Joaquin Phoenix won an Oscar, BAFTA and Golden Globe as DC Comics villain Joker in this fresh take, set in the early 80s, co-written and directed by Todd Phillips (The Hangover). Co-stars Robert De Niro and Deadpool 2's Zazie Beetz. Winner of Best Film at Venice Film Festival 2019.
"Arthur Fleck (Phoenix) ekes out a living as a clown, performing for tourists and children as he dreams of fame as a stand-up comedian like his hero, talk show host Murray Franklin (De Niro). But people never do what Arthur wants them to do, his inner torment eats at him, and his ailing mother keeps harping on everything she is owed by her former employers, the Wayne family. Life is so ugly that you just have to laugh. As Arthur descends into the unhinged killer he must become, Phoenix keeps us on edge as he reveals the soul of a man in crisis. A tentative romance with his neighbour Sophie (Beetz) grows more dangerous with each encounter." (Toronto International Film Festival)
The Joker’s whole deal is the chaotic lack of logic behind his acts, so exploring his origin story was always going to be complicated. Directed by Todd Phillips (The Hangover, Due Date, War Dogs), Joker is kind of a mess. A stylised Gotham City never once captures the magic of Phillips’ alleged cinematic references—Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and Akerman’s News From Home.
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The word “problematic” boomed through social media megaphones even by people who had yet to see Todd Philips’ Joker after its much-hyped premiere at the Venice Film Festival. But for all the fears of it promoting ‘incels’ (shorthand for the ‘involuntarily celibate’ online subculture linked to real-world misogynistic horrors like the 2014 Isla Vista killings) and the broader extreme right wing movement more generally, the North American premiere that I saw at the Toronto International Film Festival left me with a different conclusion...
Full reviewPhillips says he doesn’t see Joker as a major departure, and it’s clear what he means: he has made a career out of manchild movies and here is another.
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It is brilliantly performed – you can put the house on Phoenix getting an Oscar nomination, at least – stunningly well staged and disarmingly well written and argued. It also contains the seeds – the Batman origin story is revisited – for a remake of Batman Begins.
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As a standalone piece of cinema documenting the grim descent of a broken human being into madness this is visceral, confronting, uncomfortable and flawed. Gifted storytelling in places, heavy-handed when it needn't be in others, there is so very little light in the dark and there is nothing blockbuster here.
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Its priorities are less in entertainment than in generating self-importance. As social commentary, “Joker” is pernicious garbage.
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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.
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Not to discredit the imaginative vision of the writer-director, his co-scripter and invaluable tech and design teams, but Phoenix is the prime force that makes Joker such a distinctively edgy entry in the Hollywood comics industrial complex.
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A dazzlingly disturbed psycho morality play, one that speaks to the age of incels and mass shooters and no-hope politics, of the kind of hate that emerges from crushed dreams.
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More character study than comic book movie, and anchored by an Oscar-worthy Joaquin Phoenix, Joker is a bravura blockbuster that proves you don't need superpowered scraps to dazzle.
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"Joker" is a dark, brooding and psychologically plausible origin story, a vision of cartoon sociopathy made flesh.
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Bold, devastating and utterly beautiful, Todd Phillips and Joaquin Phoenix have not just reimagined one of the most iconic villains in cinema history, but reimagined the comic book movie itself.
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Superhero blockbuster this is not: a playful fireman's-pole-based homage to the old Batman television series is one of a very few lighthearted moments in an otherwise oppressively downbeat and reality-grounded urban thriller...
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What do you get when you take a poor, mentally unstable loner and you treat him like trash? The answer given in Todd Phillips's ingenious new feature is Batman's arch nemesis, the Joker.
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"Joker" achieves two contradictory goals simultaneously, delivering a blockbuster that highlights what is eternally captivating about the character, while at the same time offering a sobering critique of the nihilism that has long been the Joker's M.O.
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Phillips may want us to think he's giving us a movie all about the emptiness of our culture, but really, he's just offering a prime example of it.
Full reviewHaving brazenly plundered the films of Scorsese, Phillips fashions stolen ingredients into something new, so that what began as a gleeful cosplay session turns progressively more dangerous - and somehow more relevant, too.
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This is a truly nightmarish vision of late-era capitalism - arguably the best social horror film since Get Out - and Joaquin Phoenix is magnetic in it.
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