What the film wants to say — about mental illness or class divisions in society — is not as interesting as what it accidentally says about whiteness.

| Original Score: B | Oct 13, 2023

Joaquin Phoenix, in another outstanding performance.

| Mar 9, 2020

Not only an intelligent throwback to the feel-bad shock cinema of the 1970s, Joker is all but unique in its social realism...

| Feb 6, 2020

The result of these creative decisions, however, is that whatever power Joker, as a pop culture icon, might wield, Joker, as a movie, feels toothless.

| Dec 6, 2019

Joker doesn't understand its representation of violence because it doesn't know what to do with its politics, opting instead for a confused aestheticization of anarchy, all incendiary chants and masked malcontents thronging the streets.

| Nov 19, 2019

Joker is a jumble - sometimes brilliant and sometimes trite. Among its flashes of excellence is a self-serious movie that isn't nearly as deep as it thinks it is.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 19, 2019

Is it possible, in the world of 'Joker,' to believe in real heroism? Do the filmmakers even care about that question?

| Original Score: C | Oct 11, 2019

Never evolves beyond scene after scene of painful slights, degradations, and worse - empty provocations.

| Original Score: 1.5/5 | Oct 11, 2019

It's hypnotic just how horrifying Arthur's existence is, just as Phoenix's performance is hypnotic as he spirals from fragile hope into increasingly outsized and confident acts of destruction.

| Oct 7, 2019

As well made as Joker is, there is little here to delight in beyond Phoenix's performance.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 7, 2019

In aping the ambition and prestige of its motley influences, Joker winds up with a bungled understanding of its own relation to violence.

| Original Score: 5/10 | Oct 7, 2019

A movie that borders on genius-repellant, dark, terrifying, disgusting, brilliant and unforgettable.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 7, 2019

Joker suggests that mental health issues require government funding-a narrative that would actually be progressive, if the film stopped there.

| Original Score: F | Oct 6, 2019

Joker looks set to have the last laugh.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 6, 2019

If there is a meaningful difference between performing and acting, Joaquin Phoenix surely exemplifies the former here, creepily contorting as the Clown Prince of Crime in Todd Phillips' timely, toxic take on the Making of a Murdering Madman.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 4, 2019

Phillips' flashes of style are all in service of a grimdark image rather than a message about the haves and have-nots, or the treatment of mental illness, or any of the other, real issues so easily within reach. It's all show, and no substance.

| Oct 4, 2019

While it succeeds in aping the superficial aspects of [Martin] Scorsese's style, "Joker" lacks the intelligence or gravitas of Scorsese's best work.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 4, 2019

Joker is a self-serious movie that, in spite of its lead, posits itself as revolutionary when it never hovers above bland and tasteless.

| Oct 4, 2019

A movie of a cynicism so vast and pervasive as to render the viewing experience even emptier than its slapdash aesthetic does.

| Oct 4, 2019

Bleak and juvenile

| Oct 4, 2019