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

I found Pi and Requiem actively irritating, the Wrestler endearing if slight, and Black Swan I think I started to watch once but fell asleep

I should see that, I do like Winaynay

er Wino Forever

Pi actively irritating, really? Did you watch it around the time when it came out, or way later and maybe his image influenced it? I find nothing irritating about Pi. It can not be for you, sure, but that's something else.

I saw it when it came out. The ending, which the whole film is a furious buildup to, was a copout.

Idk it sucked me in Eraserhead-like, and by the time the ending came I already had my fair share of enjoyment

The new one apparently does not have a score, which is a genuine surprise.

I thought you said it was scoring in the 60-80% range

musical score

I know :(

:/

anyone got any other jokes that need mansplaining

Why did the Aronofsky cross the road? Because he's a fucking pile of shit and would have congealed into a big amorphous lump of turd if he had crossed via the sewer?

I like Pi a lot, and Black Swan was good - Noah was pretty silly but that was as much because I couldnt take Rusty seriously in the role.

I'm already hackles-up about this one though, because of THIS (which is not Aronofskys fault):

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-08/mother21-director-darren-aronofsky-apologies-over-newtown-mural/8885476

oh fuck lol

I know right? I mean WHO PAINTS OVER A MURAL WITH ANOTHER MURAL. What the shit.

mural gate reminding me that theres a mural of stormzy in dublin for no reason

http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/music/an-amazing-stormzy-mural-has-popped-up-in-dublin-and-the-rapper-is-delighted-35576589.html

i hardly know her

The audience at my screening was laughing at the end. I think they were expecting a horror movie, not a trippy creation myth with a couple of jump scares. I heard a lot of muttering coming out.

I had an okay time. I kind of wish it had gone more extreme. There are a few gross and brutal moments, but I never felt really uncomfortable. Kind of how I remember Black Swan being. I was mainly impressed at the crowded kaleidoscopic sequences where it felt like every cut was adding something new.

I liked Noah.

jmm your experience was very close to mine. I liked the movie and admired its moxie but didn't love it

otoh having seen it, I find this take bizarre

Let's not pander to Aronofsky with the 'But what does it all mean?!' articles. I've got an interpretation: Aronofsky is a vile misogynist

— Another Gaze (@anothergaze) September 16, 2017

choice quote from audience member on the way out: "I was expecting a normal movie, not...that"

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

at a minimum, from the AO Scott review it seems like this will actively upset a large number of 'plexgoers, plus a nutty Polanski rip can't be all bad.

(I think I know too much already tho)

oh also that excellent CinemaScore result

ordinary fuckin' people, I hate em

it's incredible to me that William Friedkin's Bug is also on that very short list cause I thought of it a couple of times during my screening

I don't expect to ever see it so I spoiled myself on the plot/ending. In terms of that aspect alone and realizing film is not text: sounds pretty fucking boring.

also, this has joined the CinemaScore "F" club along with Solaris, the Box and a few others

aw man i love both of those movies

It is many things but "boring" is not in contention. xp

Whatever floats yer boat.

read the spoilers and this sounds like the Hugh Jackman one with the floating crystal and monkeys

It weds the gonzo intensity of Black Swan with the grandiosity of The Fountain and (some of) the wanton cruelty of Requiem for a Dream.

read the spoilers and this sounds like the Hugh Jackman one with the floating crystal and monkeys

― 龜, Saturday, September 16, 2017 5:01 PM (fourteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I hated The Fountain but this was good. Definitely more Black Swan than that one. Feverish, intense and anxiety-inducing.

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

it sucks but you should still go

the very polarized reactions and takes itt and elsewhere would compel me to see it more than anything

Okay, but what was that bloody thing in the toilet?

lol, I was wondering about that all weekend.

Anyone know what he's talking about with the yellow powder?

Like most movies it's neither terrible nor great. Don't let yourself be polarized!

it sucks but you should still go

― flappy bird, Sunday, September 17, 2017 8:02 PM

I assume thats a reference to Charlotte Gilmans Yellow Wallpaper. A few other reviews have mentioned it too.

