Phoenix is the best Joker in the pack
JOKER
★★★★★
(15, 122 mins)
Director: Todd Phillips
Stars: Joaquin Phoenix, Robert De Niro
JUDY
★★★★★
(12A, 118 mins)
Director: Rupert Goold
Stars: Renée Zellweger, Jessie Buckley, Rufus Sewell
WEREWOLF
★★★★✩
(15, 88 mins)
Director: Adrian Panek
Stars: Kamil Polnisiak, Nicolas Przygoda, Sonia Mietielica
WHO IS your favourite Batman villain? The brutally brilliant Joker should banish all memories of Cesar Romero, Jack Nicholson or even Heath Ledger in the role. From now on, the Caped Crusader’s grinning nemesis will be dancing through your mind with the dastardly grace of Joaquin Phoenix.
He could even take the odd turn in your nightmares.
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 in February, the jokers will be on the Academy.
Here we don’t see a stitch of Spandex as director Todd Phillips takes his inspiration from the gritty crime dramas of the 1970s.
We meet Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck dressed as a clown in what looks like late 1970s New York. Phillips calls Arthur “a man with music in his body” but here his movements are stiff as he twirls a sign advertising a closing-down sale.
When a gang of thugs grab his sign, Fleck gives chase and ends up battered and bloodied in an alleyway.arthur, for now at least, is a victim. Gotham City is in the midst of a crime wave and business mogul Thomas Wayne is running for mayor on a platform of zero tolerance and zero empathy.
Arthur hopes to find a way out of poverty through stand-up comedy like his hero Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro). In an obvious homage to Martin Scorsese’s King Of Comedy (where De Niro played the fame-hungry loner), Arthur imagines himself appearing on Murray’s chat show as he sits in his crummy flat nursing his sick mother (Frances Conroy).
Arthur isn’t well either.after being released from a mental ward he is on seven forms of medication. He also suffers from a dastardly form of Tourette’s, causing him to break into an uncontrollable cackle.
The city lays off his social worker shortly before Arthur loses his day job. When a gang ofwall Street bullies jump him on the subway, he decides to 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. Not only does it seem like he can hear the film’s sinister score, he seems to revel in his insanity.
There will be more murder before he embraces his evil alter-ego in another hugely disturbing scene.arthur, now recognisably the Joker, dances down a flight of steps to the opening bars of Gary Glitter’s rousing but now highly disturbing Rock and Roll Part 2.
Arthur has become a beast in make-up, 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.
If Phoenix does win his first Academy Award for Joker, he could end up celebrating with Judy star Renée Zellweger.we knew Zellweger could sing from her Oscar-nominated turn in
Chicago but she is electrifying as an over-the-hill Judy Garland.
As in Stan & Ollie, Judy is a fading star’s swansong in Britain.there is a slight TV feel to director Rupert Goold’s work. We don’t see enough of 1968 London or the golden age of Hollywood in flashback. But Zellweger manages to fill the big screen with heart and sheer verve.
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 what performer would take to the stage – the lovable songbird or the drug-addled shambles.
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 she died of an overdose at 47 but 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 beautifully shot and wonderfully performed.
Werewolf is Poland’s entry for Best Foreign Language Oscar and writerdirector Adrian Panek is clearly one to watch. His allegorical second feature has a lot to say about the nightmares visited on his people in the 20th century.
But what impresses me most is how he can coax such naturalistic performances from non-professional child actors.
It’s 1945 and the Red Army has rescued a group of children from a concentration camp and left them in a country house.
With no electricity and few supplies, the children aren’t much better off than before. But common threats force them to unite.a fugitive Nazi is in a bunker nearby and the mutilated bodies of their former guards litter the forest, victims of the starving killer dogs from the camp.
After flirting with the tropes of a horror film, the mad hounds turn into supporting players as Panek delves into the minds of his feral children.