Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Robert De Niro, Zazie Beetz, Marc Maron, Frances Conroy, Shae Whigham, Brett Cullen, Douglas Hodge, Dante Pereira-Olson, Bill Camp, Glenn Fleshler, Josh Pais.

If comedy has become a matter for the subjective disguised as hate or even animosity that has been disguised by the mask of envy then so has all art forms, from the video game, to the novel and onwards to the relative study of looking back at an old master’s work of art, for some now is not a means of expression but a chance to decry and even destroy something without really looking at it with an eye of understanding. It is in this that the joke perhaps has become a by-word for abuse, and that the Joker is nothing more than evil dressed up in outlandish rags and a symbol of modern sickness.