(xposts - re the yellow powder)

thx. i am going to go to it

only reason I could justify seeing this is for Pfeiffer

worth it

saw it at the weekend. For me it's an allegory about the nightmare that is DIY

This was of the worst movies I have ever seen.

first half (with the family who invite themselves in) was a good surreal black comedy, second half (by the time kirsten wiig was instructing a militia to shoot fans of javier bardem's poetry in the face, i mean) was the worst movie i've ever seen. i now think daron aaronovfsky is a deeply stupid person (maybe i should have thought that a long time ago, but it's been a long time since i last saw a film of his). it's actually a feat how much the ending spoils whatever goodwill it had built up in me. sound design was cool (nailed the feel of a creaky echoey old house)

*one of

xp to myself

It's like it was written by a fifth grader.

Some of the first half was okay (Michelle Pfeiffer's performance especially) but the characters are all so flat it's hard to give a shit about any of them.

saw it at the weekend. For me it's an allegory about the nightmare that is DIY

― André Ryu (Neil S), Sunday, September 17, 2017 8:42 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hearty lol @ this btw

what were the bible allegories i am too stupid and unlearned to catch them

ya pfeiff was the best thing about it hands down

xp Vice reviewer was otm. She mentions that mother could be mother *nature*, which makes the poet the godlike figure, and humanity's abuse of mother nature the allegory. But if that's the case, then the movie sort of glosses over it in favor of secondary themes like womanhood and the suffering artist, and it's a mess.

I realized how much I'd missed Pfeiffer the last 25 years.

what were the bible allegories i am too stupid and unlearned to catch them

I haven't seen the film but, based on the plot synopsis I read, the allegories seem to have been very, very blatant so I can't tell if you're being serious or sarcastic

Awards blogger-racist nitwit Jeffrey Wells is calling this the new L'Age d'Or

xp all that stuff about Jesus seemed as reasonable a Biblical parallel with the film as any

She mentions that mother could be mother *nature*, which makes the poet the godlike figure, and humanity's abuse of mother nature the allegory. But if that's the case, then the movie sort of glosses over it in favor of secondary themes like womanhood and the suffering artist, and it's a mess.

I took the Bardem figure as being just as abstract as Mother, which would make the fact of his being an "artist" just as much a metaphor as the house is. but then I don't really buy the "this is about how hard it is to be an artist" reading at all tbh

or at least I don't buy it as the primary driver of the movie

Again, I am only getting this via plot synopsis (which described the movie events and didn't link them to particular stories) but the movie runs through God creating the earth, the creation of Man and Woman, Man and Woman getting cast out of Eden after eating the apple, Cain and Abel, and the birth and sacrifice of Christ, expressed as a cyclical pattern.

Kristen Wiig as murderous prophet is almost admirable in casting against type.

I like the one moment of diegetic music as the house party cranks up. Not sure what Bible parallel that was meant to be.

Is it? I've always seen her as rather imperious.

Yeah Wiig was great & casting made perfect sense

“There were actors we were talking to, but when I heard Kristen was available, I said, ‘Sure.’ I think it works with the whole weird dream vibe of the movie. That suddenly this familiar face shows up. I don’t want to say that Kristen shows up in a nightmare, but it’s very strange and odd. You’re not expecting it, and it kind of throws audiences. I think it’s just another way of people going, ‘What’s she doing?’ and seeing her character take all these surprise turns you would never expect of her. It was fun, and about giving audiences a little gift in the middle of the film.”

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/09/darren-aronofsky-explains-mother

movie made like 7.5m over the weekend and had a 'F' rating on cinemascore

yeah, imagine Americans being dumb dipshits that would watch the scary clown reboot that looks like a live action Five Nights at Freddys

*imagines this with zero difficulty*

Haven't seen it, in no hurry to see it, etc. (or It, for that matter). But $7.5 million seems so super low to blame just on bad word of mouth or cinemascore numbers or whatever, right? You'd think enough people would be just curious enough to see the movie (which features a host of big names) to top $7.5. I assume that's why Paramount opened it so wide, to get the most while it could. Maybe this is just the downside of keeping something so totally batshit under such tight wraps that no one even had an idea what the movie was, let alone who it stared or whatever.

