‘Joker: Folie à Deux’ Hates You. Will You Return the Favor?

'Joker: Folie à Deux'With Van Lathan

Joker: Folie à Deux 2024

Todd Phillips' musical follow-up, Scott Silver co-writing, Joaquin Phoenix back as Arthur Fleck with Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn, Brendan Gleeson, Catherine Keener, Harry Lawtey as Harvey Dent, and Steve Coogan. Set two years on, mostly a courtroom drama scored to mid-century standards (Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered; That's Entertainment; For Once in My Life). Van 'doesn't get it'; both read the ending as Phillips punishing the audience that mythologized the first film, Arthur rejecting the Joker gang and dying alone with no larger meaning. Van's verdict: 'well-made, not good movie.' Sean: 'this guy fucking hates me,' respects it, doesn't like it. Gaga ends up inconsequential.

Joker 2019

The Oscar-winning original they keep measuring against. Sean liked it and read it as a movie about 2019 America; Van never did, would rather watch 'There Will Be Blood' than see that tone in his Batman world. The sequel reads as Phillips' answer to everyone who called the first film an incel manifesto.

What is an audience owed?Movie discourse, rage-bait, and the 'fuck you' movie

Requiem for a Dream 2000

Van's model of a 'fuck you' movie that still hands you something sober about the world; Sean calls it the better film but a similar bottomless-pit-of-frustrated-morality shape.

Se7en 1995

Sean's example of an ending that leaves you asking what you learned, but with morality and procedure to hold onto. Van: the whole film is a guy insisting he wants to see how bad it gets, then finding out he can't handle it.

Synecdoche, New York 2008

The 'scooped out but worth it' comparison, about the performance of life and going through the motions. Watch it when you're in a good place in your life.

Vice 2018

Van's 'not quite' benchmark: a director stepping out of comedy, good performances, a clear point, and still not sure it earned the runtime, same feeling he had walking out of Joker.

The Big Short 2015

The McKay dramatic turn that landed, cited as the before to Vice's after.

Don't Look Up 2021

Sean plays defender: the comedy is the weak part, but the closing turn toward appreciating your own life hit him at the right time. Folie à Deux has no such turn.

Killers of the Flower Moon 2023

The green-room argument before a live Rewatchables: Van admits going in looking for reasons not to like it because of Scorsese's Marvel comments, then reckoning with a blank-check movie that did exactly what it wanted.

Megalopolis 2024

The recurring example of a grand swing whose discourse arrived years before the movie, and which has become a litmus test for whether you're a good person just for buying a ticket.

The Substance 2024

Named among the year's movies people were being put 'under the microscope' over.

Greg Jardin on 'It's What's Inside'

Greg Jardin on

It's What's Inside 2024

Jardin's feature debut, a noisy Sundance acquisition Netflix won in a 36-hour bidding war for roughly five million, twice its budget. A one-location, one-night, eight-way body-swap sci-fi thriller with jokes, lit like horror (Argento's 'Suspiria' the touchstone). Shot draft 17 in Portland after a week of rehearsal where the cast read first from their souls, then from their bodies. Jardin, a longtime Netflix-promo director, edited and did the VFX himself; David Thompson's turn as Forbes was the hard one to cast and the film's pivot.

Also mentioned raised along the way

Greg Jardin's formative films BatmanNatural Born KillersKids

'It's What's Inside' comps ClueHeathersGremlinsInnerspaceSuspiria17 AgainFamily Switch

Greg's last great thing Titane

In passing Taxi DriverFalling DownThe MatrixThere Will Be BloodAntichristNetworkThe Band WagonStar Wars: The Last JediCivil WarLonglegsTrapThe FlashThe Gray ManAvengers: Infinity WarThe Karate KidThe Big LebowskiHe Got GameThis Boy's LifeCreedPat Garrett & Billy the KidBladePulp FictionTrainspottingChild's PlayThe HangoverRoad Trip

Not films filtered out: TV, games, ads

TV SuccessionGLOW13 Reasons WhyThe SopranosI Think You Should LeaveSiskel & Ebert

Comics The Killing JokeThe Dark Knight Returns

Podcasts 60 Songs That Explain the 90s

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