“We do not desperately need another actor, but Joaquin is imprisoned within his illness, and he desperately needs to get well. If he wants a career as a singer — well, why not country music? In “Walk the Line” he proved he has a talent for it. In “I’m Still Here” all he proves is that he is hurtling toward the same pointless oblivion that killed his brother River. It is a waste of the privilege of life.” - Roger Ebert’s review of I’m Still Here
So now that it’s past 8 PM PST, I’m allowed to talk about this movie. See it. It’s the best type of trainwreck to come around in a long time. It’s so good.
You know what the best part of this movie is? It’s the faces, the reactions that people have to however Phoenix behaves. Letterman’s face during that infamous interview, Diddy’s face when Phoenix plays him a song with a refrain that says “Compli-fuckin’-cation” over and over, Mos Def’s face when Phoenix describes what he wants to do as a “hip-hop ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’.”
I don’t know if the film is a hoax and it’s never definitively answered. Parts of it certainly could be read as such. The fact is that it doesn’t matter. Joaquin Phoenix definitely (literally) gets shit upon, he definitely mumbles his way through Letterman, and he definitely has a De-Niro-in-Raging-Bull-style weight gain. The way I’d describe it is that even if everything isn’t “real,” everything definitely happened.
See this movie.
