Scorecard to date - Rotten Tomatoes 69% from 327 critic reviews and 93% from 2,713 verified fan ratings. 58 Metascore on IMDB.
I would normally try and catch this at the cinema, but its so damm expensive to go, unless I go on my own. Oh, and I hate other people in the cinema. It's only a recent thing, but most people can't last 2 hours without checking their phone or chatting to the person next to them
I would suggest a matinee. On a Wednesday morning. Anything over $5 and you could probably file a robbery report. (See, I told you my jokes were bad.) I can tell you I will never sit through this movie again. I’ll stick with Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy. After all, the amount that Phillips ripped off from those movies was criminal. If that’s all it takes to write a screenplay, I’ll do a mashup of The Godfather and Apocalypse Now. Completely agree.
Had a lousy theater experience seeing It: Chapter 2 recently, with people talking through the whole thing. Was worried it would be much the same at The Joker but the dozen or so people in my screening last night stayed quiet and actually seemed to want to watch the movie. Not sure how it will play with the chatty cell phone enthusiast theater-going crowd elsewhere.
Caught “Joker” last night (Thursday night). Man, this is a complicated one to dissect. I went in with very high hopes (hopes being different from expectations; I try to never expect or assume something will be good). The idea of a truly substantive film in this genre (there are a few others, non-MCU stuff), and/or just a good film from Phoenix (I thought “You Were Never Really Here” was quite good) made me very, very hopeful. After finally seeing it, I’m not sure what to say. I guess my encapsulated review would be that I think it’s a good film, I’m glad it exists and deeply hope they make more of this type of film, I plan on seeing it again very soon, and I’m a little unavoidably disappointed. I don’t think my disappointment relates much to what the critics who don’t like the film are saying. I don’t have a problem with the level of violence in the film. I understand *some* of the apprehension some have with what can be imprinted onto this film politically. I have no problem viewing the film through my own filter and I don’t see *that* aspect as a problem either. I also don’t find the film too pretentious. It just didn’t quite hit that “master” level of filmmaking or acting for me. It’s very, very good. It sounds like empty platitudes to say it *looks* very good, but it really does. I think Phoenix is very good, but he teeters so often between an interesting form of ambiguity and a freeform type of ambiguity that it’s difficult to fully latch on to it. The potential “messages” of this film (either intended or just what can be extracted from any given viewer) seem to be both disappointingly simple and base, and then deeply complicated at the same time. I think I have to imprint a lot of my own context and subtext onto this film to make it mean as much as I was hoping it would, so that’s one of the difficulties I’m having. I feel like the film, perhaps intentionally (or then again maybe not intentionally) teeters between focusing on the perils of mental illness, the harsh reality of, well, reality (e.g everybody is mean and cruel), and then also the more obvious class “eat the rich” sort of stuff. I feel like the class/economic stuff, while most certainly a topic *very* much needing in exploring, is really just a backdrop in this movie, just a tone running through the background. If it’s meant to be a deep study of *that* particular topic, then it doesn’t do that very well. But I’m choosing to view this much more as a character study (for lack of a less cliché way of putting it), with all of the other subtext serving more as background decoration. I think a second viewing in the next few days will help a lot.
I agree with most of your points, but keep in mind, we are very much uncomfortably in the head and perspective of only Arthur Fleck in this. He's in every scene. The other characters get virtually no depth or backstory, and we only get Arthur's perception (real or mostly invented) of them. And Arthur even says (I'm paraphrasing) "It's not a political message" when Murray asks him about the clown makeup he wears when he appears on the show. Based on that, I think it's a film with plenty of political undertone but it's all happening at the periphery of a story that's foremost about Arthur's descent into madness and alienation. I think this is why a lot of critics are lambasting the film as empty and devoid of real depth.
Michael goes upriver to meet up with his father, Colonel Corleone, who has broken away from the other five regiments and refuses to get into the smuggling of heroin out of Cambodia.
You guys convinced me. Had a fast dinner and came to the theater right away. Just baught the ticket. And there's no one here to stop me from watching it... Tragedy or comedy?!
