Well known faces were in attendance for the Irish Premiere screening of The Joker on Tuesday night.
The likes of Yvonne Connolly and her son Jack, Jenny Buckley,Baz Ashmawy, The band Wild Youth,Blathnaidi Treacy, Colm Hayes and Sonja Mohlich turned out at Dublin's Cineworld for the event.
The film which stars Joaquin Phoenix ,Robert De Niro and Zazie Beetz tells the story of failed comedian Arthur Fleck who seeks connection as he walks the streets of Gotham City.
Murder is no laughing matter in this savage, disturbing and extraordinary thriller.
And though it's a comic book superhero origin story for Batman's arch-enemy, Joker, it's definitely not for the kids.
Joaquin Phoenix stars as the uneducated, disenfranchised, self-pitying fantasist, Arthur Fleck, an aspiring stand-up comic and part time clown who lives with his mother.
Repeatedly ridiculed and failed by society, his sadness leads to anger, crime and civil unrest, and he achieves a degree of celebrity which brings meaning to his life.
A dirty, rotten and violent reflection of his increasingly tortured psyche, Gotham City is in desperate need of hope, but young Bruce Wayne has yet to create the Batman suit, and his arrogant father is very much alive and running for mayor.
Phoenix has always been a gloriously intense and uncompromising performer and here he achieves greatness with a mesmerising turn as Joker, which drags you kicking and screaming inside the worldview of a man as he goes violently insane.
A certainty to be up for the major awards, Phoenix makes Heath Ledger’s Oscar winning turn as Joker seems as mad and threatening as Cesar Romero’s pantomime version from the 1960’s Batman TV series.