I mean it's a 30 million dollar flick which for hollywood is basically a writeoff, and it's not like they went nuts with the marketing budget (that trailer they released last week was hilariously misleading)

I'm pretty sure they preferred it make money over losing money.

Cinemascores & especially RT have so much more impact now just bc they're so easily accessible & right next to showtimes on most apps.

But people had to see the movie first, right? Critical pans don't usually hurt a film that badly, and Cinemascore also gauges responses, right? It just surprises me that it couldn't do more than $7.5 million even taking into account those shitty negatives. Like, $15 million might still have been a bad opening at the scale it was opened at.

Jennifer Lawrence is a bankable star, so I feel like it could have done better with a bigger marketing push, even if it meant tipping the public off that this is a fucked up movie. Maybe the chatter around it will bring more people in.

I mean it's a 30 million dollar flick which for hollywood is basically a writeoff

― a serious and fascinating fartist (Simon H.), Monday, September 18, 2017 9:09 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEL65gywwHQ

Could also be the clown movie overperforming and drawing audiences away from Mother.

Richard Brody gives it a rave.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/mother-darren-aronofskys-thrilling-horrifying-nearly-unbelievable-satire-of-fame

I haven't seen the film but, based on the plot synopsis I read, the allegories seem to have been very, very blatant so I can't tell if you're being serious or sarcastic

― this iphone speaks many languages (DJP), Monday, September 18, 2017 10:45 AM (seven hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

serious

ok so upon reflecting for five seconds

bardem: god
pfeiffer: eve
adam: ed harris
sons: cain & abel

who's jlau? who's who in the second half

I know that Brody has his fans, but friends of mine went through a bad streak of watching movies they hated based on raves in the New Yorker, so I asked them who the writer was, an inevitably it was always Richard Brody. Now, he obviously knows his movies, and makes a case for all sorts of esoteric stuff, but he reminds me a lot of Rosenbaum in that his raves (and pans) often need to be taken in context, let alone with a grain of salt.

re Mother vs It, whichever you prefer the former is inarguably more meorable

*memorable

when Brody tweeted out his review he started with 'beyond good or bad, ' lol i don't think it's a ringing endorsement

Is that not a nietzsche joke/ref

so what about Darren Aronofsky's mother

The bitch got knocked up by a clown, but not the one from It!

This was a terrible incoherent mess

who's jlau? who's who in the second half

JLaw = Earth, the various ppl in the second half = humanity getting religion super wrong

Again, I am talking out of my ass because I just read a plot synopsis but that seems to be what it was describing

I guess strictly speaking JLaw= the heavens and the earth

so this is aronofsky's third more or less religious film? I don't know what to think about that, but it seems generally worth thinking about.

he's in his dylan christian period

Which other one was aside from Noah?

I guess Pi had kabbalah elements.

The Fountain yo

Yeah, I guess.

O rite, thats the only one I havent seen haha.

Aronofsky always sounds like the biggest fraud when he speaks about his movies: http://www.indiewire.com/2017/09/mother-darren-aronofsky-explains-mythology-allegory-bible-jennifer-lawrence-1201877848/

Paramount Defends 'mother!' Against Bad Box Office and 'F' CinemaScore: 'This Movie is Brave'

'Rick and Morty' Review: 'Morty's Mind Blowers' Clip Show Subterfuge is the Show at its Most Dependable

I want Aronofsky to stop saying "allegory"

Explaining your movies = dud.

Explaining your movie, the week it comes out = DUUUUUUDDDDDD

Explaining your movie the week it bombs

yeah, the whole idea of wanting people to see it with fresh eyes doesn't exactly hold water if you're explaining the symbolism by week's end.

places like Alamo/Arclight could have probably kept a single Darko-esque nightly screening going for weeks just on the chatter of nerds

yeah exactly. that entertainment weekly interview is so fucking dumb. when the interviewer asks him "that thing in the toilet - was it the rib of Adam?" and he just says "Ding ding ding!" ---- wtf dude

The worst part is stuff like this: ' “The fame stuff is purely a side effect,” said Aronofsky. “A lot of people are seeing that. It is because we have Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris, and Michelle Pfeiffer dealing with the crowd, the paparazzi and autograph seekers. When I was writing I wasn’t seeking comment about that, it was about the allegorical sense of worship.”' The idea that you should sort out what's 'side effects' and what's the true and proper artistic effect. But if people are getting a wrong idea due to the casting, well that kinda means the film was miscast. A lot of directors wouldn't have used so many big stars for pretty much exactly this reason.

