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Emma @ The Movies (1786 KP) rated Joker (2019) in Movies

Dec 8, 2019  
Joker (2019)
Joker (2019)
2019 | Crime, Drama
7
8.5 (146 Ratings)
Movie Rating Watch
Contains spoilers, click to show
Had this been released on any regular week I'd have seen Joker the day it came out and not been overly bothered by the Twitter frenzy that happened in the aftermath of the opening... but, Joker came out two days into the London Film Festival and that meant I couldn't see it straight away. I ended up taking a day off in the middle of it and going out to have a regular cinema outing, it was only 6 days after release but the barrage of feedback online was enough to make me bored at the thought of seeing it.

I do not know how to do this review. It's not that I don't have things to say about it, because I do, but there's a lot of grumbling. I'm going to try bullet pointing it as it covers things that cross audience feedback with moaning.

• What is real? We see the Sophie shots replayed without her in them and we realise he imagined it but we also know that he's imagined other things... everything could be a twist on reality.

• I did not assume that the man with Bruce at home was Alfred.

• I would not have found it unbelievable had Arthur and Sophie been a couple.

• This film could easily have been a pre-origin story for the Joker character.

• I know Arthur needs every push to make the story progress but I don't see that Thomas Wayne needed to be that aggressive.

• Wouldn't it have been good if this film made no reference to anything Batman/Joker related and the first time we're actually shown the connection is in that iconic alley scene?

So there are the things I had thoughts, they all have me waffling on for ages when I voice them out loud.

Joaquin Phoenix really commits to the journey of Arthur and it's an incredible depiction. I'm not so bothered about the violence in the movie, what disturbed me more was how Phoenix manages to laugh without it showing on his face... that was chilling. Everything crafted around him really shows his life, the way he's captured in the shots, the way you see the darker side taking over him, you can see it in every scene. It's uncomfortable to watch him sometimes, but that's the way it needs to be.

As an environment you can feel the dirt and the story of the city really comes through in everything you see. There's a very clear divide between rich and poor and I really thought the sets and costumes worked perfectly.

I'm going to mention the song... it worked perfectly in the scene, it had the right tone for it and I thought it was very effective. As you look down the rest of the tracklisting it was nice to see that everything had a very theatrical leaning.

When we get to the point where Arthur, now under the guise of Joker, appears on Murray's talk show there's an element of uncertainty about what's going to happen. The escalation is chilling and when he starts his speech you can feel the change in him. That speech had a moment of understanding in it before you remember everything we've just seen. I would happily have seen the film end with that test card.

What happens after this is a big piece that feels like hallucination moments rather than real ones. I really didn't need that... BUT... it did bring us to that iconic alleyway scene. It was perfectly captured and would have been amazing if we saw the clown slip into the alleyway and then... no pearls. I groaned when I saw that. I'm fed up with it, it took that tense moment and could have left you with that sense of knowing without hitting you with that now rather common slap in the face of an image.


Unlike other films I still don't have a very clear idea of how I feel about this film, there are lots of issues I had with it but then there's that brilliant performance from Joaquin Phoenix. I'm sure this needs another viewing, but even then I'm not sure I'd be totally certain about how I felt.

Originally posted on: https://emmaatthemovies.blogspot.com/2019/11/joker-spoilers-movie-review.html
  
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Joe Elliott recommended Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars: The Motion Picture Soundtrack by David Bowie in Music (curated)

 
Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars: The Motion Picture Soundtrack by David Bowie
Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars: The Motion Picture Soundtrack by David Bowie
1982 | Rock
9.0 (4 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"We played at the Freddie Mercury tribute at Wembley in 1992. The best part was doing 'All The Young Dudes' with Bowie and Mick Ronson and Brian May. That was the best three minutes – musically – of my career, from an emotional point of view. It was the last time Mick Ronson played on stage and it was celebrating the life of a phenomenal musician that we all miss to this day. Brian May is a career long friend of mine. I remember Phil Collen (guitar) was really nervous. I said to him: 'You're bloody doing it. You'll regret it you're entire life if you don't' I literally had to drag him on stage by the collar. We were looking across and there was Ronson and Bowie and May. And it's my glam anthem, you know? It's my funeral tune and there we were doing it with everyone who ever meant anything to me all on one stage. Bolan would have made it even better I suppose, but he was dead. But this record Ziggy Stardust? The way I see it is this: what other record could have influenced, say, me, Boy George and Morrissey in the same way, you know? We don't have much in common but we all saw that same thing…. we saw Bowie with his arm around Ronson on Top Of The Pops and it was like 'well, that's what I'm going to do for the rest of my life'. Seeing it on colour TV as well: it looked amazing. To see Slade; The Sweet; Bolan - all of them with the purples, greens, oranges, reds and silvers – it was bonkers. Even Gary Glitter covered in bloody Bacofoil. To come from black and white to that! Bowie oozed class. I got the Ziggy album when I was 12-years-old. You're full of shit at that age but you're also a sponge. And I was listening to things like 'Rock n Roll Suicide' and I'd think: 'I wonder if we really are all going to be over and done with by 1977'. It was a great story. [sings] 'Pushing through the market square…' Brilliant vocal delivery which was a) listenable b) commercial and c) totally accessible to anybody, from hardcore Bowie fans to little girls who were probably enamoured of David Cassidy. I was listening in awe. He had it all."

Source
  
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Mariafrancesca (30 KP) rated Gemina: The Illuminae Files: Book 2 in Books

Mar 30, 2019  
Gemina: The Illuminae Files: Book 2
Gemina: The Illuminae Files: Book 2
Jay Kristoff, Amie Kaufman | 2016 | Children
9
9.1 (9 Ratings)
Book Rating
I really don't know what it is about this series. If I think about it, it just a collection of all the biggest and most common themes in sci-fi, but somehow it works. I couldn't put this book down!
The story starts 5 seconds after the end of the first book, and it focuses on the events happening on the station where the Kady and the Hypatia are headed. There is no need to say that things goes as wrong as they can.
I have to say that I found this book a bit slower than the first one, and if readers thought that characters in the first book were fake, they will probably found the ones in this second book even more so (even though I think that the problem is the narration more than anything else, we always see these characters through a filter, we never know how the feel directly from them). However the more you get into the story the more gripping and eventful it gets, there are a lot of plot twists (again they may be cliches but the do work inside the story) and the book ends with a huge cliffhanger. I can't wait for part 3!