'Joker's' dark themes speak to 2019 with a mesmerizing Joaquin Phoenix

VENICE, Italy - If you are a journalist covering the Venice International Film Festival, you go into the experience accepting a few basic ground rules. You will drink bellinis and swat away mosquitoes. You will stand in long but generally fast-moving lines in sometimes unendurable heat. And you will be freed, at least temporarily, from the obligations of watching and writing about comic-book movies.

I say this not to show any disdain for comic-book movies but only to point out the well-established seasonal logic by which the film industry typically operates. The summer - the designated stamping ground for superheroes and super-villains - has finally passed, making way for the fall and its traditional