Bizarrely, Joker: Folie à Deux seems embarrassed to be a movie about the Joker. Every time it gets close to letting the Joker (Joaquin Phoenix) and Harley Quinn (Lady Gaga) drift into twisted, dream-like musical sequences, the movie does it in a halting, tuneless way, exacerbated by Phoenix’s ear-stabbing vocal performance.
Read MoreMessy psychology aside, Joker behaves in the Batman film universe very much like The Killing Joke does for comics: it doesn’t need to connect to any other stories or characters, and captures just one possible timeline for how the Joker came to be, much like the several different threads that Heath Ledger’s Joker references in The Dark Knight.
Read MoreThe Lego Batman Movie is another vehicle for The Lego Group – a.k.a. Danish corporation Lego A/S, worth approximately $15 billion – to sell more of its (admittedly excellent) building block toys, but unlike other previous film franchises that were made solely to sell ancillary products, it’s not clumsy. It’s a clever film that has earned the rare distinction of being both a cash cow and a genuinely entertaining 106-minute commercial.
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