11. Joker
Joker is complicated. Joaquin Phoenix (who famously lost 52 pounds to play the sallow, unsuccessful comedian Arthur Fleck) is convincing in Todd Phillips’ 2019 movie; as he’s constantly beaten and ridiculed throughout Joker, Phoenix takes on the ineffable fragility of a picked flower. Though the movie operates in exhausting black-and-white thinking, you still wish for Arthur’s preservation…until he starts killing everyone. Then, Joker becomes an acrid power fantasy, eliminating all of Arthur’s softness with a flamethrower. It does, at least, make an interesting argument for nihilism, and its impact on culture has been significant, but it’s not as clever as it presents.
