John Mcfadden

Sympathetic script. Joker is the clearest example of the victim/perpetrator in modern films. The people who victimize the protagonist are too one-dimensionalal yet realistic.

This movie captures the elements of successful murderous cults and their big siblings, fascist and communist dictatorships. The creepiest and most dangerous element is the beguiling charm and family feeling the cultists exude, both in the beginning of their victims' acquaintance and through all the hidden grotesque murders of their English and American visitors. The most destructive versions of the Whilte Nationalists would be proud. The lone surviving visitor may seem to be accepted only because she doesn't violate the cult's norms and even joins in their benign but strange rituals. But she strongly hints that she only relishes the demise of her unfaithful and otherwise emotionally abandoning boyfriend that the cult orchestrate. Smells like the Heather's. Not satisfyin..

Intellectually credible empathy for someone whose views you're passionately against is difficult and this movie wasn't up to the task. It's a deceptively hostile view of pro-abortion folks. Underneath the sweetness of the anti-abortion characters in this movie is their view that women who commit abortion and abortionists is the view, you are murderers. The planned parenthood employees and their bosses are demonized as deeply cruel. This issue is more complicated than that.

In the time of Trump, it's helpful to see cruelty and intelligently conceived manipulations exposed for what they are...expressions of a barely disguised self-loathing acted out against vulnerable people. Phillipe's character explodes culture bound prejudices against Trumpian people, the Sociopaths, showing that underneath the defensive armor of even the cruelest people is a powerful longing for genuine love.