Joker: Folie à Deux just made its premiere at the Venice Film Festival — to less than enthusiastic reviews. The first Joker, directed by Todd Phillips and starring Joaquin Phoenix as the iconic DC villain, also premiered at Venice, where it was received very positively by critics and won the festival’s top prize, the Golden Lion. While subsequent … Read more
IF is the sort of prodigious failure that only a very successful filmmaker can create. Only a director with a track record like John Krasinski could convince a studio to bankroll a film this egregiously saccharine and devoid of drama, and only a guy with a ton of pull in Hollywood could to recruit so many A-list stars to appear in … Read more
The Expendables was a gritty, grungy R-rated action movie. It grossed over $100 million in the U.S. The Expendables 2 was also rated R. It grossed $311 million worldwide. The Expendables 3, however, was only rated PG-13. And guess what happened? The film flopped; grossing just only $39 million in the U.S. So it appears that Lionsgate … Read more
Revenge is a very classical and mythological story subject. So is incest. Because I’d already dealt with the division of the Korean peninsula in “Joint Security Area (JSA)” and class conflict within South Korea in “Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance,” I didn’t want to handle yet another timely social issue in my next work. I wanted … Read more