MIKE WARD’S SMALL SCREEN
JOKER (15)
WHO is your favourite Joker? This brutally brilliant origins tale should banish all memories of Cesar Romero, Jack Nicholson or even Heath Ledger.
From now on, Batman’s grinning nemesis will be dancing through your mind with the pure dastardly grace of Joaquin Phoenix.
He could take the odd turn through your nightmares, too.
Phoenix starred in my favourite film of 2018, the criminally under-rated crime drama You Were Never Really Here.
Now he’s in every frame of my best film of 2019. If he doesn’t take home an Oscar, the Academy panel are the villains.
We meet Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck dressed as a clown twirling an advertising sign in what looks like late 1970s New York.
When thugs grab his sign, Fleck chases them and ends up battered and bloody in an alley. Arthur, for now, is a victim. He hopes to find a way out of poverty through stand-up comedy, like his hero Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro).
In an homage to Martin Scorsese’s King Of Comedy, Arthur imagines himself on stage as he sits in his crummy flat nursing his sick mother.
Arthur isn’t well either. After being released from a mental ward he is on seven forms medication.
He also suffers from a form of Tourette’s, causing him to break into an uncontrollable cackle.
His luck runs out when he loses his clown job and the city lays off his therapist.
Arthur is angry and off his meds. And when a gang of Wall Street bullies jump him JUDY (12A)★★★★★
RENÉE Zellweger delivers an electrifying performance as an over-the-hill Judy Garland in this rousing biopic.
As with Stan & Ollie (with which it shares a character in showbiz impresario Bernard Delfont), this is about a fading American star’s British swansong.
There is a slight TV feel to director Rupert Goold’s staging.
We never quite see enough of 1968 London or the golden age of Hollywood glimpsed in flashback. But of on the subway, he fight back.
Our first glimpse of the Joker is in a brilliant sequence where a topless, frighteningly skinny Phoenix breaks into a horribly graceful dance in his apartment. He seems to revel in his insanity.
There will be more murder before he embraces his evil decides Zellweger manages to fill the big screen with heart and sheer verve.
We know she can sing from her Oscar-nominated turn in Chicago but this time she doesn’t need to hit every note. Garland’s failing voice is what gives the drama its suspense.
In these London concerts, nobody knew which performer would take to the stage.
In one scene, a riot nearly erupts as the slurring legend is pelted by to alter-ego in another hugely disturbing scene, dancing down steps to the opening bars of Gary Glitter’s Rock ’n Roll Part 2.
Arthur is now a beast in makeup, a predator hiding behind the mask of an entertainer.
Don’t expect Batman to swing in to save the day. This looks like a superhero flick, but really it’s a monster movie. a furious crowd. But Zellweger never plays the victim. There is fragility but also defiance in her voice during a barnstorming performance of By Myself and in a smouldering take on Come Rain Or Come Shine.
The film takes place the year before Garland died of an overdose at 47.
Goold avoids that tragedy to end on a triumphant note.
It’s not the most challenging film of the year, or even the week, but it’s a movie that’s beautifully shot and powerfully performed. live out his final days – with one of those things they’ve used for this movie’s title.
THE GAME CHANGERS
(Apple TV)
★★★★
ARNOLD Schwarzenegger, Lewis Hamilton and Novak Djokovic are the big names behind this thought-provoking programme, arguing that a plant-based diet can easily fuel the exertions of the world’s top sportspeople.
Oh, and talking of plants…
SWAMP THING
(Amazon Prime Video)
★★★
A PLANT-based creature fights the evil forces threatening his Louisiana home.
This DC Universe superhero horror runs for 10 episodes only, as it’s already been axed.