Kunjikoonan
2002
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Joker gives its infamous central character a chillingly plausible origin story that serves as a brilliant showcase for its star -- and a dark evolution for comics-inspired cinema. Read Critics...
- (601)
- Todd Phillips
- R
- Joaquin Phoenix
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Oct 3, 2019 · “Joker” is a supervillain origin story, involving a character whose big-screen résumé already includes three Oscar winners (two for other roles, but still). It’s not hard to see the appeal.
- Todd Phillips
- A.O. Scott
- 121 min
Sep 30, 2019 · As social commentary, “Joker” is pernicious garbage. But besides the wacky pleasures of Phoenix’s performance, it also displays some major movie studio core competencies, in a not dissimilar way to what “A Star Is Born” presented last year.
Aug 31, 2019 · Joaquin Phoenix boldly reinvents Batman's cackling archnemesis in 'Joker,' Todd Phillips' dark new vision of the supervillain origin story, also starring Robert De Niro.
- No joke -- this DC movie is amazing.
- Joker Movie Influences
- The Many Origin Stories of the Joker
- Verdict
- Joker Review
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- IGN Recommends
By Jim Vejvoda
Updated: Apr 21, 2020 12:30 pm
Posted: Aug 31, 2019 5:15 pm
This is an advance review tied to the Venice Film Festival. Joker opens in the US and UK on Oct. 4 and in Australia on Oct. 3.
You can watch our video review for Joker in the player above.
Featuring a riveting, fully realized, and Oscar-worthy performance by Joaquin Phoenix, Joker would work just as well as an engrossing character study without any of its DC Comics trappings; that it just so happens to be a brilliant Batman-universe movie is icing on the Batfan cake. You will likely leave Joker feeling like I did: unsettled and ready to debate the film for years to come.
Joker’s setting (roughly 1981) not only allows the film to be a comic book version of classic Martin Scorsese or Sidney Lumet films, it also strips away the technology that nowadays would help catch such a madman sooner rather than later. This is a time when people smoked everywhere (including hospitals), security cameras and metal detectors weren’t ubiquitous, and no one wore seat belts while driving. Times were bad but they could get even worse. Joker the character acts as the symbolic match to that waiting dynamite.
Unnervingly played by Joaquin Phoenix, the mentally ill Arthur Fleck is a struggling, overlooked schlepp trapped on the margins of society. Arthur is a man who has never had a good break or happy day in his life. The less said about how and why Arthur embraces the Joker persona and finds his liberation and joyful empowerment the better — this is a film meant to be experienced with an open mind and sans spoilers — but suffice it to say this Joker is the end result of a society far too comfortable with its casual cruelties and lack of empathy. We create the monsters we deserve.
Watch Joaquin Phoenix and director Todd Phillips respond to the criticism that Joker is a "dangerous" movie:
Joker is an indictment of a society’s collective disregard for the well-being of its citizens rather than necessarily critiquing any one type of individual or class. As much as you sympathize with their plight, Gotham’s downtrodden can be as callous and vicious as the rich and powerful. Arthur is at one point or another injured emotionally or physically by individuals at every level, as well as by the institutions they populate. If Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle called himself “God’s lonely man” then Arthur Fleck is certainly Gotham’s lonely man. Arthur is ultimately seeking human connection, something he tragically won’t find until he puts on a happy face and violently exposes the city’s own hypocrisies and inhumanity.
The key to that careful calibration is not only Todd Phillips’ sharp direction and clear vision but also Joaquin Phoenix’s indelible performance. Arthur’s uncontrollable laughter looks as though it physically pains him; his body is rail-thin and battered, his misery is etched on his deeply creased face. He looks healthier and livelier -- dare I say happier -- as he transforms into Joker than he ever does as Arthur. Phoenix captures all these tiny nuances in Arthur and his interactions with others that reveal so much about this disturbed individual’s inner life.
The camerawork is often claustrophobically tight on Phoenix, who’s in nearly every scene, all of which adds to the film never making me feel like I was anywhere but in Arthur’s tortured headspace. As solid as Robert De Niro, Zazie Beetz and Frances Conroy are in their small roles here, this is Phoenix’s film and he delivers a tour de force.
Watch director Todd Phillips explain how Scorsese helped out Joker in the video below:
Considering the comic book Joker infamously once said he preferred his origin to be multiple choice, this movie wisely embraces the ambiguity of its title character, despite this seemingly being an origin story. Arthur’s increasingly unstable mental state is reflected in the film as things grow progressively more dreamlike -- okay, nightmarish -- and violent in the homestretch.
Joker isn’t just an awesome comic book movie, it’s an awesome movie, period. It offers no easy answers to the unsettling questions it raises about a cruel society in decline. Joaquin Phoenix’s fully committed performance and Todd Phillips’ masterful albeit loose reinvention of the DC source material make Joker a film that should leave comic book fa...
Review scoring
masterpiece
Starring a captivating Joaquin Phoenix, The Clown Prince of Crime gets a standalone film for the ages with Joker.
Jim Vejvoda
Aug 31, 2019 · “Joker” is a movie about a homicidal narcissist who feels entitled to the world’s attention — a man who’d rather kill for a good laugh than allow the world to treat him like its punchline.
Despite being a movie about a superhero villain, Joker is much superior to most of the movies of the genre (I'd exclude the Dark Knight Trilogy only, but Joker is easily as good as Nolan's movies, or at least very close).
