4/5 stars

Joaquin Phoenix returns to the role that won him an Oscar and gave him the biggest hit of his career in Joker: Folie à Deux.

Director Todd Phillips takes the brave decision to turn this into a Hollywood musical. Yes, you read that right: Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck sings old standards, the clown turning crooner.

The film begins with an old-school, Warner Brothers-style cartoon, loosely replaying events as Arthur’s Joker persona shot dead TV interviewer Murray Franklin live on air.

Now incarcerated in Arkham Asylum, this deranged loner is awaiting to see if he will stand trial. Near-silent in the beginning, Arthur only brightens when a prison guard (Brendan Gleeson) admits him to a music class.

“We use music to make us whole,” says the teacher. And it’s here where he meets his soulmate, Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga).

An arsonist whose mother had her committed to Arkham, Quinzel is familiar to all DC Comics fans as Harley Quinn, the character known as the Joker’s paramour.

First Half Report:

Plot- or presentation-wise until the pre-interval, there aren’t any exciting moments or action sequences that provide a high. Vijay is terrific in a couple of emotional scenes. The interval twist is interesting and raises the bar for the second half.

GOAT starts with an action sequence in Kenya and quickly shifts to Delhi, followed by a song featuring Vijay’s energetic dances alongside Prabhu Deva. Stay tuned for the first half report.

Vijay’s film, written and directed by Venkat Prabhu, who delivered the blockbuster Maanaadu and the disastrous Custody with Naga Chaitanya, is now ready with his big star film GOAT (The Greatest of All Time). This film comes at a crucial juncture for Vijay as he steps into politics, and it will be interesting to see how director Venkat Prabhu has made the best use of this significant opportunity.

Cast: Thalapathy Vijay, Prashanth, Prabhudeva, Mohan, Jayaram, Sneha, Laila, Ajmal Amir, Meenakshi Chaudhary, Parvati Nair, Vaibhav, Yogi Babu, Premgi Amaren, Yugendran Vasudevan and Akilan.

Written & Directed by Venkat Prabhu

Music : Yuvan Shankar Raja
Director of Photography : Siddhartha Nuni
Editor : Venkat Raajen
Banner : AGS Entertainment (P) Ltd
Producers : Kalpathi S Aghoram, Kalpathi S Ganesh, Kalpathi S Suresh

U.S. Distributor: Alerion (USA), Hamsini Entertainment Ltd

The GOAT (2024) Tamil Movie Review by M9

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Defending the state’s handling of the “Rust” shooting case, New Mexico special prosecutor Kari T. Morrissey has asked the judge to take another look at the circumstances that prompted the dismissal of Alec Baldwin’s manslaughter charge.

In a court filing Friday, Morrissey asked New Mexico First Judicial Circuit Court Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer to reconsider her decision to throw out Baldwin’s manslaughter case.

Six weeks ago, Marlowe Sommer dramatically ended Baldwin’s criminal trial after potential new evidence came to light. A former police officer who lives in Arizona had months earlier delivered nearly two dozen .45-caliber rounds to the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Department, saying they might have been related to the “Rust” shooting 2½ years earlier that killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.

The former officer, Troy Teske, is a friend of Thell Reed, a noted Hollywood armorer and father of “Rust” weapons handler Hannah Gutierrez, who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in March in the shooting. Teske was scheduled to be a witness in her trial but Gutierrez’s defense attorney decided not to call Teske to testify.

After the Gutierrez trial and before leaving Santa Fe, Teske turned over the ammunition he had brought to New Mexico to local sheriff’s deputies. The casings of three of the rounds appeared to match the fatal bullet in the “Rust” movie set shooting, deputies later testified.

During Baldwin’s trial, the Santa Fe County sheriff’s crime scene technician testified that she took the rounds from Teske and placed them into evidence storage. However, the rounds were not included as part of the “Rust” shooting evidence, later testimony showed.

Instead the ammunition was filed under a different case number — a fact that Baldwin’s attorneys pounced on as evidence that the state was allegedly hiding material that might have been helpful to Baldwin’s defense.

The judge agreed and dismissed the criminal charge.

In her 52-page motion, Morrissey argued that defense attorneys knew more about the Teske rounds than she did. She wrote the situation surrounding the rounds did not rise to a level that warranted Marlowe Sommer’s dismissal of the case with prejudice, meaning it could not be refiled.

Morrissey asserted that the tardy disclosure of the Teske rounds did not hamper Baldwin’s defense because his attorneys apparently knew about the ammunition before the trial. Morrissey also argued the rounds were unrelated to the charges that Baldwin faced.

“It never occurred to the State that the Teske rounds were relevant to the case against Mr. Baldwin and they are not,” Morrissey wrote.

A Baldwin representative was not immediately available for comment.

Morrissey wrote that the state, which had just two attorneys on the Baldwin case, lacked the resources of the actor’s team, which included at least nine lawyers. She asked the judge to ask Baldwin’s lawyers to disclose when they learned of the Teske rounds — presumably to show that it was well before Baldwin’s trial that began with jury selection on July 9.

Morrissey also wrote in her motion that the crime scene technician, Marissa Poppell, was not trying to mislead the judge when she testified that the Teske rounds were dissimilar to the ones uncovered on the “Rust” movie set in October 2021.

“She provided mistaken and inaccurate testimony because people occasionally make mistakes,” Morrissey wrote.

In July, the judge grew visibly angry when she saw that three of the rounds did appear to match the live ammunition found on the “Rust” set.

Morrissey said the judge should have considered less severe remedies, such as declaring a mistrial to give Baldwin’s team the opportunity to inspect the rounds and have them tested by the FBI.

The judge has scheduled a hearing later this month to consider a separate motion filed by Gutierrez’s attorney to throw out her conviction or grant a new trial.