Were one to inquire of the many, many people who went to see Todd Phillips’ Joker back when it premiered in 2019, one would most likely find a swath of largely binary responses, with a few notable variations. At the time it was either beloved or disliked, with little – if any – room for middle interpretation, and the public response bore that out. Between its billion dollar worldwide box office gross (it remains the only R-Rated film to pull that off) and its mixed critical reception, there was no movie released in 2019 as publicly divisive, nor one as unstoppable when it came to an awards season run. Garnering a whopping 10 Oscar nominations, 2 of which became wins, Todd Phillips’ origin tale of Arthur Fleck’s descent into madness stirred up so much buzz that theaters beefed up security in the event of possible shootings inspired by its titular character (thankfully, no such event occurred). As the years have come and gone, some opinions have shifted up or down, but most seem to have only become more entrenched. For myself, while I continue to flip back and forth on whether Joker is actually good or not, I find it to be an interesting experiment in the realm of comic book storytelling and a well-mounted – if not entirely novel – approach to adapting the Joker character for the screen. (The King of Comedy and Taxi Driver – its two main inspirations – are far better films.) All of this to say, with a billion dollar gross and a character that popular, a sequel was inevitable. But how were Phillips and company meant to pull off a comic book sequel to a film that was originally designed not to have any follow-ups at all? What possible angle was there left to use on a character whose cinematic history held no less than five different interpretations? Joker: Folie à Deux’s answer to this question should have been its saving grace. Instead, it may well be the film’s defining flaw.
 
Positioned as a jukebox musical – regardless of what the cast continues to deny about it on press tours – Joker: Folie à Deux picks up not long after Joker left off, with Arthur Fleck still in Arkham Asylum after two years, awaiting trial for the murder of the three New York subway accosters and television host Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro). While living amongst Gotham’s most notorious criminals and preparing his case with his lawyer, Arthur is invited to participate in a music class, where he meets Lee (Lady Gaga), and the two form a connection based on their shared madness, hence the film’s subtitle. Together, the pair engage in a whirlwind of various musical sequences across the film’s runtime as both prepare for the first-ever live broadcast of what is being dubbed “the trial of the century,” and civil support for Joker continues to grow ever stronger in the Gotham streets.
 
If you were to give me fourteen guesses as to where the Joker sequel would go back when it was first announced, “jukebox musical” would have never made the top forty-five guesses I had. Regardless, it was a bold move to turn what was more-or-less a Scorsese rip-off story into something no one has ever done at this scale before, and the addition of Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn to the mix is a genius bit of casting for this interpretation of those characters. That said, if the story synopsis above sounds too vague, it’s because, frankly, there’s not much of a story to Folie à Deux at all. In some manners of speaking, it is in fact the antithesis of its predecessor – boring, drawn out, repetitive, and thematically murky, to the point where the addition of the musical sequences become not a fresh new angle by which to push the story forward, but the main thing sapping it of any real energy or narrative momentum. Each time a character breaks out into song, which – unlike most musicals – just happens for the sake of happening, regardless of how little sense it makes narratively, the movie stops dead in its tracks, and this happens over and over and over again. The music is decently performed, and there are one or two numbers that are genuine hits in terms of how they’re mounted, designed, etc, but they do nothing to advance what little story there is. By the time these sequences roll around, the story is already where it was going to end up anyway, and the music more or less only reminds the viewer what we’re already watching happen, without deepening its meaning or offering any greater weight to the performances.
 
The introduction of Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn – as stated – is a genius bit of casting, and she does what she’s able to, excelling particularly in the film’s musical moments, but the script offers her little to chew on in terms of her relationship to Arthur, making her seem like more of a crazed fan than a devoted fellow psychopath. There are some greater specifics to that idea that I won’t spoil here, but suffice it to say, she doesn’t get a lot of interesting things to do, and the character is too underdeveloped for what the script asks of her. As for Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck, he’s given less grimy material to chew on, which leads his performance to run more or less the same lines as his pre-Joker personality in the last film. Luckily, he’s still quite talented – even a little more interesting as a character – in that bit of the last film, so even when the film’s not working, he is working within the confines he has.
 
