Joker: Guest Review

   I haven’t had a chance to see the new Joker movie yet, but my pal Lyle Tucker saw it and sends in this guest review:

(Stars Joaquin Phoenix, Francis Conroy and Robert De Niro)

   As with most movies these days, this one is too long by a good half-hour, if handsomely directed and acted in.  

   Bleak as hell, not quite as cliched as I feared it would be by the ads, very nihilistic, very violent, and quite outside the regular DC universe, with Phoenix giving an extremely solid performance ('tho Ledger remaining as my favorite).

   At the end I was thinking, "Well, that was disturbing, and had some solid acting and cinematography,  but, really wasn't something I needed to see and definitely won't be anything I'll be revisiting."  

   It's an intense character study wanting a better story. Obviously informed by Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy, the De Niro sequence, sadly, just doesn't deliver, and the ending was quite weak, I thought.  

   However, Phoenix does a rather incredible job - he definitely out-darkens Ledger's Joker, which is both good and bad.

   The production itself is stellar and the cello soundtrack starkly evocative. I would've liked to have seen this suitably trimmed (it really did become tedious) - I might be able to recommend it more, but as it is I'd say it's a 70 out of 100.