Lady Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix are Harley Quinn and the Joker, two crazy criminals in love, in the sequel “Joker: Folie à Deux.”

Here’s more on that film and other entertainment highlights this weekend →

A “half-baked, halfhearted musical” that features classics from the American Songbook, Todd Phillips’s “Joker: Folie à Deux” is mostly “a dour, unpleasant slog” that “never coheres,” but the film does have “appealing moments here and there,” Manohla Dargis writes. It arrives in theaters nationwide today.

As it celebrates 200 years of bringing art to the masses, the Brooklyn Museum is emphasizing its identity as “an institution with the heart and soul of an alternative space enclosed in the body of a traditional museum,” Holland Cotter writes. Its birthday bash begins on Saturday.

“It came from years of frustration of watching teen movies and shows,” Paul Feig says of the high school sitcom he created, “Freaks and Geeks,” which debuted in September 1999 and introduced future stars such as Seth Rogen. The series lasted just one season, but it lingers in the hearts of its fans, as well as on Hulu.

Halloween may be 27 days away, but several events in the city are celebrating early. Among them are Jimmy Fallon’s Tonightmares (shown here), at Rockefeller Center, which travels through the dark corners of the talk show host’s mind, and the film series Kill Yr Landlords at Anthology Film Archives in the East Village.

On tour behind its fifth record, “Only God Was Above Us,” which according to our critic is “an album of big ideas and rich textures,” Vampire Weekend returns home to New York on Saturday and Sunday at Madison Square Garden. The concerts are among our picks for entertainment in New York City.

Read our weekend roundup for more things to do in New York, or go to the Arts home page for the stories mentioned here and more.

• ‘Joker: Folie à Deux’ Review: Make ’Em Laugh (and Yawn)
  
• Brooklyn Museum at 200 Celebrates Beauty and Art’s Hidden History