Possibly one of the best movies I've seen this year! (Possible spoilers!!!)

Rating: 9/10 (4 October 2019)

I watched this movie last night and left the theater with a "holy crap...what did I just watch face". This movie was truly amazing. I firmly believe some people are crapping on it because it is a mirror to how society is right now and that scares people. If this kind of movie isn't your cup of tea that is fine but we have to look at this movie for what it is. This isn't a marvel film, you don't have a ton of action sequences, or jokes every two seconds. I wouldn't really even call this a comic book movie, but it's still really good. What Nolan create with his dark knight trilogy was phenomenal and I know Nolan really tried to take comic book characters and ground them to reality, and to me the dark knight can't be touched, however this was able to bring a comic book character even more down to earth than what Nolan did. There were certain lines and scenes in the Joker that were so real it hurt. I'll break down a couple sections right now, I'm no expert critic by any means but I do enjoy a good movie!
Phoenix does an amazing job with this character...I wasn't worried given Phoenix's reputation in the business, but he really blew me out of the water with this one. I thoroughly enjoyed his performance. Phoenix really is the star here and honestly will probably be the only character I really remember from this movie (with good reason obviously lol) A lot of the other characters sorted faded in the background for me with the exception of Murray (SPOILER)(given the fact that Joker shoots him point blank on live television) and Thomas Wayne given the fact that he was just an ass in this movie. Which I don't mind that they did that to his character but the lack of compassion from all these characters was a really hard hit. Zazie Beetz character did display compassion in the apartment scene which honestly I was floored when I finally realized what was going on with her character and Arthur. It was honestly a really good twist in my opinion.
The pace of the movie is slow, if you are accustomed to high action movies then you may be disappointed in this and find it to be too slow. I don't mind a slow movie when the storyline engages me and this story line engaged me.
Cinematography was beautiful, I don't have much to say here, whoever was in charge of that did a phenomenal job.
The dialogue in this movie was really good, as I mentioned above there were certain lines that were said that were honestly so real that it hit like a ton of bricks to me. This movie was really heavy, one of the heaviest parts was when you find out what happens to Arthur when he's a child because of his moms negligence, the abuse and being tied to a radiator...that hit hard and deep. It also was interesting trying to figure out what was real and what was in Arthur's mind throughout the whole movie. It was just really crazy.
One of the most disappointing things for me which I knew about before going to see the movie was that you really only see Joker as joker in full makeup and costume for the last 20 minutes of the film, although exhilarating really left me sad that Phoenix does not want to reprise this role. I know this is an origin story, and when I first heard that Joaquin didn't want to reprise this role I was ok with that, I liked the idea of a one and done situation, until I watched the movie! Now I want more! His last 20 minutes as joker was great, the ending of the talk show got me, when he was laughing in the camera, I was sitting there thinking "that is joker".
All in all this movie was phenomenal, some weak moments but I will definitely be watching it again. The message is clear and concise (not a message on violence!!!!) and everything was done great. Not perfect but everything I needed and wanted it to be. Todd Phillips did great and deserves applause and recognition for this movie!
Ps. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do not take your children to this movie, as I stated it is very heavy and rated R for a reason. (Obviously do what you want with your child, but I don't think it is necessarily a good idea to expose children to what is in this movie)