… I think I liked it regardless, but I can't be sure, and I don't want to watch again to try to figure it out.

Helvetica (2007) (Watched January 3, 2024)

★★★★

This film is called Helvetica. It gathers a bunch of people who love and dedicate their lives to typefaces to talk about Helvetica. It is literally called Helvetica; it is an 80-minute-long documentary about Helvetica.

Personally, I really liked it!!!! I think it is an interesting and sometimes silly documentary. There are some REAL NERDS!!! in it, which should be expected because it is about a font, but I love real nerds so I thought they were all very charming and funny. Big standouts for me include: the Most German Man Ever and the lady who said Helvetica was the font of the Vietnam war(!!). I really agree with the reviewer who said that the movie is a lot like Helvetica itself (pretty conventionally created, rarely draws attention to its own construction, acts as a vehicle to convey information without being itself very stylish at all), but through its dissection of and dialogues about Helvetica, it makes you think more about the “invisibility” of the techniques and products of modernity. It un-naturalizes something we now are super used to and in general reveals the unnoticed (at least to me, but probably also to most people who aren't font nerds) importance of small things in the world around you. It highlights how something as small, omnipresent, and naturalized as Helvetica font creates a narrative about globalization and temporal cycles in art and society, and discussions about topics, like: what does it mean that Helvetica is the dominant font in most European/US cities? What does the chosen font of Western countries reflect about advertising and CAPITALism (haha get it)? What do the backlashes to it say about perception of corporate culture, power, and subjectivity at a certain time period and place? I am not a font-head, so I had to watch this wondering where my favorite font was (the creepy one with all the letter dripping), but I really liked this movie.

Sent from my iPhone

Typed in Helvetica

Priscilla (2023) (Watched February 23, 2024)

★★★

1. I can't believe the actors are the same age. That is really insane.

2. Makeup symbolism is my best friend; Sofia Coppola is always doing this for me. Thank you. I can't decide if Winnie and I forgive her for the incident where she ran out of books to sign at the Marc Jacobs bookstore before they got to us in line, but I think probably not.

3. I wish they showed Priscilla giving birth. Weird thing to say, but I wanted to see her experience something sharp and real for one second!!!!!!

4. This wreaked hell on my current shopping addiction.

5. I went back and looked at stills of Priscilla and Elvis from the Austin Butler movie. They’re objectively very attractive people, but it’s crazy that they were immediately put up against two of the most beautiful people on earth like one year later. I'm not even joking, I would probably end my life if I knew I was going to be photoshopped next to Caliee Spaeny and Jacob Elordi in articles wearing the same outfits.

6. I liked the "Oye Como Va" needle drop.

7. I'm really face blind so when Priscilla looked normal again at the end of the movie, I was like, who is that. Spaeny is so awesome and like a chameleon in this movie and her subtle acting is really good.

8. Elordi is good too, but I can’t believe Elvis genuinely talked like that. To be honest, sometimes I can’t believe he was for real named Elvis.

9. I think it was so smart to make there be a (symbolic?) crazy height difference. Like straight up genius. Everyone needs to get over accuracy in biopic casting and fit the story they're creating, which my bff frenemy Sofia Coppola is always doing. Thank you.

10. I NEED THEIR PAJAMAS. Everything they slept in, I need to have in my house.

11. Those sideburns looked like shit; I’d divorce him too. My god…

12. Some of the dialogue was so on the nose I didn't like it. But it's fine, and it was delivered well.

13. Where was the Elvis sandwich?

14. And IIIIII will always love youuuu :(

15. After I finished the movie, I went back and changed my Elvis (2022) rating to two stars instead of three. 

Joker (2019) (Rewatched March 26, 2023)

★★★ 

To be honest, I liked it a lot more on this rewatch. Joaquin Phoenix was really doing something even though the dialogue was horrible and embarrassing and the first hour and twenty minutes are just him having one (several) bad day (decades). He is just so weird and freaky and his physicality is straight up awesome; you wouldn’t get it.

Plus I like that it has Death Wish (1974) influences, even though I hated that movie. And Taxi Driver, but the Taxi Driver similarities are also bad because they just remind you how much better Joker would be if it was as stylish as Taxi Driver. NYC in the 70s in film can be horrific, vile, nasty, and sleazy but also moody and jazzy and cool… Gotham in Joker just sucks and is excruciatingly not fun to exist in as a setting.

But since the last thirty minutes were so insane, I cannot wait for the Lady Gaga Harley Quinn musical, I’m so serious (as a current undergrad at Little Monsters University). I hope it’s just them having fun.

Read my article about Joker 2 for the Associated Press here.