I got pretty attached to the notion of Cillian Murphy winning Best Actor in a few months, but Bradley Cooper in Maestro has officially made that a much more difficult path. The performance does meet the hype.
That said, the Academy has recently established that it doesn’t care about awarding even the most ridiculously elite performances as musical conductors, so…
(I realize that the silly snubbing of Cate Blanchett means absolutely nothing about Cooper’s odds. “It’s too boring to award the trophy for best performance to the best performance if the performer has won before” should 100% go up in flames, but never will.)
“[The People’s Joker is] a transgender Joker origin story steeped in Batman and DC references, but it is unabashedly ruthless in who and what it mocks.” - Joe Lipsett
I’m stealing a take from Twitter, but the fact that the map doesn’t make sense is a good thing because it suggests there’s interesting worldbuilding gong on and it’s not just a simple Red State / Blue State projection.
Biggest takeaway: holy shit what a powerhouse performance by Emma Stone. I love her in everything and this immediately pops for me as the best acting I’ve seen her do. With all love and respect to Lily Gladstone, it sure feels to me now like Emma deserves Oscar #2.
The movie itself is good. I’m less high on it than the raves are, but I also won’t say that it disappointed me (since I’ve spoken previously to the caution in my optimism). It’s not one of my very favorites of the year, and for my money it’s not quite on the greatness level of The Favourite just when looking at the Emma/Yorgos collabs, but there’s a lot to recommend this movie and I suspect that I may like it even more on rewatch.
Great musical score; of the 2023 movies I’ve seen, I’d call it a strong runner-up to the score of Killers of the Flower Moon for best of the year. Also Mark Ruffalo killed it in his supporting role.
Not nearly as good as Promising Young Woman for me. Just a tad too predictable.
I like your initial read of the situation leading into the ending. I think they had to reveal this aspect of his character though in order for what he was doing to be believable and consistent. Until then, I felt almost certain the better comparison for the movie would be American Psycho.
I don’t get why they would have to reveal it though. All they have to do is leave it open as an option and then let the audience discuss exactly when the various deceptions started. My biggest complaint of it all is the fucking wallet reveal from the bar early in the movie. Like, seriously? He hasn’t met the guy yet and he’s concocted this master plan? I guess he’s scouted him and knows that he’s a mark who has a lot of money and has access to even more money, but it just makes him such an unnuanced mustache-twirling villain. It also really kills any notion that there was meaningful eat-the-rich messaging happening here since the family at Saltburn, while utterly shitty, were the lesser evil in the whole thing. Though I will say that probably my favorite part is Rosamund Pike at breakfast after Elordi’s character dies. That was great fun no matter my criticisms of the artistic vision.
By the way, also about the general ending sequence, WTF is Keoghan doing ripping the ventilator away from Pike? His character left a ton of plausible deniability with the other deaths and no apparent way to trace it to him…and now he’s got a person dying on their own in some other way, and suddenly he’s creating a path of evidence to trace back to him? Dumber than the Hopkins character at the end of Fracture.
I mean I have to say no because I was negative on the trailer and I liked the movie, but the trailer’s tone was entirely consistent to the movie. It just wasn’t framed in an interesting way at all. I gather you were going to disregard the trailer and watch anyway, which I’ll say is the right choice. At the very least, you’ll agree that Emma is amazing in it.
