{"id":20,"date":"2010-09-28T06:21:06","date_gmt":"2010-09-27T23:21:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dvdpinson.com\/?p=20"},"modified":"2010-09-28T06:21:06","modified_gmt":"2010-09-27T23:21:06","slug":"im-still-here-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/?p=20","title":{"rendered":"I\u2019m Still Here\u00a0Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been a couple of years since two-time academy award nominee Joaquin Phoenix renounced acting, gained forty pounds, grew a face-engulfing beard that makes him look like Zach Galifianakis after a three-day bender and began to pursue a career as a rapper. To pile crazy on top of bizarre, Phoenix\u2019s friend\/collaborator\/brother-in-law, Casey Affleck, started following him around with a camera to document his rise to hip hop fame but instead captured endless footage of JP (that\u2019s his rapper name) losing his mind. The result of the fiasco is the new film \u201cI\u2019m Still Here\u201d that serves as proof of Phoenix\u2019s slide into madness. Or so Affleck and JP would have hoped. The validity of the project has been suspect from day one and the nagging question that pre-occupies the mind while enduring this excuse for a documentary is simple: Is it real? And having contemplated all the material and facts presented it seems the glaring answer is another question itself. Who cares?
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To attempt the standard structure for a review and present a nice and tidy synopsis at this point is near impossible. All has pretty much been revealed already. Joaquin Phoenix quits acting. Then he tries to be a rapper. He isn\u2019t good at it. He tries to meet with Sean \u201cP. Diddy\u201d Combs to discuss the possibility of joining forces to create an album. He isn\u2019t good at that either. He\u2019s late for meetings and misses phone calls and much time is spent waiting in hotel rooms. Once they do occupy the same space together, Puffy verifies the obvious; the rapping is horrible. There is some drug use and hookers and a little bit of defecating but the majority of the movie is Phoenix yelling and ranting about himself and how those around him directly affect him.<\/p>\n

(Terrible Drinking Game Idea: Take a shot every time JP utters a sentence that DOESN\u2019T include the words \u201cI,\u201d \u201cme\u201d or \u201cmy\u201d. You could make it through the film\u2019s 108 minute running time and not taste a drop.)<\/p>\n

Both Phoenix and Affleck share a \u201cwritten by\u201d credit for the film. Something unheard of in legitimate documentaries because these films are supposed to be spontaneous and natural.\u00a0 I\u2019m Still Here is filled with false moments and almost every aspect feels staged and preconceived. It rings about as true as any episode of the \u201cJersey Shore\u201d or \u201cThe Hills\u201d and would have been better suited as one hour special on MTV wedged in between repeats of \u201cJackass\u201d. Various celebrities show up and only add fallacy by playing too much to the camera and nearly smirking into the face of what is suppose to be a lost soul on the verge of breaking down completely. Why Affleck would sit back and exploit his friend\u2019s mental demise by sitting idly by and filming it makes no sense.<\/p>\n

Authentic or not, \u201cI\u2019m Still Here\u201d is a tremendous bore of a movie that goes nowhere. Amateurish and maundering, there really isn\u2019t enough here to constitute a feature film. Directed by Affleck, the film suffers from a lack of any tension and spends its time following an actor who doesn\u2019t have anything to say. Both Phoenix and Affleck have worked with art house auteur, Gus Van Zant, and there are moments in the film that are pulled directly from his style of filmmaking. When Van Zant fixes his camera on someone walking aimlessly through a landscape it can be thought provoking (\u201cGerry,\u201d \u201cElephant\u201d). When Affleck does it, it is yawn inspiring.<\/p>\n

It could be argued that \u201cI\u2019m Still Here\u201d is an experimental performance art piece that exists to poke at celebrity ego and grotesque behavior. A sort of Andy Kaufman fused with Sacha Baron Cohen parodying Brando and Crowe.\u00a0 That might be true but Affleck and Phoenix keep their cards so close to their chest that they never let us in on the joke. What is left is a vanity project that neither enlightens or entertains.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s been a couple of years since two-time academy award nominee Joaquin Phoenix renounced acting, gained forty pounds, grew a face-engulfing beard that makes him look like Zach Galifianakis after a three-day bender and began to pursue a career as a rapper. To pile crazy on top of bizarre, Phoenix\u2019s friend\/collaborator\/brother-in-law, Casey Affleck, started following […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[5993,9223,10751],"class_list":["post-20","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-documentary","tag-hoax","tag-joaquin-phoenix"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}