SYNOPSICS
I'm Still Here (2010) is a English movie. Casey Affleck has directed this movie. Joaquin Phoenix,Antony Langdon,Carey Perloff,Larry McHale are the starring of this movie. It was released in 2010. I'm Still Here (2010) is considered one of the best Comedy,Drama,Music movie in India and around the world.
In 2008 while rehearsing for a charity event, actor Joaquin Phoenix, with Casey Affleck's camera watching, tells people he's quitting to pursue a career in rap music. Over the next year, we watch the actor write, rehearse, and perform to an audience. He importunes Sean Combs in hopes he'll produce the record. We see the actor in his home: he parties, smokes, bawls out his two-man entourage, talks philosophy with Affleck, and comments on celebrity.
Same Actors
Same Director
I'm Still Here (2010) Reviews
This is brilliant work. I don't understand all the derision.
Somehow, I feel like one of the only people who thinks this movie is absolutely genius and incredibly funny. Many leading critics seem to have missed the fact that this is a ruse. Reading in the NYT yesterday that Casey Affleck admitted it was not "reality" probably aided my ability to view the movie the way I did, but I am surprised that so many people have a negative reaction to what Affleck and Phoenix present and couldn't see the bigger picture even before the revelation was made. I am looking forward to J.P's appearance on Letterman next week, when I believe we will learn a lot more about their motivation in its production. In the meantime, however, I think a few things can be said that will not prove to be altogether ignorant on my part. First, this a movie made by professional actors. This is not Casey Affleck following a Joaquin Phoenix lacking self-awareness around with a camera because they have nothing better to do. It is a deliberate effort to create, and they are both collaborating. That should give everyone a good starting point. It is a real movie with thoughtful development, not the work of pedestrian journalists. With that in mind, it is easy to see just how much fun it would have been to make. The primary "conflict" in the movie is Joaquin's discomfort with the pressures on him and the risks he is taking in the face of so many expectations to keep producing the kinds of movies that won him accolades. The viewer who thinks the film is true life will believe he is throwing away a great movie career because he is the typical tragic celebrity who has it all, can't recognize it, is under chemical influence, and has no one around who cares enough to intervene. There are far too many clues to let that impression control throughout the film. When J.P. delivers monologues about how he's putting it all on the line, what we should understand is that the fake J.P. is talking about his hip-hop dream, while the real J.P. is acknowledging the risk he is taking by staying out of glossy big-budget blockbusters he had at his fingertips after Walk the Line. Keep in mind: he had to be this character for almost two whole years in order to make anyone bother to watch the movie. When you stack this kind of dedication up against a stupid movie about the drama behind Facebook, the farce of Jersey Shore, another crime movie set in Boston, and all the other garbage out there, I'm Still Here stands out as cutting-edge performance. Comparisons are easily made to works of Sacha Baron Cohen and Christopher Guest. The primary difference is the real-world gambit of Phoenix and the manipulation of the media, expanding the stage of performance beyond the theaters. And the audience isn't spoon-fed the humor. Yeah, they probably ticked off a lot of suited business people who wanted Phoenix to be predictable and stay in bounds, but the very point of the movie was that the Hollywood system is a fenced-in joke of a society and very easy to toy with. Of course, the sad truth is that so many fine performers have indeed self-destructed in similar fashion. Perhaps that is why people are uncomfortable with the movie; because it is plausible. But if J.P. can deceive so many so easily, it is all the more a masterpiece.
Will be utterly fascinating...for some.
