Posts Tagged ‘Steve Coogan’

Joker: Folie a Deux

Director: Todd Phillips

Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga, Brendan Gleeson, Catherine Keener, Harry Lawtey, Steve Coogan, Bill Smitrovich, Jacob Lofland, Zazie Beetz

Film Rating: 7 out of 10

It’s a risky endeavour for an actor to return to a role that won him an Oscar in 2020. Oscar winner Joaquin Phoenix (Joker) returns to his role as the manic comedian Arthur Fleck in the highly anticipated sequel Joker: Folie a Deux directed by Todd Phillips that did such a brilliant job on the original film.

Joker: Folie a Deux is like a musical set in an insane asylum. Last time I checked the Oscar winning film One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest was not a musical.

This is where the casting of Lady Gaga as Lee Quinzel aka Harleyquin is problematic. To justify the casting of the pop star Lady Gaga in Joker: Folie a Deux, this intense film is oddly lighten by some strange musical numbers in the vein of La La Land for Lunatics.

Gaga and Phoenix almost recreate the iconic dance scene between Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling in Damien Chzaelle’s La La Land, tricking the audiences into believing that this film is a light and fluffy musical, which it’s not. Lady Gaga was miscast in this film and if they had cast another more intense actress as Arthur Fleck’s romantic interest it would have been an entirely better film.

The inmates run riot in Joker: Folie a Deux and despite some solid performances by supporting cast members including Oscar nominee Brendan Gleeson (The Banshees of Inisherin) as the vindictive Arkham asylum guard Jackie Sullivan and Oscar nominee Catherine Keener (Capote, Being John Malkovich) as Arthur Fleck’s sympathetic lawyer Maryanne Stewart, this sequel to the original comes off as a shocking and inconclusive pastiche of violence, animation, music and anarchy.

Joaquin Phoenix holds his own naturally in a character which he made iconic with his immense talent. In this sequel, it is not Phoenix’s best performance and to return to this character would always be judged by the original version that he was so brilliant at doing. Unlike his exceptional Oscar nominated performances in The Master opposite Amy Adams or in Gladiator opposite Russell Crowe, Joaquin Phoenix was good but not exceptional.

There are some seriously funny almost David Lynch moments in Joker: Folie a Deux especially when Arthur Fleck represents himself in a media frenzied trial in which one of the witnesses is a dwarf called Mr Puddles who sits on a copy of the yellow pages to gain height.

The French Connection inspired late 1970’s production design by Mark Freidberg for this sequel is on point and some of the scenes are superb, like the shaving scene at the beginning. Unfortunately the random musical numbers and the lack of a comprehensive narrative make Joker: Folie a Deux an insane mess, made worse by some truly bizarre musical numbers.

Todd Phillips almost pulled off a successful sequel except for the problematic casting of Lady Gaga and the absolutely shocking final scene. Note this film is not a superhero film for kids, but a seriously deranged film about incurable mental illness and social paranoia. The storyline is schizophrenic like the characters. The age restriction should be adhered to.

Joker: Folie a Deux gets a film rating of 7 out of 10 and despite its high production values, this film veers into the world of strange art house cinema which contradicts its box office expectations.

Recommended viewing for those that enjoyed the original but be warned it’s not nearly as good.

The South African Film and Television Awards (SAFTA’S) were held on March 2017 at Suncity Resort and Casino in the North West Province, South Africa

Best Film: – Sink

Best Director: Oliver Schmitz for Shepherds and Butchers starring Steve Coogan, Andrea Riseborough, Deon Lotz and Marcel van Heerden

Best Actor – Feature Film
Dann-Jaques Mouton – Noem my Skollie

Best Actress – Feature Film
Shoki Mokgape – Sink

Best Supporting Actor – Feature Film
Abdurahgmaan Adams – Noem my Skollie

Best Supporting Actress – Feature Film
Hlubi Mboya – Dora’s Peace

Best Original Screenplay: Brett Michael Innes and Nicholas Costaras – Sink

Philomena

Director: Stephen Frears

Cast: Judi Dench, Steve Coogan, Michelle Fairley, Mare Winningham, Peter Hermann, Sean Mahon

British director Stephen Frears certainly brings out the best in his female leads in his stunning filmography. Who can forget Glenn Close in Dangerous Liaisons or Angelica Huston in The Grifters? Or more recently Helen Mirren in her Oscar winning performance in The Queen?

