The People’s Joker (2024)
The newest film on this list — it’s in theaters now — stars Vera Drew as a struggling performer who becomes someone called “Joker the Harlequin” to dismantle the comic tyranny of Batman and Lorne Michaels, who is kind of like the Lorne Michaels who created Saturday Night Live, but different.
The film has layers of metaphor — the search for a comic identity parallels Vera’s coming out as trans — and it’s loaded with inside jokes about Batman, but also about alternative comedy and singer-songwriter Ben Folds. It’s very funny, and — here’s the unexpected part — igorgeous. Drew enlisted a team of friends to create her own beautiful version of demented Gotham.
The parody of Warner Bros. characters drew a legal warning from the studio when it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, but no one would ever mistake The People’s Joker for a studio film. It’s completely independent and original, and one of the strangest movies we’ve ever seen, in all the good ways.
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