Joker ★★1/2

Extra point for Phoenix's performance but this fell fairly flat for me. I LOVE the idea of a villain origin story sans superhero but it does necessarily remove some of the urgency and forces character development to precede action (not to mention the lack of the latter in this film in general). Todd Phillips seems to toe the line between social commentary and world building too closely for either concept to fully come to fruition. I found myself pulled from dirty city streets to first-class citizen's exposition seemingly at random and never had time to soak any of it in.

Perhaps it's just the time we're in but there was just something that didn't sit right with me about the film's reasoning behind Arthur Fleck's spiral into insanity being bookended by the "What did you expect..." monologue toward the end. This movie carves out a clear narrative behind the Joker's mentality and the conclusion it comes to is problematic on several levels. In lieu of spoiling that conclusion here, I'll leave it at that.

However, I have found my favorite thematic through line to one of the other most tonally-deaf films of the year (Ready or Not) though; "Fucking rich people...."

-Max Minardi (Reviewed on FHC 142)