The unfortunate side effect of a movie like Joker, when a sequel is greenlit, is that all the worst defenders of it as some masterwork of comic book storytelling are hoping for the least interesting approach to the follow-up. In that manner, I can absolutely understand what Todd Phillips and company set out to do when crafting a narrative that investigates not only whether the Joker character is in fact a sympathetic figure in this universe, but whether the decision to mount the character in that way previously was ever a good idea, an idea Folie à Deux confronts directly. Unfortunately, this angle just didn’t work. The storytelling is repetitive, the narrative is disengaging, and even the small surprises the film has in store are too little, too late to fix what’s broken here.
 
I’m giving “Joker: Folie à Deux” a 4.2/10
 
- The Friendly Film Fan

When I was approximately 8 years old, I watched Superman: The Movie for the very first time. To my memory, my father had rented it from the local video store at my own request after my having seen the cover art. It was the origin of my experience with superheroes and with superhero movies, as well as one of the first cinematic ventures on which I voluntarily journeyed. Though I was too young then to understand what any of it meant, I – like so many others when the film was first released – saw for the first time that a man could fly through the air without the assistance of wings or other devices for support; he could soar high above the ground, traveling from place to place at lightning speeds, accompanied by an epic musical score (courtesy of maestro John Williams) and a set of dynamic additional superpowers that allowed him to do all sorts of miraculous things. He instantaneously became, and remains to this day, my favorite superhero. I remember distinctly printing out a paper Superman logo, cutting it out with scissors, and taping it to my blue-shirted torso while I wore a bright red velcro cape we had lying downstairs in the toy chest. I would then go to jump on our neighbor’s trampoline and pretend that I, too, could fly. What I was unaware of at this time, and what I wouldn’t come to fully grasp until my late teens/early 20s, was just how much of the hero I so adored was informed by the man who wore that bright red cape with the symbol on his chest, nor how soon the world would lose the man who made us believe that he could fly.
 
When I was 9, Christopher Reeve passed away due to sepsis, following a long struggle with full-body paralysis after a tragic horse-riding accident fractured his upper spine, leaving him unable to breathe without a respirator or move without assistance. Though many more pieces of Superman media would be produced to varying degrees of success, including 3 more live-action movies, and though I wouldn’t understand the impact of this sentiment until much later in life, to most of the world, their Superman had died. And yet to a much smaller corner of the world, Christoper Reeve the actor, the father, the activist, the human being had passed on. For all the theatrics and celebrations about what it meant for him to be Superman, and for the legacy he left in having carried that mantle, there was still so much more to Reeve than what the silver screen allowed people to know. What Super/Man – which comes to us from directors Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui – sets out to do is both recognize the superheroic iconography of Reeve as an actor, and celebrate his more human-bound struggles as a man. Much as the Superman character acts as a comic-book stand in for the Christian figure of Jesus (i.e. both God and man), the filmmakers’ aim is to examine the duality of the Super and the Man, ultimately assembling a portrait of a hero in both senses.
 
To those who were aware of Christopher Reeve’s public life outside of his work as Superman, as well as his disability activism following his accident, most of what The Christopher Reeve Story has to offer won’t be especially surprising, nor is the film itself any kind of revolutionary act within the documentary space. There’s no upending of documentary structure, nor rug pulls of information about which the public was previously kept in the dark. It’s largely full of archival footage of Reeve at various stages of his life, interspersed between testimonials of his three children and other working professionals who knew him. In terms of the sheer importance of the documentary to the world stage, and the story it aims to tell, there’s nothing in the film that elevates it above most films like it. But for those to whom Superman means something more personal, and especially to those like myself who were unaware of much of Reeve’s life and work outside of the costume, the portrait painted is a relatively full one, which is buoyed by excellent pacing throughout its two halves.
 
