darren aronofsky's mother!

Especially if you hate crowds

also, this has joined the CinemaScore "F" club along with Solaris, the Box and a few others. They'd make a good poll, actually.

This, more so than the 60-80% on RT bar mentioned upthread, is what truly gets my interest piqued.

Visually, sonically, & psychologically, this movie was very compelling. The claustrophobia of the house, the constant closeups on Jennifer Lawrence, the nightmarish feeling of being unable to communicate with those around you & losing control of your environment... the lighting & Gothic atmosphere of the house & all its dust & debris & unfinished mess, all great... otherwise I thought it was pretty fucking daft and thematically shallow. Another movie about creativity and how hard it is to be an artist? Hard pass. So arrogant & uninteresting, & what's frustrating is there are sub-themes & tangents in here - fan/artist relationship; artist as deity & the one-way adulation & love between fan & artist - that are far more interesting than dwelling on how hard it must be to be someone's muse. A CRYSTAL? You must be fucking kidding me. And fwiw I found the violence & verbal abuse to be way over the top, gratuitous, obvious, & misogynist. He's a good technical director, but he should not write his own scripts.

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

Another movie about creativity and how hard it is to be an artist? Hard pass.

If anything, I thought this movie took artists to task! But then I've already seen a host of interpretations I disagree completely with.

It felt very much like "woe is me, i ruin relationships and hurt people because i must CREATE!"

Except that She had a very near-complete monopoly on the perspective of the movie (nearly half the movie is literally first-person!) as well as our empathy.

*Mother, not She lol

"Mother" is not a person. This movie had the emotional depth & subtlety of a political cartoon. Aronofsky goes to extreme lengths and constructs this visually stunning allegory only to convey profoundly dull observations about creativity.

Interestingly, I agree with most of what Rex Reed says here, even though I really like this movie!

http://observer.com/2017/09/darren-aronofsky-mother-worst-movie-of-the-year/

Polanski's Tree of Life

Reed's review makes it sound like it's a disaster, albeit an absolutely must-see one.

hahaha holy shit @ that Reed review

the funniest thing to me is that I left the film convinced that Mother represented God (or more literally "mother nature") - tending to all aspects of the home/world, far beyond any "homemaker" cliche - while Bardem represented humanity, with art standing in for human endeavor generally, but now I've seen at least one person suggest it's the reverse

This was terrible and boring for an hour, after which it turned terrible and interesting. The violence turned my stomach. I don't get liking movies that produce anxiety.

I loved Michelle Pfeiffer though -- she looked great and was commandingly brittle.

Lol @
"We don't smoke in this house."
"That's smart."

I didn't find it that bad aside from maybe the worst five seconds of the mob sequence, though I did just see Caniba a few days ago so my threshold is pretty high at the moment

also "Do you have any painkillers?"

I agree than Pheiffer was really good and brought some badly needed levity

Aronofsky gives the impression that he's never read a long book in his life.

This was terrible and boring for an hour, after which it turned terrible and interesting. The violence turned my stomach. I don't get liking movies that produce anxiety.

I do if it's justified. Same goes for violence like that. Nicolas Roeg's Bad Timing is a great example of that. This was just so intellectually barren & literal. "The Poet" give me a break

Nope. The violence offended me insofar as it was at the service of banal points about an artist's self-absorption. Conveying dread isn't a skill if what you're dreading is stupid. I was in knots waiting for the next act of egregious violence -- that's not skill

I agree with you, Alfred. I said as much.

I know. I did appreciate Aronofsky's playing with The Exterminating Angel tropes.

yeah! I was thinking about that, too. the house was very cool & imposing

Except that She had a very near-complete monopoly on the perspective of the movie (nearly half the movie is literally first-person!) as well as our empathy.

Same goes for Justine by Marquis de Sade, which mother! reminded me of. Doesn't make it a feminist text at all. Just relentless abuse in the service of... what?

hey Whiney's the one arguing it's feminist, I'm just not convinced it's misogynist

Rex Reed's review is the funniest but this is the most convincing I've seen

https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/wjx8zb/mother-tries-very-hard-to-be-more-than-a-disturbing-abusive-movie

This type of stuff is getting ridiculous post-LaLaLand

"viewers start to question what more Aronofsky is trying to say here, except, "That's bad.""

Like, it's perfectly OK to have a shallow reading of a movie, but stuff like this assumes the director had a shallow vision

hated this but I had just yacked from nausea due to a hangover an hour beforehand so idk that I was in the greatest place to receive this

The fuck would you ever go see Aronofsky with a hangover to start with! And I say that as someone who likes much of his work.

yeah that sounds like a nightmare

needed to kill a few hours and at the time I bought the tickets, I wasn't nauseous. bumpy Uber ride on the way there changed that pretty quickly

This sounds exactly like the kind of movie that I suspect that I won't like, will finally be compelled to check out months from now, and then will end up not liking.

The Bunuel comparisons have popped up in everything I've read on it so far, but I kind of suspect this film lacks anything like Bunuel's playfulness.

I agree, there's nothing Bunuelian in Aronofsky. the parallels with Exterminating Angel are strictly superficial

This, from a review from my favourite working film critic (who loved the film) is a big red flag for me:

It's unpleasant to the point of unwatchability--an instant entry into the films maudit hall of fame, predicting a popular failure and critical evisceration that are at least in part something Aronofsky must have expected, given how dedicated mother! is to destroying pleasure

(its the "dedicated to destroying pleasure" that scares me off, I should note, not necessarily the unpleasantness)

so what's the over/under on the total number of jokes about this at the Globes+Oscars

Won't Lawrence get a nom?

absolutely not

I guess I shouldn't say that, they love her, but I don't see it happening.

The Bunuel comparisons have popped up in everything I've read on it so far, but I kind of suspect this film lacks anything like Bunuel's playfulness.

― the general theme of STUFF (cryptosicko), Saturday, September 16, 2017 11:46 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I agree, there's nothing Bunuelian in Aronofsky. the parallels with Exterminating Angel are strictly superficial

― a serious and fascinating fartist (Simon H.), Sunday, September 17, 2017 12:05 AM

agreed

No idea if it's going to actually get nominated, but I was completely enthralled with the sound design

"Dedicated to destroying pleasure" doesn't describe my experience. The action of the movie is so theatrical and nested in its own allegorical world that I never found it seriously disturbing or unpleasant.

I've never minded babies getting eviscerated in the hands of a mob.

I agree in theory that an artist's self-loathing is not really an interesting subject but I found this pretty effective for what it was

I think ppl are underselling the Rosemary's Baby style black comedy aspect - a huge proportion of this is basically escalating a classic what about bob? type premise

He spells it out: http://ew.com/movies/2017/09/17/mother-darren-aronofsky-burning-questions-answered/

End credits song should have been "Get Out of My House."

i'm going to see this tonight... is it bad or good