Joaquin Phoenix to take a long, likely unsettling stroll down Ari Aster's Disappointment Blvd.
Film Features Ari Aster
It’s been two years since Ari Aster made picturesque Sweden seem absolutely terrifying with Midsommar, so it’s about time for another m-Aster-piece (we’re not sorry) to come and terrify us. It looks like we’re getting one sooner than later: Today, The Hollywood Reporter announced that Aster is working on a new A24 film, titled Disappointment Blvd.
Joaquin Phoenix, who’s had his fair share of bone-chilling roles, is set to star in it. The last time we saw Phoenix, he became a meme and an Academy Award-winner for The Joker, so this seems like fitting opportunity to follow Todd Phillips’ controversial film with. Plot details haven’t been released just yet, but THR said it’s an “intimate, decades-spanning portrait of one of the most successful entrepreneurs of all time.” The description doesn’t lend much to the imagination on where the story will go, and it certainly doesn’t sound like anyone’s being decapitated or burned in a bear suit, but given Aster’s previous work, it’s bound to have some deeply unsettling surprises in store.
As with his other films, Aster is writer and director, as well as co-producing with Lars Knudsen. No other production details have been shared yet.
35 Comments
Man, I never thought about it before, but that is one super appropriate director/actor pairing. This’ll probably be really good.
Phoenix is never less than fantastic, no matter how you feel about any given film. And I believe I read an interview with Aster saying he was working on a non-horror film. I have high hopes.
I beg to differ: I found his work stilted and unconvincing in “Space Camp”
When Tate Donovan outshines you, you just know you’ve got to go and change your name and start from scratch.
They should have had his character Max land the shuttle at the end of that movie, so that he could be a Leaf on the wind.
I think we all know Jinx carried that movie.
“Max and Jinx friends forever.”
Touche’
Didn’t Aster say after Midsommar that he was looking to make a comedy? Or whatever the Ari Aster version of a comedy would look like?
A comedy, but with more surprise decapitations.
Is he going to play Itchy or Scratchy?
Was Midsommar *not* a comedy??
Yeah, whenever Dani sobbed and whimpered, I got that I Love Lucy vibe like whenever Ricky would give Lucy a scolding for getting into trouble, she’d turn on the water works for comedic effect.
If you want to see Ari Aster’s idea of a comedy, watch his short film The Strange Thing About The Johnsons. Laugh riot, that guy.
[shrugs] I laughed a lot. Her travelling companions’ lack of empathy & undisguised disdain was as funny as any recent comedy.
“[I]t’s an ‘intimate, decades-spanning portrait of one of the most successful entrepreneurs of all time.’”I’m thinking it’s a gritty reboot of Annie with a focus on Daddy Warbucks, and with Rooster and company singing about “Disappointment Blvd.” instead of “Easy Street”. It’ll be like the musical, but with more typhus and smallpox.
I never thought that depiction of the Great Depression was depressing enough.
It’s not a “bear suit,” it’s an actual FUCKING bear.Bear suits are what Nic Cage punches women in.
Disappointment Blvd. : Where gorehounds and fans of slashers and torture-porn find themselves after watching, out of FOMO, the next A24 dark drama, that they already knew they’d find boring and unable to hold their attention.
Disappointment Blvd. was where I was when I saw Midsommar, which is so dumb, so contrived and unbelievably silly, that I realized Hereditary must have been beginners luck.
This will be a good pairing. Maybe on par with his roles in PTA’s films. Also, goddammit. I didn’t need to be reminded that he won a fucking Oscar for The Joker. I mean…how terrible is it? Should I watch it if I’m very much over that character in general, but love Phoenix? I have to admit that I enjoy some of Todd Phillip’s comedies. Specifically Starsky & Hutch and Due Date. Or should I just rewatch The King of Comedy? Serious question.
Being over the character but loving Phoenix is pretty much the right way to approach that movie, I think. The movie didn’t do all that much for me with its Falling Down / King of Comedy narrative, and Phoenix hits very similar acting beats to The Master and You Were Never Really Here (which should be, and is, a compliment), but all that is to say the whole enterprise feels like something you’ve seen before, and then yeah, add in the decades of familiarity with the character in question, and it’s…fine? I don’t get the love for it, and I don’t get the hate for it – it’s mostly just there.
Thank you for this sincere answer. And for also reminding me about the fantastic film You Were Never Really Here and Joaquin’s excellent performance in that role.
You Were Never Really Here is the pizzagate movie where Travis Bickle is really the hero the media proclaims him to be. Joker is the movie where he isn’t deterred from assassinating a famous person and thereby achieves the validation he’d been seeking.
It’s fine. It’s neither as great or bad as people claim. Phoenix is great and it’s so barely The Joker, you can pretend that it’s not him.
Robert Eggers makes better cinema than old man Aster.
Although the Lighthouse fell off nearly as hard from the Witch as Midsommar did from Hereditary. I mean, both the Witch and Hereditary were mean, smart and tight, Lighthouse was goofy and fell apart, and Midsommar is pure stupid shit.
Why the need to make it a competition? They’re both great filmmakers.
Hey, just because it’s (probably) not a horror film doesn’t mean it’s not going to be fucked uuuuuup! I certainly hope so. But even more, I’m looking forward to more unique, breathtaking cinema. So glad we have Ari Aster. Hereditary was excellent, but Midsommar had my jar. on. the. floor.Still trying to forget I ever saw that one short movie of his though.
Must have been your jar of critical acumen because that movie is stupid as shit.
Joaquin Phoenix to take a long stroll down Disappointment BlvdYes, I already saw Joker, thank you.
Disappointment Blvd.? Someone is finally making a movie about my life.
Midsommar is one of the silliest, most intelligence-insulting movies of the last decade. It’s a rip-off Wicker Man done far less well, has crap internal logic, completely telegraphs everything that’s going to happen, and has contrived characters that make the folks in Green Inferno seem cool. It’s so bad and so dumb it makes me think that Hereditary was a fluke, or was written with someone else’s help.Yet sure, it’s a classic, nothing means anything anymore, he’s a genius.
Is that near the Boulevard of Broken Dreams?
I don’t care what it is about, or what genre. So far, Aster and Peele have become the two directors that I have on my short list of “New movie? I’m in.”
I remember Nathan Rabin saying after I’m Not Here that Phoenix was finished and that he would only be remembered as that guy who went weird and pretended to try and be a rapper.Since then, Phoenix has anchored such films as The Master (AV Club’s film of the half-decade), Inherent Vice, Her, You Were Never Really Here and has won an Oscar!You could say that after I’m Not Here that Phoenix rose like a…well I can’t think of a perfect analogy but you know what I mean.