Woody Allen at his most exhausted and self-parodying. A philosophy professor (a begutted Joaquin Phoenix) — newly arrived for the summer session at a quaint Rhode Island college, and bored with himself, philosophy, and life in general — finds inspiration in the notion of directly, concretely making the world a …
If there is a meaningful difference between performing and acting, Joaquin Phoenix surely exemplifies the former here, creepily contorting as the Clown Prince of Crime in Todd Phillips’ timely, toxic take on the Making of a Murdering Madman. (Timely because it seeks to tap into festering resentment on the part …
Arthur Fleck is institutionalized at Arkham awaiting trial for his crimes as Joker. While struggling with his dual identity, Arthur not only stumbles upon true love, but also finds the music that's always been inside him. Starring Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga.
Arthur Fleck is institutionalized at Arkham awaiting trial for his crimes as Joker. While struggling with his dual identity, Arthur not only stumbles upon true love, but also finds the music that's always been inside him. Starring Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga.
Arthur Fleck is institutionalized at Arkham awaiting trial for his crimes as Joker. While struggling with his dual identity, Arthur not only stumbles upon true love, but also finds the music that's always been inside him. Starring Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga.
If there is a meaningful difference between performing and acting, Joaquin Phoenix surely exemplifies the former here, creepily contorting as the Clown Prince of Crime in Todd Phillips’ timely, toxic take on the Making of a Murdering Madman. (Timely because it seeks to tap into festering resentment on the part …
Solemn post-9/11 tribute to firefighters, although these are Baltimoreans rather than New Yorkers. The central one, Joaquin Phoenix, lies injured and trapped in a burning building as his life flashes before him. Or to be more exact, he consciously flashes back on his life at length and at intervals -- …
Fifteen years after Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, director Garth Davis offers a sort of spiritual and tonal counterpoint: a Jesus story that stresses what might be called the more feminine aspect of his visit to earth — told, fittingly enough, through his relationship with the woman whom …
Happily, and despite the fact that director Paul Thomas Anderson used controversial Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard as a model, The Master is more than a modernized rehash of the religious chicanery at the heart of Anderson’s There Will Be Blood. Rather, it is an exploration of broken humanity in …
A middle-brow mulling of the issues of free expression and censorship, with the Marquis de Sade as the bone of contention. (Present-day application warmly invited.) The movie does not try to deny literature's potential damage to weak minds -- at least to the extent that a slobbering resident of the …
The adaptation of a nongenre novel by John Burnham Schwartz bears a first-glance resemblance to the Claude Chabrol thriller ca. 1970, This Man Must Die, in both of which a bereaved father tracks down the hit-and-run killer of his young son. But Chabrol's killer, from a genre novel by Nicholas …
Moral crisis. Three American party-heartiers are on holiday in Malaysia. Two leave together, and leave the third holding the bag (so to speak) of "good cheap hash," and facing a death sentence unless the others agree to come back and serve prison time (three years if both return, six years …
Director and co-writer Jacques Audiard knows that the old west’s big open spaces make room for the asking of big open-ended questions, and the biggest one he asks here is, “Can a man change?” Can he break from what origin and circumstance have made him, and actually choose a better …