Just Call Me Joker!

Rating: 9/10 (18 January 2020)

This movie is great, if Joaquin Phoenix is superb as Arthur Fleck-A.K.A. Joker. If he doesn't get an Oscar for best actor The Academy is truly a JOKE. I loved this movie because it combines the 89 Joker performance by Nicholson along with Ledger's Performance from The Dark Knight and roll them into one. Phoenix combines the two and creates his own psychotic individual that we will never forget.
The film is actually a tragic back story about Arthur Fleck, his early life and how he because the Joker. The film takes place in 1981 the Thomas Wayne( Brett Cullen) era. Gotham is in chaos and you were either the haves or the have nots. Bruce Wayne( Dante Pereira-Olson) is a youth and Fleck has a job as a clown. Fleck who lives with his mom Penny Fleck( Frances Conroy), is very unstable and has a medical condition which causes him to have laughing fits. He tries his best to fit into society and hates to be made fun of. All he wants is to be a comedian. He goes to the Murray Franklin( Robert DeNiro) show to study him. When Franklin calls him down to the stage he kinda gets made fun of, but laughs it off. His mother is very demanding, unstable, and tells him Thomas Wayne is his father. Which is untrue, Arthur was adopted by Penny . Penny worked for the Wayne's but was hospitalized in a mental ward for some time, and afterwards adopted Arthur. Like his mother he has also done time in the Gotham Asylum. When Arthur finds out the truth he begins to become more unhinged. After the death of his mother he becomes his alter-ego, dressing, putting make-up on, and dressing like a clown. He really losses it killing a co-worker and then going after Murray Franklin for making fun of him.
After each killing he become more violent, then he begins to draw a following. In the end Gotham is embroiled in complete chaos and Arthur Fleck is Gone, HE IS JOKER.
This is a great story about Flecks early life, and was mentally unstable from the beginning. It is a violent film, but I have seen worse. A story involving his time as an orphan, time in asylum, home life then into his downward spiral as the JOKER.