Edward Norton, Willem Dafoe and the film ‘Motherless Brooklyn’

The film Motherless Brooklyn (2019) sets itself against the backdrop of 1950s New York City with a puzzle for lead character and private detective Lionel Essrog, as played by film director Edward Norton, in the starring role. Essrog battles Tourette’s Syndrome, and as a result is taken under the wing of Frank Minna, as played by Bruce Willis, from childhood.

(Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Laura Rose, left, and Edward Norton as Lionel Essrog in the film Motherless Brooklyn).

Frank Minna sets the story in motion with a shady proposition to extort more payment for his business from businessmen whose background Minna keeps deliberately vague. Using the photographic memory of Essrog to plant puzzles for a crime solving plan for the private detective, things turning sideways for that deal reveals a story that offers a degree of potential character depth that isn’t present in many contemporary movies.

(Bruce Willis as Frank Minna, left, Willem Dafoe as Paul, center, and Alec Baldwin as Moses Randolph in the film Motherless Brooklyn).

The pieces suggest involvement by characters Paul, as played by Willem Dafoe, Laura Rose as played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw, and Moses Randolph as played by Alec Baldwin. Randolph, a character written into the book Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem, resembles power broker Robert Moses as described in the book The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert Caro. The intrigue within the movie, a project brought to the movies due to Norton, includes intrigue that in part includes character Tony Vermonte as played by Bobby Cannavale.

(Bobby Cannavale as Tony Vermonte in the film Motherless Brooklyn).

The Rotten Tomatoes listing for the film Motherless Brooklyn rightly mentions the film takes the story from the “gin-soaked jazz clubs in Harlem to the hard-edged slums of Brooklyn”. The film aims for setting a mood, a place, and a feeling of corruption fighting that works if understood through the lens of those constructs, some of which Norton seems to have added into the film’s screenplay. The film largely worked for me due to this, which leads me to my rating of 3.75-stars on a scale of one-to-five.

Matt – Wednesday, November 20, 2019

Joaquin Phoenix and the film ‘Joker’

The film Joker (2019) works. Joaquin Phoenix starring in a gritty, physically demanding, emotional gut punch of a role as Arthur Fleck demands your attention. While given credible support in roles supporting him, make no mistake that Joaquin Phoenix as star of this character study surpasses the critical appreciation granted Christian Bale for Batman Begins (2005). While in the conversation, it is hard for me to say Phoenix’ Joker surpasses that of Heath Ledger from The Dark Knight (2008).

(Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck in the film Joker).

While thinking quite highly of the film Joker and the role Joaquin Phoenix played, this commentary is largely intended to keep the story of the experience to myself. Robert De Niro starring in a role reminiscent of Johnny Carson‘s The Tonight Show brings credibility to a sense of time and place in setting to a time of the maybe the 1970’s with the fictional city of Gotham standing in for New York City.

(Robert De Niro as Murray Franklin in the film Joker).

Arthur Fleck faced the gritty hardship of experiencing the difficult sides of a life that lacked stability, a future, and other elements that brought the Joker, as a character and villain, into conflict with the character Batman we know through the myth of the comic books, the multiple television series, and the multiple movie franchises. Arthur’s relationship with Penny Fleck, as portrayed by Frances Conroy, is given appropriate treatment in Joker.

(Frances Conroy as Penny Fleck, Arthur’s mother, in the film Joker).

Further, critical roles were given convincing voice in giving the role of Arthur Fleck an escalating series of events, each deepening Fleck into his culmination as sociopath Joker. Bringing Gotham with him in parallel offers a tangible sense of what guides the Batman we see on the reverse side of the coin. Those leveling criticism of this film as juvenile, bleak, clichéd, derivative or not angry enough miss a large point that this was a character study. Part of what made the slow burn of Quention Tarantino‘s film Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood (2019) film work made Joker also work.

(Joaquin Phoenix with director and co-screenwriter Todd Phillips from the film Joker).

Todd Phillips directed Joker. Scott Silver joined Phillips with screenwriting credits. My feeling of this movie, following my first viewing on Sunday of opening weekend, is that the film deserves the 4.0-stars on a scale of one-to-five that I am granting it. The audience score (91% favorable) rather than the score of critics (69% favorable) from Rotten Tomatoes on Sunday evening at roughly 10:30 PM Eastern Time, is more in line with my experience.

Matt – Wednesday, October 9, 2019