Hello, and welcome to this week’s Film Roundup, bringing you the biggest new cinema releases! In today’s issue, the Clown Prince of Gotham makes his all-singing, all-dancing return to our screens, Sebastian Stan learns the true meaning of beauty, and we close out the Birmingham Anime Film Festival 2024…
Usual disclaimer: unless otherwise stated, I haven’t seen these films. All of my opinions are based on trailers, early reviews and other rumours and buzz.
Birmingham Anime Film Festival – week three
It’s the third and final week of this year’s Birmingham Anime Film Festival! We’ve had a great time with it so far, and week three is set to continue the mix of classics and modern masterpieces. Tonight at the MAC we have something a little bit different, with surreal stop-motion Junkhead. Tomorrow at the Mockingbird, The Evolution of Horror presents Perfect Blue in the second of our live podcast events. We return to the MAC, and to high school, on Saturday for slacker comedy On-Gaku – Our Sound and redemption story A Silent Voice. Finally, on Sunday, we round off the festival back at the Mockingbird with coming-of-age fantasy The Tunnel To Summer, The Exit Of Goodbyes, futuristic police-noir spin-off PsychoPass: Providence, and highly acclaimed anthology movie Memories.
We’ll be hanging around at the Mockingbird again so please come over and say hi – let us know what you thought of the films and if you have any recommendations for next year’s festival. You can also take a look at the fantastic artwork that sprung up last weekend in the Mockingbird’s hallway.
Joker: Folie à Deux
The first Joker movie was, it’s fair to say, a runaway success. Its box-office takings broke records for R-rated movies, and its slew of Oscar nominations (with two big wins including Best Actor for Joaquin Phoenix) proved that comic book movies absolutely can be art. Not even Martin Scorsese can argue that your superhero flick isn’t proper cinema when your key influences are Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy. It gave the Joker a sympathetic origin story, the veracity of which was left just open enough to interpretation to preserve the character’s mystique and menace. Folie à Deux picks up where it left off, with Arthur Fleck being imprisoned in Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane and forming a bond with one of the other inmates.
The sequel introduces a few new elements, first and foremost being Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn. Gaga’s flamboyant celebrity persona feels like a great fit for Harley (who I can absolutely imagine going out in a dress made of meat), and she’s proven a few times now that her career transition towards acting is more than just pop-star ego. Also joining the cast are Brendan Gleeson as a gruff Arkham prison guard and Steve Coogan as a TV personality, both of whom are always a sign of a good film.
But the biggest and most controversial new element is that this is a musical. Not just a film with a song or two in but a full-blown musical with dance numbers and everything. I’ve heard a lot of people greet that news with some apprehension – the popular image of a musical is bright and colourful and miles away from the twisted evil that the Joker is known for. But the more I think about it, the more this feels like a perfect direction for the series.
The whole raison d’etre for the first Joker was a psychological character study. While other comic book films have huge, fantastical stakes, this focused in on a single psychopath, taking the audience inside his mind to help us understand more about why he is the way he is. That is something that musicals, when done well, have the power to do better than any other genre. Every song in a musical is designed to tell you what it’s like to be the singer at that time. The lyrics sound out their most private thoughts in a way that they could never just tell the other characters in a scene of regular dialogue. The tune and performance capture their emotions and take the audience through those emotions too. The pacing and rhythm can add a sense of urgency or excitement or melancholy or threat. The staging and choreography can give the singer more (or less) prominence and power, or map out their relationship with the rest of the cast. Little cues in the melody can trigger nostalgic memories of particular times or places, and all the personal feelings that they bring to the listener to put them in the right headspace. It’s a great use of the cinematic medium that you couldn’t replicate in the pages of a comic book – this will not just take us into the Joker’s head but it will do so in a way that adds to his mythos from the original source material.
