Oh Joaquin, you are spectacular!

Rating: 10/10 (3 February 2020)

Maligned, manic, masked, wounded, Oedipal, lonely, fragile. An Oscar-bound performance from an actor whose career has been rising Phoenix-esque since 2010's disastrous mocumentary "I'm Still Here".
Director Todd Phillips gifts Joaquin with the role of a lifetime in this character study set in a post-populist Gotham, riddled with crime and trash, tracing the spiral from awkward loner to Killer Clown. The casting of De Niro as talk show host (and surrogate father) is heavily weighted by his roles in "The King of Comedy" and "Taxi Driver" both of which resonate with the themes of "Joker".
The now-iconic Bronx staircase, appropriately located on Shakespeare Avenue, is a perfect setting for our anti-hero's descent into villaindom. But with his backstory exposed do we condemn him or cheer him on? Thus the filmmakers present a fitting commentary on our times in this morally ambiguous tale.