Jason Grosser

"Joker: Folie a Deux [madness of two]" utterly destroyed the villains, Arthur Fleck and the Joker. The Joker's concept of creating chaos and madness through his mad genius and cruelty was nowhere to be found. Arthur Fleck and the Joker were reduced to idiotic mad men with delusional ideas and a life of trauma, hopelessness, and in the end [spoiler alert] a meaningless, lonely death of an invisible nobody--nothing that even closely warrants Batman's arch enemy. The Joker was painted as a complete loser who got what he deserved from a psychopath inmate--and from the justice system. Was this the screen writer's way of killing the Joker that some people loved in the first movie? If so, he nailed it.

SPOILER ALERT: I saw the 96% Rotten tomato review and thought that it might be good but was disappointed. The thrust of the movie was that life is all about sex and beauty. Thus, when this old woman lost her attractiveness but still had this crazy sex drive but nobody to satisfy it (her husband had a bad heart), she got extraordinarily jealous and envious and killed the young who still had lots of sex. Her 90+ year-old husband hated his 90+ year-old wife trying to sleep around so he, too, participated in the killing. It is just a movie about our modern objectification of women's sole worth as sex objects and sex and attractiveness being the primary value in society (and perhaps it is the one true value in Hollywood). I think the writer was trying to be profound, which was awkward. Another awkward part was when the 19-year-old sound assistant could not help but want to be a pornstar after watching and helping to film two late 30+ year-old aspiring pornstars having sex. So the teenager insisted on being filmed having sex with this well hung black pornstar in his late 30s. I'm sure that happens all the time--young attractive female teenagers just wanting people nearly twice their age for sex. Then, I thought that Wayne might want to have sex with the old killer lady who is twice his age, but then I remembered that this was a Hollywood movie--that will never happen. LOL Sex is a very powerful desire, but I think that the script writer needs to spend more time with older adults and less time with horny, sex crazed teenagers or very young adults--and pornography culture. The acting, however, was pretty good.

It is good, but I don't like the supernatural powers given to Gaal Dornick--who can "feel" the future without the help of math and science. What was special about Foundation was psychohistory's ability to predict the future mathematically and mathematically gifted people's ability to grasp and expand on that mathematics, not a kind of X-Men character with supernatural abilities to peer into the future without psychohistory. I am on Season 1, Episode 7. I hope that this series doesn't turn in to just another Marvel, DC, or Superhero superpowers plot. Psychohistory and the people who could intellectually understand and use it were the heros in the books. Again, that was the secret ingredient and is what made Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy unique and a celebration of math and science. The production, special effects, and acting is excellent!

Very thought-provoking! There are a number of challenges that women in science have to overcome because of, for example, 1) biases toward men's capabilities that led to greater lab space at MIT, 2) more time navigating social interactions than men to appear less aggressively or assertive to prevent disadvantages associated with that reputation as a women, 3) sexual advances that undermine their credibility--colleagues thinking something sexually happened than didn't for an advancement undermining their merits, and 4) so forth--in addition to blatant sexual harassment that everyone understands.