Joker - 2019

idk, I’d watch a period piece where Joaquin Phoenix plays a failed comedian who is abandoned by the social safety net and succumbs to violent madness. The first third of this movie is a tender character study of a pathetic guy who has never once caught a break, and it really stinks when they don’t know how to propel that forward. There’s some decent raw materials here: the performances, the sets and costumes, the cinematography make it feel like a film proper. But Arthur Fleck ultimately becomes a weird and unpleasant guy, in a way that doesn’t feel connected to his interiority at all, and the movie doesn’t know how much to root for him. So the end is just a bunch of violence that accomplishes nothing. Next time I’ll just watch a Batman movie.