Doh, the reviews are brutal and not good... Richard Brody, The New Yorker “Joker” is a wannabe movie that also wants to be all things to all viewers, that imitates the notion of adding substance while only subtracting it. “Joker” is a viewing experience of a rare, numbing emptiness. A.O. Scott, The New York Times “Joker,” an empty, foggy exercise in second-hand style and second-rate philosophizing, has none of that. Besotted with the notion of its own audacity—as if willful unpleasantness were a form of artistic courage—the film turns out to be afraid of its own shadow, or at least of the faintest shadow of any actual relevance. Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian The year’s biggest disappointment has arrived. It emerges with weirdly grownup self-importance from the tulip fever of festival awards season as an upscale spin on an established pop culture brand. Doh! Apparently, After All That Drama, 'Joker' Is Terrible
I know! It's very polarizing. I have four critics I really trust: Ann Hornaday (Washington Post), Michael Phillips (Chicago Tribune), Richard Roeper (Chicago Sun-Times) and Mick LaSalle (SF Chronicle). Roeper and LaSalle liked it while Hornaday and Phillips had the same reaction that A.O. Scott did. "Joker" is hard to talk about. So right off the top, let's just state two easy and obvious things we can say about it: It's a very good movie, and it features a blood-curdling performance from Joaquin Phoenix, in the most frightening portrayal of a violent maniac in decades. – Mick LaSalle "It’s difficult to fathom anyone who has actually seen “Joker” coming away with the impression it’s a sympathetic origin story or it glorifies mob violence and bloody anarchy. – Richard Roeper
From the same article: The Good: Josh Wilding, ComicBookMovie.com Joker is definitely influenced by the comic books and there's plenty here for fans to appreciate. At its core, though, while it may not feature the villain battling it out with The Batman, this is just a masterclass in acting and filmmaking. Kurt Loder, Reason The prospect of unnecessary sequels is always dismaying; but Joaquin Phoenix is so good here, and the movie's plot structure is so inventive, that you could find yourself actually wondering what might happen next. John Wenzel, The Denver Post By the time the film reaches its convulsive, citywide climax, Phillips has done his best to show us how terrible things tend to beget more terrible things—but also how cool they can look when shot against sunsets and flickering lights. Perhaps the bleakest assertion of “Joker” is the one that’s hardest to disprove: That the ghastly world Fleck inhabits, and by extension ours, is the one we deserve.
I just got back from seeing it and I thought it was great, especially Phoenix. Thought the framing of the shots and the direction were great too. It's definitely a polarizing film and I can understand the extreme mixed reviews by critics and audiences (some thinking it's a masterpiece, while others thinking it is garbage.) Definitely not a movie for everyone. Personally, I think it is more of a character study of someone with mental illness than anything else. Though, class divisions in society in which how each treat each other play a part as a backdrop. Spoiler I think the main reason the class divisions were even brought into this was as an excuse to get Wayne Industries into the story along with Bruce Wayne and his parents so there would be some sort of connection to the Joker. In regards to the direction and framing used: Spoiler I loved how the director framed the scenes with the black female neighbor. I had a feeling that most of her scenes in the movie were only fantasy/imaginations going through Arthur's mind and we find out later that is the case. One of the persons I saw the movie with today didn't realize it until after I explained it after the movie. They actually thought Arthur was having a true relationship with his neighbor.
I'm with Roeper on this. Phoenix gives a mesmerizing performance, to be sure, but I certainly didn't walk out of the theater feeling sympathetic to Arthur at all. He's a bonafide narcissistic psychopath, and portrayed exactly as such.
My favorite Twitter reaction so far is.. This is so wonderfully indicative of what I loathe about social media. Yes, yes we know he's... cancelled ... thankfully the director of this film is an adult and realizes that erasing history doesn't really solve anything but make the present more saccharine. And we all know what happens when you eat too much sugar. Spoiler: Spoiler The (I think) "meta" usage of "Rock 'n' Roll (Part 2) is inspired on several different levels. 1) It began being used in the 80s and 90s at American sporting events as a pump up song. – It's meant to coney Arthur's newly found swagger in an over-the-top way. 2) It was almost instantly overused in the 80s and 90s at American sporting events as a pump up song. – It instantly makes the audience go back to when it was overused and think, 'Am I hearing 'the "hey" song in JOKER'? 3) It is now "cancelled" according to some, along with Michael Jackson and myriad of other performers who did bad things in their lives. – It is used at this point in the film for both previously stated reasons and, I think, to elicit just the type of reaction of this individual on Twitter had. I mean this character has killed perhaps 5-6 people at this point and you're incensed about GARY GLITER music? Lawd – priorities people.
It's complicated. I'm not sure we were meant to sympathize with him, even though he starts out sympathetically. He does only kill those he feels wronged him (as he lets his former co-worker go who was "good" to him). There's no easy answers in this film and that certainly frustrates people.
Yes, there appears to be a backlash against this film. I’ve read some mixed reviews recently, whereas a few weeks ago it was almost universally praised.
The reviews in the trades are more positive, but I think they're looking more at the commercial angle: Film Review: ‘Joker’ 'Joker': Film Review | Venice 2019 ‘Joker’ Review: Joaquin Phoenix Kills It In Dark, Timely DC Origin Movie – Venice – Deadline On the other hand, the Washington Post says... A grim, shallow, distractingly derivative homage to 1970s movies at their grittiest, ?Joker? continues the dubious darker-is-deeper tradition. Joaquin Phoenix is a vivid, operatic Joker, but the movie is way too full of itself and Time Magazine says: Arthur inspires chaos and anarchy, but the movie makes it look like he’s starting a revolution, where the rich are taken down, the poor get everything they need and deserve, and the sad guys who can’t get a date become killer heroes. There’s a sick joke in there somewhere. Unfortunately, it’s on us. 'Joker' Wants to Be a Movie About the Emptiness of Our Culture. Instead, It’s a Prime Example
A few weeks ago, it was seen as the main film at a festival. Now it's been seen by a huge number of critics.