I'm now going to see this just so i can complain about how terrible it is

hell yeah

It's kind of cool to see Aronofsky fully transform into Michael Haneke.

Given the massive "let me explain!" reverse promotion going on, they are obviously desperate to salvage what they can. Aronofsky, Jennifer, Javier all doing interviews all over.

I appreciate Paramount sticking up for the film, though. http://www.vulture.com/2017/09/paramount-shades-netflix-in-mother-backlash-response.html

“My first instinct when I first wrote it was that there would be that twist at the end, that final twist of just like, ‘Oh God it doesn’t end and this guy is just more and more of a narcissist and it just doesn’t end,’ and that would be like just another smack to the character and to the themes. How that lines up with the metaphor doesn’t fit perfectly, but I think that’s where the human story kind of takes over a little bit more and replaces the metaphor.”

I like that more than the cyclical thing. End with Him delivering his most narcissistic line yet and then iris out on Mother looking completely exasperated.

It's kind of cool to see Aronofsky fully transform into Michael Haneke.

xp Aronofsky wishes

It's kind of cool to see Aronofsky fully transform into Michael Haneke.

― this iphone speaks many languages (DJP), Tuesday, September 19, 2017 7:07 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, but no: Haneke's actually got a great oeuvre to show for. Aronofsky could only hope.

Yeah no comparison

And I say that as someone who really liked Black Swan and Requiem (at the time). But I didn't like those movies a fraction as much as I flat out loathed Funny Games and Benny's Video, and I'll always give the edge to the director who made me feel strongly one way or the other.

yeah, no

That is the problem with you and Bad Movies. Haneke is an aesthetic dick.

mother! (Aronofsky): F for effort

— Adam Nayman (@brofromanother) September 18, 2017

lmao

from the guy who wrote a book about Showgirls being a masterpiece though

I believe he said "it doesn't suck."

suck what?

https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/jennifer-lawrence-mother-movie-reviews-flop

After a summer when too many major studio releases felt like passive experiences, pieces of content meant to fill a release date on a calendar or bridge a gap between sequels, mother! vibrates with wild-eyed purpose. Its poor box office showing makes sense: This is a film that died so we can live.

oh cool no more Marvelverse movies! thx Darren!

I wonder how many critics who write these over the top indignant film reviews look back years later and think "yep, my reaction was completely appropriate". And then decades later if it becomes a sort of classic?

Did anyone ever catch up with the appalled critics of Psycho and Peeping Tom to see how they felt about their reaction decades later?
Not comparing Mother! to those films, I haven't seen it.

Oh, I've seen some grumpy contemporaneous reviews of Psycho, yes. Some of the bourgeois scribes thought Mr Hitchcock had debased himself.

RoboCop remake could have been his apex.

Hitchcock or Aronofsky.

Barry Norman seemed to maintain into the 00s that Shivers was the actual worst film he'd ever seen.

from the guy who wrote a book about Showgirls being a masterpiece though

― ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, September 19, 2017 9:04 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Showgirls is a masterpiece.

“I apologize,” he told one TIFF audience, “for what I’m about to do to you.”

fwiw: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DJ4dqMnWAAAcPry.jpg

i don't know who that is but he sounds like a dick

how could you possibly say that about someone that did coke with the Strokes!!!

