Review of I'm Still Here (2010) by Ollie P — 12 Jan 2011

I've always liked Phoenix as an actor. It's out now that this was all a hoax for the sake of this film - Affleck calling it Phoenix's "greatest performance ever", and he's revealed such parts as the kid footage at the beginning and end was fake, and a lot of the main assistants featured were actors, but I would still like to know precisely what is real and what isn't with regards to every single scene in the film, as a lot of it is painful to watch.

Painful in a Sacha Baron-Cohen-esque way, only worse, since with Baron-Cohen we know he's just portraying a character that isn't him (even if his victims don't), but here Phoenix is portraying himself and thus completely ruining his career and public image.

It is worthwhile for the fact that it deconstructs and eviscerates the whole celebrity media obsession that the world is continually struck with. As a film though, it's overlong, sometimes dull and often very ugly indeed, but I'm impressed.

It's daring and I imagine took a lot of balls on Phoenix's part. You have to truly love art to go this far with it.