Lucky to have Joaquin Phoenix

Rating: 6/10 (17 November 2019)

ACTING - 7.5/10
Joaquin Phoenix kept this movie from being a 5, but the other actors kept acting from being 8. Robert de Niro was disappointing, he felt tired and his dialogue itself was clunky. Frances Conroy was distracting and hard to believable.
MUSIC - 4/10
The original orchestral score was less than bland, with the song choices being highly inappropriate for the tone of the movie (Rock 'n' Roll (Part 2)). The sound editing was really distracting and overall poor.
EDITING - 5.5/10
Annoying and uninspired. The edits were at points counterproductive, mixing past dream like sequences with the next scene; not purposefully working to make the audience question the reality of the movie, rather, carelessly confusing the audience.
PRODUCTION DESIGN - 7.5/10
This is the only other category I enjoyed from the movie. Gotham looked well constructed as a whole, but there were quite a few cheesy elements that tried to be smart. Internal settings were, for the large part, well done.
WRITING - 5.5/10
The movie begins asks many questions it fails to answer or even finish asking. The story was very confused, not knowing what it wanted from many of the aspects, Sophie was useless and was basically used to show how Arthur was crazy, stalks, and hallucinates.
A wasted character or at least wasted time. Why the did they include a single black mother and only have her as a quasi-love interest.
Few too many coincidences, did Arthur even do anything in relation to the movement? Was it going to happen anyway, just without clown masks?
The 80s setting was also useless. I feel that it was only there to make the movie seem more sophisticated through the inclusion of class warfare and smoking.
The main monologue at the end was really forced, as was the unnecessary fan service.
A lot of the writing they wanted to seem realistic and gritty and different from other superhero movies came off as unrealistic and cheesy.
CINEMATOGRAPHY - 5.5/10
Damn was the framing and blocking bad. And the composition. And shot type. Very distracting. Breaking 180 degree rule without reason like 4 times in a row because its convenient for the camera? Sure. Slow motion for the purpose of seeming arty, and smarty? Yep.