darren aronofsky's mother!

Out friday. I am steering clear of plot details till then but the reviews have been...intriguing.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/451338/jennifer-lawrence-mother-sickest-movie-ever-made-disgusting-torture-porn?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=Smith

sounds fun!

I knew Slant could buck the tide: https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/mother-2017

my wife refuses to watch anything involving the deaths of children/evil babies/scary pregnancies so I probably won't get to see this but have to admit I'm a little curious. Aronofsky's shitty track record as a filmmaker is more off-putting to me than anything else tbh.

not reading that yet but it should also be mentioned there have been more than a few accusations of misogyny thrown around as well

god the pearl-clutching of the never trump conservative cultural critic

aronofsky sucks imo so im not going to watch this. i didn't know he was dating jennifer lawrence!

I never saw Noah but I really should 'cause everything I've heard about it makes it sound absolutely batty

i haven't seen this movie but really enjoyed this review by matt lynch on letterboxd:

"Intense, intensely pleased with itself, and intensely dumb. So, a Darren Aronofsky movie."

haha otm! Avoiding this like the plague.

idk it's his tastelessness/lack of restraint I find refreshing so I feel like going full grindhouse will be a good look for him

like if I wanted more milquetoast american schmindie there's...half of netflix

i resist whatever binary you're setting up there

Whatever lens MD'A sees movies through doesn't match mine, but I will never fail to have my interest piqued when he gets genuinely enthusiastic.

mother! (Aronofsky): 85. Here's the thing: Metaphors are inherently kinda dumb. If you're making one, GO FOR MOTHERFUCKING BROKE. Comme ça.

— Mike D'Angelo (@gemko) September 10, 2017

obviously I'm being reductive but I'm always suspicious of people who dismiss filmmakers using that type of language xp

like, "intensely dumb" could describe so many of my favorite movies (and also me)

sort of interested. I still feel like Jennifer Lawrence has immense potential and I'd rather see her in an Aronofsky movie than a David O. Russell.

well we're in an era where smart filmmaking is the Batman movie where he's a Lego and there are feelings.

I also don't really know what "pleased with itself" means, is this when a movie you don't like feels confidently made?

All it really means is "someone told me the film maker's pedigree and now I feel insecure"

lmao ok y'all i'll refrain from quoting pithy two sentence reviews in the future

This is the mode -- really the only mode -- I like Aronofsky in. So I'm expecting to like this.

should I watch Noah y/n

literally the only review I actually remember was Chris from Propagandhi extolling it as a parable about veganism

lmao

Aronofsky's shitty track record as a filmmaker is more off-putting to me than anything else tbh.

otm, i kind of hate this guy

I heard this horrendous interview with him on 5Live last week. What they should have asked him was "are you christopher nolan in disguise?".

cant be any worse than j laws mop movie

I am developing a thesis that the 60-80% range on rotten tomatoes is where the most interesting movies tend to end up and this is sitting nicely in that range

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/spring_breakers_2013/

The math checks out.

hahaha yesss

Noah is definitely Aronofsky's most entertaining movie

Well, going by my own rule, I guess I have to see it

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/noah_2014

intriguing cast and i honestly don't hate any of his movies (seen all but Noah)

I am developing a thesis that the 60-80% range on rotten tomatoes is where the most interesting movies tend to end up and this is sitting nicely in that range

Does this prove or disprove your thesis? https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/ghostbusters_2016

Aronofsky's shitty track record as a filmmaker is more off-putting to me than anything else tbh.

Pi and Black Swan were really good. The Wrestler is a bit run-of-the-mill plotwise but Mickey Rourke makes it. Requiem is a bit shit alright.

Does this prove or disprove your thesis?

It certainly doesn't help, though winnowing it to "top critics" takes it down to 60 which puts it right on the edge.

I loved The Wrestler and Black Swan but everything is garbage. Mildly excited to see this.

s/everything/everything else

I forgot about the Wrestler, that might be my favorite. which is to say I thought it was "pretty good" instead of garbage.

The Wrestler was pretty much a movie by some other director. Not literally, but may as well have been.

his movies have been pretty diverse! Beyond most of them indulging in one form of aesthetic excess or another it's tough for me to locate a common thread.

beyond "obsession", I guess, which is 99% of movies really

as someone who thought black swan was hilarious i should probably be into this

his movies have been pretty diverse! Beyond most of them indulging in one form of aesthetic excess or another it's tough for me to locate a common thread.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Yv6L4DunPDE/maxresdefault.jpg

http://screenmusings.org/movie/blu-ray/The-Fountain/images/The-Fountain-363.jpg

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/_OSaJE2rqxU/maxresdefault.jpg

Admittedly, I've not read or heard interviews with the guy for at least seven years, but surely Pi, Requiem, Wrestler and Black Swan are all half-decent films? He sure had his misfirings but I don't know where the hate comes from.

so...beards? more seriously I could see a case for squinting at the divine as a thread, but only in a few of 'em xp

lol The Fountain

xp

Filed under misfirings :)

heaven help me but I like The Fountain

tbh if we polled his movies I have no idea what would win

Marty OTM (on Rotten Tomatoes, at least)

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/martin-scorsese-rotten-tomatoes-box-office-obsession-why-mother-was-misjudged-guest-column-1047286

Or maybe they'll fade away and dissolve in the light of a new spirit in film literacy

sounds likely

his THR editor told him it needed a ray of sunshine

I thought the ray of sunshine was his praise. I would've loved him to write, "Was the film any good? No. It was garbage. Nevertheless..."

