That's it?

Rating: 7/10 (4 October 2019)

A clichéd, hollow, almost lifeless recreation of better films, Joker 2019 is about as deep and meaningful as a puddle after the rain. The director tried so hard for this film to be taken "seriously", in many ways very similar to Zack Snyder's work. For example, Joker is like a collection of cool moments, all trying to be iconic, all wanting to be THE moment, which only resulted in repetition and so much slow-mo, taking away the emotional weight from all those could have been powerful scenes. More is not better. The subtlety here is the equivalence of Todd Phillips slapping you in the face, yelling "Look! Society! See how clever I am???". Exactly what I was afraid this film would turn out to be. Also, the commentary about the rich and the poor was done 10 times better in Parasite just this year. The whole thing just feels disingenuous and insincere and so on the nose.
That's not to say Joker is a bad film, it's perfectly fine, just didn't reach the potential of what it could have been. Phoenix's performance is exceptional just as expected, the cinematography is beautiful, and the soundtrack is really great. All in all, I'm still glad that I went to support Joker instead of something like Far from home because we really need more experimental comic book films like this.
Robert De Niro rules hard btw.