Just One More Thing - The Limits of Cinema

As the year is winding down, I'm sorting out a few final blog posts of the year.  There'll be a look at some good films of this year, my top ten, and a look ahead to stuff I'm looking forward to in the new year. I might also do a favourite films of the decade list, but I might leave that a little while, as I have some catching up to do for a few major titles.  I'm also planning out what I'm seeing in the new year, what previews and such I can get to as "Canary Duty" material; for example, I'm currently on to see a preview of next series of Inside No. 9 in early January, that should be done by the second weekend of 2020. 

Just One More Thing - Killing Jerks

Decided to dust off an old title for here; Just One More Thing is the title I'm going to use for commenting on things that are happening, where I get to flex my inner Charlie Brooker.  For this week, I thought I'd talk about the Joker.  That trailer for the new R-rated Joker dropped this week, and I'm really not liking the look of it.  Not that it looks badly made, or poorly acted, or anything like that, and let's face it, you'd have to work hard to present a worse Joker than Jared Fucking Leto.  But the subject matter is bothering me; it's another story of a white guy getting treated a bit badly, told he can't have a thing he wants, deciding to take it out on everyone in a disproportionate way, and we the audience are asked to sympathise with them.  In the age of mass shootings every fucking week in America, it's very poor timing for this kind of thing, and in general I've never liked that sentiment.  The closest I ever came to really liking that sort of thing was Falling Down, only because at the end the film makes damn clear "Michael Douglas is the bad guy here", though only by literally saying it out loud.  But it's not really the film itself I have an issue with; it's some of the fans reacting to the premise, and how it links to the film's most likely source material.