Frears manages to bring out the subtle naivety and unearthed guilt in Judi Dench’s Oscar nominated brilliant performance in the title role of Philomena a fascinating almost picaresque account of two people Philomena Lee and Martin Sixsmith in their quest to locate Philomena’s long lost son.

Philomena terrorized by Irish nuns and who fell pregnant after a brief encounter with a young man in Limerick back in the 1950’s, unknowingly gives up her young son at a reclusive Irish convent where the nuns reigned supreme, punishing young women who succumbed to the temptations of the flesh, by forcibly removing their unwanted children. This unorthodox form of adoption involved selling the small children to wealthy Americans to financially benefit the local nunnery, a practice which Sixsmith, a former Media Liaison Officer and now freelance journalist discovers to his horror and moral indignation.

Martin Sixsmith, Cambridge educated and living in Knightsbridge, an intellectual snob has to come down a level when he takes on the case of Philomena’s abandoned son who has gone missing fifty years earlier. Sixsmith, superbly played by comic actor Steve Coogan in one of the his best onscreen performances takes the slightly naive and streetwise Philomena on a journey to Washington DC to discover where her son is.

With his persistent investigative journalism skills, Sixsmith at the coaxing of his editor Sally Mitchell played by Games of Thrones actress Michelle Fairley soon realizes that Philomena’s son who would be 50 years old, was a legal advisor to the Republican Party in Washington D.C., but more revealingly was a closeted homosexual living during the era of denialism which blighted the initial impact of the AIDS epidemic in the years of the Reagan and the first Bush administration, namely the mid 1980’s to mid 1990’s.

More shockingly, Philomena and Sixsmith return to the convent aptly named the Sisters of the Sacred Heart to discover the awful truth about the fate of her son and the scandalous lengths the Catholic Church went to, to cover up not only his birth and illegal adoption, but those of many other children in the early 1950’s. An unfortunate fate which awaited all unwed Catholic girls in Ireland in that equally repressive era.

With his usual dexterity, Stephen Frears spins out an engrossing narrative around the journey that Philomena and Sixsmith embark on from Ireland to America and back again, puncturing the odyssey with nostalgic home video footage of the life of the lost son.

Dench’s  performance is subtle, gentle yet determined portraying both conviction and blind faith in Catholicism, which ironically deprived her of her only son and used shame and guilt to cover up the transaction. Sixsmith’s character also serves as a substitute son in Philomena emphasized in one hilarious scene in a Washington Hotel room where the only way to gain entry is to state that Philomena is his mother. With masterly performances by Dench and Coogan, Philomena is an acerbic, witty and tragic tale of revelation and forgiveness, expertly directed by Frears with a suitably poignant musical score by Alexandre Desplat. Highly recommended viewing and based upon the real story, The Lost Child of Philomena Lee by Martin Sixsmith.

2013 Venice International Film Festival Winners

Venice International Film Festival, known as La Biennale di Venezia takes place annually
in late August, early September and is regarded as the oldest Film Festival in the World.

Golden Lion (Best Film): Sacro Gra directed by Gianfranco Rosi (documentary)

Silver Lion (Best Director): Alexandros Avranas for the film Miss Violence (Greece)

Best Actor: Themis Panou – Miss Violence

Best Actress: Elena Cotta – Via Castellana Bandiera 

Best Screenplay: Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope – Philomena starring Steve Coogan and Judi Dench

Source: http://www.labiennale.org/en/cinema/news/07-09.html