Director Todd Phillips
Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Robert De Niro, Zazie Beetz
Rated MA
Score 5/6

During the 1980s, a failed stand-up comedian is driven insane and turns to a life of crime and chaos in Gotham City while becoming an infamous psychopathic crime figure.

Yes, I suppose this is a comic book movie. However, first things first this movie is not for kids. Follow the rating advice, only a yogurt would let a kid watch this movie.

There is supposed to be some controversy surrounding the release of Joker. Is this a violent movie? Yeah but compared to some of the movies that I have watched in the past couple of months, such as Rambo, Joker is kind of tame.
Is Joker a disturbing movie? Given that the movie deals with mental illness is about a man’s gradual transformation into a ‘psychopathic crime figure’ it is supposed to be disturbing at times I even found it slightly awkward to watch this movie. Now I would like to take a moment to say that from a certain point of view movies such as Beauty and the Beast and Twilight are also just as disturbing.

I’m going to do my best not to spoil anything for those of you who are going to go see this. I enjoyed Phoenix’s performance; I probably should see more of his movies. Is Phoenix’s Joker chronologically the same Joker we see in The Dark Knight trilogy? I doubt it. I loved how Phoenix took Arthur Fleck from being a man you might feel sorry for to a psychopath with a point to make. Then there is the portrayal of Thomas Wayne by Brett Cullen which was great even though Cullen’s Wayne isn’t exactly traditional, I really wasn’t expecting that. Though I suppose given the use of Multiverses in the comic book industry more than a few characters who far from traditional are bound to turn up in their on-screen incarnations.
For the past decade we have had a string of comic book movies that have slowly started to become carbon copies of themselves. Joker is different from all of those of movies, I loved the 80’s vibe that the opening credits had, and I loved how Phillips showed just how crazy Fleck had become by about the start of the third act and by then he certainly wasn’t a sympathetic character.