Unexpected Masterpiece!

Rating: Null/10 (4 October 2019)

Honestly, I wasn't expecting much from the trailers and director's track record. I was only interested in seeing how Phoenix does as Joker but I expected the film to be run of the mill and lack substance. Well, it was a masterpiece.
I would just say to anyone judging without actually watching, give it a try. If only to see Joaquin Phoenix top Heath Ledger as Joker, which I didn't think would ever happen after Dark Knight.
There was a hell of a lot more substance to this than I expected. This was a masterful slow burning character study, showing the transformation of a downtrodden, mentally ill sociopath, into The Joker. And yeah, it's one of the darkest and most uncomfortable comedies you will ever see but it's set up and done very well. Visually great, soundtrack great and Phoenix was unbelievable.
This is getting a lot of bad reviews from critics who I guess were made uncomfortable but there are thousands of senselessly violent movies and this was dark as you get, but not senseless.
Metacritic currently has an average rating from critics of 57/100, with both the metacritic and imdb users rating it 9.2/10. It used to be that I'd put more stock in the critics than average viewer ratings but it's getting really hard to take modern reviewers seriously when you see the countless generic and badly constructed comic book adaptations and new Star Wars films get a better critical response than an actual piece of art like Joker.