Taxi Driver ★★★★☆

Fantastic film. Made me feel absolutely awful. I suppose it’s easy to project current perspectives backwards onto things but the way Travis struggles with sociality and understand or making connections with people, then turns inwards and through intense racism he has absorbed from society utterly sours as a person reminds me of a specific kind incel rabbit-hole some people who struggle socially due to autism and other problems end up trapping themselves in.

The ending is a sickening fantasy of how a mass shooter might wish to be vindicated. Iris was a girl in an unbelievably fucked up situation but who has only been left even more traumatised, back with a family who beat her and now speak for her, her voice entirely silenced, while Travis coolly blows off Betsy to show how above it all he is now while rejecting any actual human connection.