A bleak, performance-driven character study with real visual style and a memorable central turn, but it’s also blunt, self-serious, and often more interested in provocation than insight. If you want a grim descent into alienation and urban decay, it delivers; if you want nuance around mental illness, politics, or… Read more
61% ★★★☆☆ (6,185,761)
Joker
Where to watch: Max
Movie · Crime · Thriller · R
2019 · 2h 2m · ★ 61% (6.2M)
Put on a happy face.
Director: Todd Phillips
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Robert De Niro, Zazie Beetz
Overview
During the 1980s, a failed stand-up comedian is driven insane and turns to a life of crime and chaos in Gotham City while becoming an infamous psychopathic crime figure.
Director
Todd Phillips
Production
Warner Bros. Pictures, Joint Effort, Village Roadshow Pictures, Bron Studios, DC Films
Cast
Joaquin Phoenix, Robert De Niro, Zazie Beetz, Frances Conroy, Brett Cullen, Shea Whigham, Bill Camp, Glenn Fleshler, Leigh Gill, Josh Pais, Rocco Luna, Marc Maron, Sondra James, Murphy Guyer, Douglas Hodge, Dante Pereira-Olson, Carrie Louise Putrello, Sharon Washington, Hannah Gross, Frank Wood
Where to watch
Max
Curator Review
Verdict
A bleak, performance-driven character study with real visual style and a memorable central turn, but it’s also blunt, self-serious, and often more interested in provocation than insight. If you want a grim descent into alienation and urban decay, it delivers; if you want nuance around mental illness, politics, or comic-book mythology, it’s likely to frustrate you.
Best for
viewers who like dark psychological dramas
fans of antihero origin stories
people drawn to intense lead performances
audiences interested in 1970s-style urban paranoia
Skip if
you want superhero action or comic-book spectacle
you’re sensitive to exploitative depictions of mental illness
you prefer subtle, politically coherent storytelling
you dislike grim, oppressive tone
Overview
Joker is less a comic-book movie than a grim character study dressed in comic-book iconography. Todd Phillips leans hard into 1970s New York paranoia, using dirty streets, sickly lighting, and a relentless score to frame Arthur Fleck’s collapse into violence. Joaquin Phoenix gives the film its voltage: twitchy, wounded, and physically committed in a way that makes the character hard to ignore even when the script is blunt.
Worth noting
The movie’s biggest strength is also its biggest problem. It knows how to create discomfort and dread, but it often mistakes that discomfort for depth. Its ideas about class resentment, media spectacle, and mental illness are provocative on the surface, yet they can feel underdeveloped or opportunistic when the film reaches for larger social meaning.
Bottom line
Still, as a piece of mood, performance, and urban nightmare cinema, it’s effective. If you approach it as a toxic descent rather than a definitive statement, there’s plenty here to admire. If you want clarity, empathy, or a richer political argument, the film is much shakier.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Joao (1★) · 33439 likes
if you’ve never swam in the ocean then of course a pool seems deep.
mia lee vicino (2★) · 9605 likes
bad because -he never said joker’s trick -super-rats mentioned but never expanded on -i know the gf was a fantasy but they still made us watch him kiss her. don’t like the implication that joker fucks -posits people with mental illness as unhinged murderers when really we just want to lay in bed amidst our snack food wrappers forever -willfully ignorant + fundamental misunderstanding of revolution/ANTIFA (how are you gonna say your film “isn’t political” when characters are carrying signs
davidehrlich (2.5★) · 5573 likes
Todd Phillips’ “Joker” is unquestionably the boldest reinvention of “superhero” cinema since “The Dark Knight”; a true original that’s sure to be remembered as one of the most transgressive studio blockbusters of the 21st Century. It’s also a toxic rallying cry for self-pitying incels, and a hyper-familiar origin story so indebted to “Taxi Driver” and “The King of Comedy” that Martin Scorsese probably deserves an executive producer credit. It’s possessed by the kind of provocative spirit that’s seldom found in
Patrick Willems (2★) · 5520 likes
I have this whole series of YouTube videos that are like “what if Werner Herzog directed Ant-Man” or “what if the show Gotham was a teen drama” or “what if there was a gritty Tintin reboot.” Anyway Joker is like if someone made a feature-length version of one of those.
Nick (3★) · 5030 likes
Some people a few rows behind me applauded when Joker said society