Finally watched this today and really quite enjoyed. I guess my biggest complaint is that the allegories were so obvious and directly literal in the last third particularly that it got a bit bogged down in Do You See.

this film was literally so boring. it was just a load of special effects doing bits of the old testament. only highlight was the book publicist shooting people in the head execution-style. That was pretty funny in terms of "character arc". Feel like the lead actress was only scripted to say "what?" and "don't sit on the counter!"

lol best review

at the end of the day, i liked darren aronofsky's mother more than she liked me.

lol @ the lead actress

this movie was great, I don't get all you people who hated it. It was a bit "here is a very blatant metaphor' but I kind of appreciated that. At least it tried.

"A lot of the criticisms are the opposite of how I felt about it. I thought it was deeply feminist and Christian

― Whiney G. Weingarten, "

Yes

We just watched this over two nights. After yesterday we thought it was pretty good, after finishing it today I feel like I've been put through a traumatic experience for no reason, my wife says it was a "parable about nothing." Feel like there's all the ingredients for a great movie in there somewhere, but something's gone really wrong in the cooking, we're all stuck here eating this baby and we don't know why.

I don’t know if “parable about nothing” is really apt for this. I mean I think it’s main fault is in how sledgehammer-y it is with its themes.

My glib go-to on aronofsky’s religiobabble movies is that they are judeo-christian mystery plays rendered as Scientology

Its weird that I felt sledgehammered but at the same time I don't know what point he was making. Stay away from asshole messianic writers? Fans tend to assume they own their heroes too much? Don't let a bunch of weirdos into your house?

fred armisen's impression of kristen wiig is that she's cold all the time and is always looking for a sweater -- maybe the point of the movie is to construct a very elaborate joke about fred armisen's impression of kristen wiig.

He's an artist! *slap* She's a mother! *slap* He's an artist! *slap* She's a mother! *slap*

~spoilers~

He is God, she/the house = Mother Earth, babby = Jesus, etc. Environmentalist movie with biblical underpinnings.

I ignored the religious themes because they were so poorly thought-through, assumed there must be something more to it, reading an interview now it seems that was the whole point of the exercise? So why bother creating characters at all?

why bother doing anything ever

the creation / destruction stuff was just so glib, I assumed it was part of the idiocy of the poet

Does DA think there is a god, but he is a shallow narcissistic asshole? I guess I can be down with that.

is this more or less scary than mike pence’s mother

tell us quickly mrs pence is killing me

Kinda liked this; some of it doesn't work, but it's ambitious, and has the right attitude toward humanity (mistake).

Don't let a bunch of weirdos into your house?

Let has nothing to do with it. Do you have relatives or friends? They'll be there.

lol @ the lead actress

I didn't, because as I liked her for the first time since Winter's Bone here, I have no notion as to why she's a "superstar."

Darren comes off as an asshole in the book "meet me in the bathroom." Lol.

TIM GOLDSWORTHY: Darren Aronofsky would turn up at Plant Bar with a wifebeater on, leaning on a bar, “Hey, guys, what are you drinking?” He’s such a tosser. He really reminds me of the super-nerdy Dungeons and Dragons kids who really wants to be cool.

think Goldsworthy comes off worse here tbh...

probly upset that I had to google who he is

this movie fairly accurately conjured up the feeling of being trapped in a nightmare, for that I appreciated it.

Xpost haha. Yeah.

also Pfeiffer and Wiig brought some lols. (The former: "Wow, you really love him. God help you.")

lol when i watched this film it was during a sleepless slow onset of fever for something that I was hospitalised for days later and I still thought it seemed clumsy and empty.

I was really hard on this movie when it came out & thinking back on it, pretty sure I still hate most of it, but there are some hilarious moments (Wiig shooting people execution style especially).

Rewatched it to see if it compared to what it feels like to be alive these last three months and, voila! Masterpiece.

have been planning on watching this for the last three years! will get around to it soon

maybe should see Black Swan again, I reacted negatively to it at the time and think my experience with it contributed to my reluctance to see mother!

I'm never sure about my past film opinions, especially when a decade or more has gone by. Pi and Requiem were interesting at the time, but that was a different era in my life and I can hardly remember them now.

I have always been pro mother! !!!

Someday. Not soon, not at home. But someday.

I thought this was one of the worst movies I have ever seen. Like, Lady In The Water-levels of bad.

it was so bad it made me angry, but have already complained about it upthread.

Admittedly my default w films maudit is to love tgdm

I thought this was one of the worst movies I have ever seen. Like, Lady In The Water-levels of bad.
― Paul Ponzi, Monday, June 22, 2020 5:34 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

it was so bad it made me angry, but have already complained about it upthread.
― Anti-Cop Ponceortium (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Monday, June 22, 2020 5:38 PM (fifty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Ditto--but the idea that it has pandemic resonances has me intrigued.

lol i watched this film when i had a fever and it was still unconvincing

i admire this film's dedication to being really annoying

imo aronofsky packed all of his good ideas into the fountain

finally saw it, it made sense (as has been mentioned) as a story about our treatment of earth

“He is God, she/the house = Mother Earth, babby = Jesus, etc. Environmentalist movie with biblical underpinnings.
― circa1916, Wednesday, October 31, 2018”

...is the essence imo.

I didn't hate it, don't think I will ever want to watch it again though

^^ My exact reaction to every Aronofsky movie I've seen lol

she was hot (joke about darren aronofsky's mother!)