The Handmaid's Tale

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In what used to be the United States of America rises a totalitarian state named Gilead, where women garbed in red known as Handmaids are assigned in rotation as birth vessels to men of power known as Commanders. Their role is simple: to serve the biological purpose of reproduction, after an unmentioned phenomenon leaves much of the country with fatal levels of infertility. One such Handmaid only referred to as Offred, based on a genitive naming system after the names of their Commanders who serve as their owners, tells the story of her everyday life and routine, how she discovers an underground resistance group known as Mayday, and how both her Commander and his Wife make her complicit in their various secret schemes that neither must be aware of. In a new world order where the only purpose of a fertile woman is to give birth, Offred tries to reconcile her current situation with fleeting memories of the past, her partner and daughter, and hopes that she might be reunited with them again one day.

Slaughterhouse-Five

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All this happened, more or less. Billy Pilgrim is captured as a prisoner of war and is sent to Dresden with fellow American POWs to live in Schlachthof-fünf (Slaughterhouse-Five), which as the name suggests used to be a storehouse for meat. There they serve as contracted laborers and survive the Allied bombing of Dresden that kills tens of thousands and reduces the city into rubble. Pilgrim and company are saved by the underground bunker in their make-shift residence but only a few of them make it back to America alive. He rebuilds his life and finds wealth in optometry in his hometown of Ilium, marrying the daughter of the owner of the school he attends and having two children with her. And then he is abducted by extraterrestrials and taken to the planet Tralfamadore where he is housed in a zoo for observation and given another human being as his mate, a porn star named Montana Wildhack with whom he sires another child. Later on in life he claims to be capable of time travel, jumping to different moments of his life at will. So it goes.

Joker: Folie à Deux

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Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) goes on trial for the multiple murders he has committed prior to ending up in prison. Arkham State Hospital guard Jackie Sullivan (Brendan Gleeson) becomes his watcher and vouches for his good track record inside, taking him to Ward B from time to time where they witness a group session that utilizes music as therapy. There Arthur locks eyes with Harleen Quinzel (Lady Gaga), a patient who instantly develops an obsession with him and goes on to encourage him to unleash the Joker. His legal team led by Maryanne Stewart (Catherine Keener) is preparing an insanity plea, looking at the possibility of using a split personality diagnosis as his get-out-of-jail-free card. However, upstart prosecutor Harvey Dent (Harry Lawtey) is hell bent on pursuing a guilty conviction for Fleck, revealing in a TV interview that he wants nothing less than the death penalty for him. As the trial begins, a group of Joker sympathizers come up with a drastic plan to rescue their idol.