It's the Joker Baby

Rating: 7/10 (12 October 2019)

JOKER Review
The Beginning
Joker, voted as the most anticipated movie of 2019, theorised to grab all the oscars and walk away with flawless scorings of 10/10 and 100%. While the acting in this movie deserved all the anticipation and hype, that can't be said about the rest of the work on this movie. This is the first movie Todd Phillips has done that is very serious, doing titles such as the hangover trilogy which are mostly comedy. While he did a creditable job with his other films his should maybe stick to what is suitable for his style of writing.
The Good
Joker is a good movie, to call it bad would be a massive disrespect to Joaquin Phoenix, Lawrence Sher (cinematography) and Todd Phillips (in his directing). Before I explain why this take on Joker was so good, I would like to just say that I will not compare Joaquin Phoenix to Heath Ledger as they are two VERY different takes and should not be compared. Well why did this take on Joker work? Joker has always been a character that has fought with "The Good Guy" while he takes the role of "The Bad Guy".
This take had Joker fighting himself and society, which on paper sounds like it would be an edgy, wanna be dark movie idea. But, it really works. The idea of him fighting with both his own mental state and the people that don't understand that he is mentally ill, which is increasingly impacted by the fact that the mental health care within gotham city is shut down. The best example I can think of that shows the excellent structure of that section of the movie is the episodes with the girl.
Joker (Arthur Fleck) later in the movie comes back from a train ride and walks into a lady's apartment in his building and they "make out". She then goes on a date with him, later goes to a comedy show with him and then sits with him while he watches his mother in hospital. Again later Joker comes home and goes into her apartment and sits on the couch. The woman comes out of her kids room and sees him. She gets freaked out and says "hey what are you doing here, this isn't your apartment." and joker looks confused.
The camera zooms in of his face and then a flashback sequence occurs in which it shows the scenes where he was with the girl, turns out she was never there and it was his mind that placed her there with him. That part of the movie was done so well as it subverts all expectations of lovey dovey lady helps the criminal and falls in love with him. Nothing can best psychological themes when done right, it really showed the strong suit of some of the writing.
Joaquin does a terrific job with his body language as whenever he wants to exaggerate something his controls his facial expression to express exactly what he wants the audience to feel, mainly using his eyes and extremely skinny torso to portray his messed mental state. Many scenes had Joker dancing without his shirt, you can see bruises and you can see his rib cage right against his skin.
Now the directing and cinematography is very well done, all camera placements match the emotion that is in the scene. Colours are used to show emotion perfectly with shades of blue and grey and red used with sadness, discomfort and anger.

The Bad
Now due to this movie not being written by little kids i'm going to be brutally honest. The one simple rule for the most part in movies is SHOW DON'T TELL. They decided that the best way to follow that rule was to not. Bad call. 20 minutes in they do something that pisses me off so much. So, this movie was about Mental Health issues and how they aren't treated properly and it addresses a lot about mental health.
The way to not do this is exactly what the movie did. 20 minutes in, Joker is writing some jokes down in a book. He writes a joke about Mental Health and they decide the best option is to zoom in and focus on the words "mental health" that is a clear example of telling not showing, major mistake that should have been so obvious not to do. The writing in this movie is at points very good and then it weakens down, this weakens the good as the flow is ruined.
The writers (Todd Phillips and Scott Silver) have tried to put a bunch of stories together which did not work, for example there are a few too many meaningless scenes in which Joker is dancing, I understand this is supposed to be a way to show his mental state and extreme lack of weight but it takes away from the ending scene in which Joker dances on the hood of a police car in front of thousands of people wearing clown masks which would have been incredibly powerful if it did not overuse the dancing thing.
The speed of the movie is very wonky, there will be intense fast action which then slows down completely to a very slow dancing scene. That isn't the best way to change the pace as it didn't make as much sense, which could be argued that its an example of his mental state but it really doesn't fit in with the other episodes he has. All in all the writing is strong in parts but doesn't hold up when the rest isn't executed well. I don't know if the two writers kept swapping the page when writing it but it seems very zig zag.
The Ugly
This movie was very good looking with its cinematography and didn't have any mistakes or bad camera placements. The only thing I can think of that made a certain scene ugly was (MASSIVE SPOILER IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE FIRST WARNING) - A goon kills Bruce Wayne's parents and the stereotypical pearls dropping to the ground shot that was part slo mo but part normal pace and it felt very out of place.

The Verdict
Joker was a good attempt at making a psychological, personal conflict, drama. There are some unforgettable scenes in this movie and to be truthful I enjoyed the movie, it's just the weak writing and overuse of slow shots that make this movie not as good as all the advertising hyped up. Joaquin Phoenix deserves an Oscar for his performance and deserves all the credit he is getting. Joker was perfectly acted, directed and produced, but weak writing is the very structure a movie is based on.
7/10
Golden Revolver Award
(award for a movie that does its own style and nails it.) Do note this award is not for the writing at all, this is strictly for Joaquin's acting, The Cinematography and Todd's directing.