Man this was heavy and hard to watch. Saw it yesterday in IMAX - 11pm on a Monday night and there were a lot of people watching. I gotta say it was kinda interesting how a lot of people (men in particular) laughed at a lot of really dark and disturbing moments.
Love the cinematography, the look and feel of it, from the titles to the framing. I love how they made it look like an actual period piece. The score was also a highlight. Phoenix is undoubtably brilliant in this.
-This definitely failed on the mythological side. Ledger's subjective stories of how he got his scars were 10x more interesting than the generic stuff Arthur Fleck lived in the film.
-It was... interesting otherwise. Phoenix was definitely great, but it was so derivative of Scorsese that it was definitely distracting for me. Casting De Niro was just too much. I thought the cinematography, music and overall vision was pretty interesting. I just personally hate that we have to relate everything to comic books now because otherwise it'll make no money. All the Gotham/Wayne stuff felt like last minutes additions to finance the film.
All the praise that Phoenix gets doesn't do him justice, this is easily his best performance of all time. But man, this movie is hollow.
Joker is like this year's Vice for me. Brilliant acting wasted on terrible writing.
Most of all, I'm annoyed that so much of the elements that pushes the plot forward requires me to read something. Newspaper headlines, letters, medical journals. The movie is filled with lazy, uncreative writing.