This has to be one of the most weird and surreal movies that I've ever seen. Watching Joaquin Phoenix bouncing around like a gibbering idiot and rapping in front of Edward James Olmos (rap name: EJO), while a nonsensical voice-over of Olmos rambles about raindrops and mountains and inner light...it's just insane. And the entire mockumentary is like that, to varying degrees. Joaquin plays a deranged, drug-using, prostitute-frequenting, delusional, destructive, bizzaro-version of himself, and I just can't look away. Every time he steps up onto a stage to rap, it's a hilarious train wreck. Even though you can't help but feel painfully embarrassed for the character. The way he berates his assistants, tries to get a friend in recovery to take drugs, constantly surrenders to his own paranoia and delusions, and takes narcissism and selfishness to the furthest excesses, it's all just unbelievably compelling. It's like watching the worst person in the world and wondering what insanity they're going to race towards next. I thought that the performance by Phoenix was great. This is my absolute favorite movie by him, and my favorite "character" that he's played. It's not by accident that so many people thought this movie was a genuine documentary about Phoenix's spiraling life. He genuinely makes the character seem crazy enough to believe that his music is actually good and that the absurd things that he's saying have meaning. It feels real, even when you know it's not. Every uncomfortable, embarrassed and incredulous reaction of his friends and the people he meets just drew me deeper into the world of this bizarre man. I was beyond impressed by what Phoenix and Casey Affleck did with this. When I first heard about it, it sounded like a vanity project that would be an amusing oddity, at best. What I got instead was one of the best movies I've seen this year. It is NOT for everyone. But how can I not rate a movie highly that made me laugh so much, while also making me feel sadness, disgust, pity, incredulity, anger, hope, embarrassment, and ten other things? This experiment was a smashing success, in my opinion, and something truly unique that I'll be thinking about for a long time. I'm Still Here is audacious, ridiculous, and certainly divisive. I can honestly see why some people would hate this movie, and the entire idea behind it. But, long before that perfect ending left my screen, I knew which side of that divide I would fall on.
A scathing and hilarious indictment of the category of celebrity
Under normal circumstances, I might have given this title a slightly lower rating, but the criminally low scores given by some reviewers demanded a strong counterpoint. This was an immensely intelligent and relevant film to come out of Hollywood, made by actors, celebrities in their own right, who are clearly sickened by the solipsistic egoism of the entertainment industry and its undeserved position of prominence in American culture. The grotesque character Phoenix and Affleck bring to the screen, perhaps crystallized best in an instance where the former physically attacks a heckler during a performance and subsequently voids his stomach after all the exertion, instantly - and irrevocably - shatters the glamorous veneer that surrounds the category of 'the celebrity'. This, I suspect and fear, may be one of the reasons why some of the reviewers in these pages had an aversion to the film. As a Brit, I've been brought up on slightly surreal, and often fairly, dark humour - a la Chris Morris's 'Jam' and 'Brass Eye'. But this really pushed things further, and I felt myself challenged as a viewer, which is always a good thing in my book. My advice would be to watch this film and make up your own mind. Perhaps the best way to recommend this feature is to mention the fact that, almost 12 hours after having seen it, I still feel a warm sense of edification, a feeling that is rarely induced by watching movies (I'm more of a reader). A timely satire that bursts the celebrity bubble.
Not Hollywood
This is unlike any other movie ever made. Inventive. Joaquin made a movie, he was in character at all times. Whether or not he broke character or there were flaws or slips in the film, he had to keep in character any time he was in the public eye. He wasn't locked away on a set or in a remote location. He wasn't shielded from scrutiny until every word or action was carefully crafted by editors. He was acting in plan sight, having to flow and improvise anytime he was around the media. These guys are made a film by catching the media off guard, a media hoax, instead of the media paying there rent by displaying or exposing celebrity. This is the result of a history of celebrity turning the tables on the media. Edgar Allan Poe used the print media to conduct hoaxes for the end goal of entertainment and enlightenment. He manufactured a truth to raise questions, do you believe everything you read or hear in the case of Orson Wells? I commend the efforts and dedication that went into the making of this movie. Also, I wish no one had let me in on the ruse until I had seen the movie. Being fooled is fun, it's why magicians will always be entertaining despite the fact that we may adamantly dismiss the existence of magic.
A great experiment in gauging the cost of being original...
Society wants us in our place, whether we're big stars or the common worker. This is proof that even those on top of the world can fall if they try to do something original, unique and personally rewarding. With that said, I highly enjoyed this piece, although I can't say I expected to. I thought it would be a joke, something to laugh at and yes, while there were parts that were funny I couldn't help but to be taken aback by a message, whether intended or accidental: we are a mean society. our expectations are for us and not those around us. We are greedy. We laugh at others when maybe we're not supposed. We criticize when we shouldn't. This isn't a film about the actor/rapper in question - it's a film about us and the consensus: we're really bad people. -E