JOKER: FOLIE A DEUX

 What should a sequel be? More of the same or something radically different? If you go down the radically different route you risk alienating the very audience that perhaps made the first film the hit that spawned the sequel which is exactly what has happened with "Joker: Folie a Deux". Having given us the darkest of dark comic-book villains with "Joker" where was Todd Phillips to go with part two? Down the 'Batman' route with diminishing returns or break the mold and take the risk? Thankfully he chose the latter.

"Joker: Folie a Deux" may be a failure both critically and commercially but artistically it's a triumph. It's also a musical in the same vein as Herbert Ross's masterpiece "Pennies from Heaven" only this time the cast sing the songs which have been brilliantly woven into the plot and which, as with "Pennies from Heaven", explore the feelings of the characters making this one of the very finest American musicals and a sequel superior to the original with Joaquin Phoenix even surpassing his initial outing as Arthur Fleck. This is one of the great performances by an American actor.

This time round he's got a co-conspirator in the form of Lady Gaga's 'Harley Quinn' who he meets in Arkham State Hospital, (in a music class, naturally), and it is she who gives him something to live for but this is no "Bonnie and Clyde", no "Wild at Heart", no boy and girl killers on the lam movie, (about 95% of the film takes place in either the hospital or the courtroom), but a dark psychological study of tortured souls filtered through the gaze of the Hollywood musical. In fact, it's so 'out there' it's almost an art movie. (Did Phillips really expect the same audience who embraced the first film to embrace this one?). Phoenix's Oscar should be in the bag but it's highly unlikely the Academy will embrace this one. It's a downer but it's magnificent.

KNEECAP

 After what seems like decades in the cultural wilderness home-grown Irish cinema has produced three great Irish films in as many years, firstly with "The Quiet Girl" and now, this year, with "That They May Face the Rising Sun" and now "Kneecap", named after the Irish-speaking Hip-Hop band who just happen to brilliantly play themselves.

Fundamentally Rich Peppiatt's instant classic is about how two lads from West Belfast became the highly successful and highly controversial band Kneecap with more than a little help from their Irish teacher who became band member number three with a balaclava and the name DJ Provai but unlike most films about bands or the music industry "Kneecap" is a kaleidoscopic gem of almost surreal sounds and images that blows the cobwebs off the genre with all the force of an exploding bomb.

This is at once a history of a band and of the Northern Ireland Troubles unlike any other and it's very funny in a way no other film that's dealt with the Troubles has been before. Of course there are people in Northern Ireland who would ban the film or just maybe flush it down the toilet, (a recent concert by the band had to be rescheduled after protests that the venue, on the East Bank of Derry's River Foyle, would prove problematic), but then that's their loss since both the film "Kneecap" and the band Kneecap are just about as good as movies and music can get.