Le Phoenix : You Were Never Really Here or Joker

Hot sarcastic take : You mean his Robert De Niro performance vs. his other Robert De Niro performance?

Kidding.....kidding

I don't get You Were Never Really Here - an exercise in feeling depressed by a director who specializes in making depressing films - when people say Phoenix can't play "normal" well this won't convince anyone otherwise. I do "like" it, but overrated on here especially imo.

Joker was something better the way I see it, a tour de force, a howl of pain, something tapping into the culture too - I recognize that guy (early on especially) - a piece of work inspired by fragments of many things that he made his own. I don't think he gets enough credit for how much wit and thought is in that work from people eager to praise it or criticize it.

YWNRH by far. With Joker I just kept seeing echos of his better performances. It was almost self-parody.

Both are derivative, effectist movies, and I think rather the same way about the performances. I'd say that found more singularity in his Joker, near the end when Fleck embrace who he really is delivers some of his best work in recent years.