5 Joaquin Phoenix Films That Are Better Than Joker

1. The Master (2012)

The best movie of Phoenix’s career featured his best performance to date.

The Master saw Phoenix star as veteran Freddy Quell who becomes indoctrinated in the "teachings" of cult leader named Lancaster Dodd (played by the late Philip Seymour Hoffman) and dangerously committed to The Cause.

Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, the film offers a parallel to the real world and it’s not hard to guess that Dodd’s character is based on Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.

Hoffman is incredible as the scarily convincing conman who bullsh*ts with enough conviction to win over almost any doubter. It’s a tour de force of acting with Phoenix’s perma-sneering paranoid Quell being a wonderful counterpoint to the outwardly composed preying false deity that Hoffman claims to be.

A film that features Phoenix’s most grounded lunatic, The Master is a superb portrait of the mechanics of a cult and how it can exploit the most at-risk members of society. For all that Joker has to offer, nothing in it comes close to the ‘processing’ scene in The Master. But, to be fair to Todd Philips, not many films can compete with one of the 21st century’s great films.