Though both sections of the Christopher Reeve Story are told between flashes to key dates in the timeline of his struggle with paralysis, the first half – which moves at a slightly more rapid pace – is much more concerned with Reeve’s life as a man and an actor as it follows his origins in the theater and coming from a broken home to his screen testing for the Superman part, and on through his eventual falling out with both the role and his longtime partner Gae Exton, with whom he had his first two children. It also chronicles his friendship with former Julliard roommate and comic icon Robin Williams, about whom actor Glenn Close muses “if Chris [Reeve] were still around, maybe he [Robin] would still be alive.” Finally, the upper section essentially ends following Reeve’s partnership and eventual marriage to Dana Morosini, with whom he had his third child, and to whom he stayed married until his passing. (Dana is featured more prominently in the film than just as part of a first-half break – in fact she’s one of the movie’s sort of mainstays throughout – but in terms of structure, their marriage acts as a cut-off point.)
 
The second half of the film more closely follows Reeve’s activism in the disability community, from his controversial ad wherein his search for a cure to full spinal paralysis lead to his walking again, to his advocacy for stem cell research, to his friendships with other people in disabled spaces. This is the half where viewers are able to witness Reeve’s heroism outside of the costume, and though it moves at more of a clip than the first half, and so has a little bit less fun with the story it has to tell, it is the more compelling section of the film, and it’s in this second half where we also learn of Dana Reeve’s tragic passing due to stage four lung cancer so soon after Christopher Reeve’s death. If the film has an emotional low point, it’s when Alexandra Reeve Givens and Matthew Reeve, Christopher’s first son and his daughter, put it quite succinctly that Will Reeve lost his father, grandmother, and mother all within a 24-month timespan. Still, all three children held onto hope and to the legacy of their parents, following in their footsteps at the Christopher and Dana Reeve foundation, continuing to fight for the disability community as both Christopher and Dana did right up to the end. As a sort of counter to the emotional lows of loss that followed the Reeve family, the filmmakers also note that Christopher’s regaining of limited movement in some of his limbs before his passing would go on to inspire others with spinal cord injuries to hold onto hope, eventually resulting in regained mobility. To hear his assistant tell it “people are literally walking because of him.”
 
Whether Super/Man will compete for or is worthy of awards consideration is a subjective topic, but it’s also not the question being asked of viewers who venture out to the theater to see it. The entire goal of The Christopher Reeve Story is laid out plainly in the film’s marketing: “you will believe in a hero.” To some, that may mean being reminded of just how meaningful Reeve was as Superman; to others, it may mean learning about his work as a disabled activist and advocate for change. There are no allusions about Christopher Reeve’s being a perfect man or living an idealistic public life, but the life he did live became an inspiration for many, and whether or not one considers him super or just another man, this film makes no mistake about it: he was, and always will be, a hero.
 
I’m giving “Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story” an 8.9/10
 
- The Friendly Film Fan

Matt Reeves' take on the Caped Crusader is a Triumph of Noir Filmmaking​.

Through the many iterations and adaptation of the Caped Crusader’s adventures, the Batman character has always been one of DC’s most beloved characters, both because it’s easier to make media content centered around a non-superpowered person (meaning much less VFX work is necessary) and because he belongs to inarguably the most iconic trilogy of superheroes ever to grace a comic book page, the other two being Superman and Wonder Woman. But that’s not what The Batman is concerned with – its aspirations are closer not to legends, but scandals, not to symbols or ideas, but to the pursuit or revelation of truth, whatever that means for a city as corrupt and seedy as the title character’s hometown of Gotham City. It’s a world and a character ripe for crime capers and film noirs, but for whatever reason, the closest anyone has come to making a straight-up crime drama in a Batman movie before now was in 2008’s The Dark Knight, which wasn’t so much about Gotham or the Batman character as it was about whatever was happening to them as the Joker made his arrival. The Batman is not that movie. Director Matt Reeves’ solution to taking on the Batman story is to start not quite at the middle, not quite at the beginning, and do what should have seemed obvious from the get-go: make it a detective noir story.
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The Batman picks up just a few years into Bruce Wayne’s tenure patrolling the Gotham rooftops and alleys, which begins with Robert Pattinson’s voiceover not just explaining what kind of Batman he is, but what kind of story the film is about to tell; it’s one of seediness, corruption, scandal, darkness, and reckoning. Without diving too far into spoiler territory, the opening sequence of the film – just before Pattinson gives us his voiceover – is certainly the darkest a Batman movie has ever had the balls to put right up front, but it’s the nature of what we’re seeing and why we’re seeing it here that lends credence to the idea that while Gotham’s reckoning has come and gone, Batman’s is just beginning. It’s not only a reckoning well-formed and expertly told, but one that could only happen in a noir story like this.

