Where's the Joker?

Rating: 7/10 (4 October 2019)

Todd Phiillips' Joker is both an outstanding mentally-ill-disable-clown-turned-accidental-villain movie and a disastrous Joker movie.
Arthur Flecks, lacks all the wit and geniality that's able to win over Batman from time to time, no evil mastermind in sight.
Joaquin Phoenix is amazing given physicality to the character but falls short giving him an The kind of emotional backbone that was brought by Jack Nicholson's whimsicality or Heath Ledger's insightfulness.
Todd Phillips makes his point as a drama director but misses all the marks when constructing Joker's motivation and evolutions, he takes the easy road of madness for the sake of madness to give ground to the story.
Among the most annoying things on the film: Phillips try to simulate a period piece removing all technology elements (except costumes and cars) ala Gotham but at the end he moves the plot forward using an artifact only plausible on the digital age. The gratuitous insertion of the Wayne family inside Gotham's and Arthur narrative just a as fan servicing device.
The movie's after taste is Phillips got so attached to his lead that he couldn't gather the courage to let Joker take him to the levels of evil he was supposed to reach.
With all and all, if you forget this is related to Batman, this is a very enjoyable movie (we might have to use this advice again with Pattinson).