One common complaint about musicals is that the songs take you out of the story – it can be jarring to see otherwise realistic characters stop what they’re doing and start singing when that so rarely happens in real life. Again though, that is in keeping with the first film. Like Arthur Fleck’s mind, the narrative’s grasp on reality was fractured at best. Zazie Beetz’s Tyler Durden twist was great evidence of this – by showing us that one key aspect of the story wasn’t real, it made us question whether everything else we’d been watching was just playing out in Fleck’s head. One of the film’s most famous scenes had the Joker dancing up and down a flight of steps, which felt straight out of a classic musical. It was incongruous and surreal, but it worked – it showed us exactly how he was feeling at that moment didn’t matter if it was literally happening within the world of the film or not. Like all the best showstoppers it was a form of magical realism, where normality was suspended for a few minutes so that characters could express themselves for the audience’s benefit. All films require some willing suspension of disbelief – musicals just ask their audience to do that in a jauntier way than others.
And just to bring it back full circle, in case you need more persuasion that this absolutely should be a musical: it’s got Lady Gaga in it. If you get Lady Gaga in your movie, you’ve got to let her sing. She sang in A Star Is Born and won an Oscar. She did not sing in House of Gucci and all anyone can remember about that film is Jared Leto’s accent. The songs will also play into the score by a returning Hildur Guðnadóttir, who won the original’s second Oscar.
I think this looks excellent, and I would encourage everyone to see it whether you’re a fan of musicals or not. That said, it is also a Joker movie. If the first film’s violence and depressing tone put you off, this probably isn’t for you either – no amount of singing (or clown makeup) is going to make this a particularly smiley affair.
- Joker: Folie à Deux on IMDB
- Joker: Folie à Deux on Rotten Tomatoes
A Different Man
Struggling actor Edward suffers from neurofibromatosis – a skin condition that covers his face in huge tumours. After successfully undergoing an experimental medical procedure to remove the tumours, he is hopeful that he can start a new life without the stigmatism that comes with such a visually striking disability. His neighbour Ingrid (Renate Reinsve) writes a play based on his life, and the actor hired to play him is fellow neurofibromatosis-afflicted Oswald (Adam Pearson). But unlike Edward, who had allowed his disability to define his life so much that he cannot stand out without it, Oswald is confident, charismatic and charming.
A Different Man plays with the idea of inner and outer beauty, and the extent to which both can affect a person’s identity. It’s about accepting and embracing every part of yourself so that you’re free to enjoy your life and be the best person you can be. There’s been a lot of praise for Sebastian Stan’s performance, both before and after the prosthetics come off, but the big breakout star is by all accounts Adam Pearson. Pearson has neurofibromatosis in real life – you may remember him from the surreal Scarlett Johansson alien film Under The Skin, playing a character credited simply as ‘The Deformed Man’. A Different Man was purportedly written with him in mind – writer-director Aaron Schimberg was so impressed with him when they met on another film that he wanted to create something that gave him more of a central role. It must be incredibly difficult for an actor with neurofibromatosis to find work that doesn’t revolve specifically around that condition – an issue that the film explores directly – so Pearson is bound to have brought heaps of experience both to his own role and to advise Stan on how to portray that frustration.
This sounds like it will be funny and touching, and well worth a watch.
- A Different Man on IMDB
- A Different Man on Rotten Tomatoes
If you only see one film this week…
When you’re smiling, the whole world smiles with you (unless you’re only smiling because you’ve just stabbed them with a concealed knife). My film of the week this week is Joker: Folie à Deux.
Still in cinemas and worth a watch
- Megalopolis
- The Substance
- Speak No Evil
Trailer of the week
In a world that is chock-full of cookie-cutter biopics about celebrities’ rise to stardom (see for example this year’s Back to Black and One Love), it can be hard to set your movie apart. One way to do that is to reimagine yourself as a CGI chimpanzee, which for reasons known only to himself, is what Robbie Williams has done with Better Man. “I know what you’re thinking,” he asks as the trailer opens, “what’s with the monkey?” Actually Robbie, I was thinking what’s with the chimp? Either way, he doesn’t really answer that question and he doesn’t really need to. In Back to Black, Amy Winehouse was played by Marisa Abela. In One Love, Bob Marley was played by Kingsley Ben-Adir. And in Better Man, Robbie Williams is played by Caesar from Planet of the Apes. The real question is whether the other members of Take That will also be portrayed as CGI simians. Will we get Garilla Barlow, Mark Bonobowen and Jason Orange-Utan? We’ll have to wait and see…
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