What makes The Batman succeed where other “dark” adaptations failed is all in the eye of the beholder – that’s not me saying it’s a subjective opinion (though it is), but that what this film gets right is on display for all to see. The further we dive into the plotting of the film, the more beautiful it begins to look beyond what we’re shown for shock value or whatever was used in the trailers. Beyond the gorgeous wide shots, the striking color palettes, the makeup work, minimal use of visual effects, we see shadows. We see Batman emerge from them even as the camera has been focused on them for quite some time with nothing in sight. The only other Batman movie to get close to this was Batman v Superman when the dark knight first appears, but that movie never does that again. The Batman, by contrast, does it three or four times over the course of the film, and each time, it works, which makes Gotham’s lower-level criminals fear his being nearby, whether he’s actually there or not, and in turn lets the audience understand why.

Why is the big question posited by The Batman as its mysteries begin to unravel over the course of its three-hour runtime (a runtime which is felt, but not resented). Though it does back out of some of its more challenging material at one or two points, the answers to that question are nonetheless riveting to discover, especially when the script attempts to challenge some more traditionally held views on how the Batman story is meant to go and how the audience has become familiar with certain versions of characters the films rarely, if ever, actually explore. Few films about superheroes can challenge whether they belong on the pedestals we built for them, but fewer still can challenge whether their particular brand of heroism does more harm than good. That’s something usually reserved for anti-heroes, the answers usually falling along the lines of “I’ll go good” or “it doesn’t matter.” In The Batman, it does, especially where Paul Dano’s chilling, calculatory Riddler is concerned. “Unmasking the truth” is Riddler’s obsession, through violence or psychological terror, but we never wonder what it is he’s doing or how – we want to know why.

As Michael Giacchino’s instantly iconic score for the film blares through the theater speakers to signal the arrival of the Batmobile with all its cacophonous sound, we’re not obsessed with the epic car chase sequence or the many hand-to-hand fights leading up to this moment, but with what might happen after, since it might give us more answers to “why?” (though the car chase and those action sequences are excellent in practice as well). We’re not here for an action film, we’re here to help solve the mystery of what’s going on with the world’s greatest detective guiding us along the way. It’s the milieu of Gotham that intrigues most; who holds the power? What do they use it for?

The most intriguing of these social elite are the Penguin (Colin Farrell), who owns a nightclub in the city that Zoë Kravitz’s seductive Selina Kyle works at when she’s not parading around the Gotham rooftops herself (though the name “Catwoman” is never actually mentioned), and John Turturro’s Carmine Falcone. Waiting in the wings with naught but a few words to share and a lot of money to move around, these are the guys who make things happen, and the why of it all is what makes them the most interesting secondary villains to watch, even as Riddler remains the most captivating core antagonist since Heath Ledger’s Joker back in 2008 by taking down people exactly those kind of characters, though his focus is centered on Gotham’s social elite.

Reviewing a film like The Batman without discussing some of its more interesting elements in a spoiler-heavy fashion is a tall task – there’s not that much to spoil that anyone who watches the film won’t expect, but in describing how it all fits together and what’s great about it, there are some heavy-spoiler plots I can’t really divulge in a meaningful way. But, in summary, it’s an excellent crime noir with a visionary look, excellent sound design, an instantly iconic score, and performances that aren’t necessarily standouts, but that more than get the job done. Does it really matter if it’s better or worse than The Dark Knight?
 
I’m giving “The Batman” a 9.1/10
 
- The Friendly Film Fan