That's some valuable oral history alright.

that is a sick burn of aronofsky even if it's also an accidental self-own

there's people to laugh at on both sides

have you seen the movie
even if you like it - and i will grant there are some really good things in it - you have to admit that last section is pure torture to watch, purpose disregarded
i don't see you how you could fault anyone who hated and/or was offended by this film

In some ways, this reminds me of the Lou Reed/Metallica collab Lulu: the nutty mashup, the gruesome metaphors, the critical reaction. "Sing it, James!" = Kristen Wiig cameo.

it's "come on james!" and god don't make me want to see this by comparing it to lulu

For worship someone who actively despises you.

lol

Darren Aronofsky dresses like he is the drama teacher on a Disney Channel sitcom. His name is "Mr Z" and he rolls his Rs for some reason pic.twitter.com/J28mSkw2SC

— Natalie Walker (@nwalks) September 19, 2017

As an Aranofnostic (liked Pi, Wrestler and Black Swan) I really enjoyed this. I didn't really pick up on/care about the religious symbolism, for me it was most effective as a blackly absurdist, sometimes very funny depiction of social and relationship anxiety. The level of ire it has raised doesn't make sense to me.

didn't really pick up on/care about the religious symbolism, for me it was most effective as a blackly absurdist, sometimes very funny depiction of social and relationship anxiety

same. that's why i didn't like the last third, though

see I liked the blackly absurd social anxiety, "hell-is-other-people" stuff. the movie fell down when it actually became HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE

yup. really hitting-you-over-the-head with a really non-clever analogy. also the violence was just gratuitous and dumb, not even particularly well orchestrated

Gone all in on the 'biggest mother of them all' approach, I see.

#controversy #mothermovie YOU DECIDE pic.twitter.com/gBSDrD4jnJ

— darren aronofsky (@DarrenAronofsky) September 22, 2017

this movie sounds not interesting in the least but it does remind me i should probably watch Antichrist someday

^ yeah just don't watch it on a full stomach

I think the thing that is most putting me off of this is how much the reviews and the discussion around it are reminding me of Antichrist (which I hated).

i have a friend who watched antichrist on a first date

...and a last date?

i have a friend who watched antichrist on a first date

Oh hell yeah, I assume they're married

For the first two-thirds or whatever, I thought this was an ugly-looking mishmash of better horror films, Rosemary's Baby and Night of the Living Dead most obviously; it held my interest at that level. The last third was preposterous: Cronenberg and Lynch at their most self-parodic, crossed with Ken Russell or somebody like that. I didn't much care for Get Out a few months ago, but after Baby Driver and this monstrosity, it suddenly seems moderately okay.

Michelle Pfeiffer and Ed Harris were good as the Castevets.

"better horror films"--I meant to say exponentially better, or infinitely better.

yeah what did you think of Get Out?

I was intrigued for a while, then I thought it became more and more a conventional--conventionally graphic--horror film. The context was interesting, but the actual experience of watching it became less and less so as it went along.

I think horror films and me may have had our day. It Follows and The Witch were at the opposite end of the spectrum--moody, arty, almost completely without gore--and I wasn't big on them, either.

this only fell off 56% at the US b.o. 2nd weekend, less than i wd've expected (tho i guess it didnt have far to fall)

the vvitch was the best of the last few years' big-deal US horror flicks imho

Otm

Clemenza u should watch The Love Witch

would also watch The Love VVitch

I don't know...I found Viva mind-numbing; I passed when it played here for a couple of weeks.

no idea what Viva is

The previous film by the director of the love witch iirc

ah wikipedia is a little squirrely, all I was turning up was some spanish movie about a drag queen

The Love Witch was fun but it needs an edit so bad

does this movie work as an art movie at all? i just like interesting visuals and sound. if it had a tiny budget and no stars would people think it was so controversial or just another indie flick? i tried scanning this thread for descriptions of what the movie looked like but i couldn't find anything. you are all a.o. scott. kidding.

well scott the cinematographer is DA's usual guy (who also has done a few Spike Lee films, eg Inside Man and Chi-Raq)

imo:

there is some really great filmwork (the slow tracking shots that circle around JLaw, the use of wall color as a narrative device) and some really bad filmwork (the cartoony look and bad CGI of some of the last third)

my ambivalence towards the filmmaking makes me rate below other things I also liked this year, like Raw and Good Time

Yeah, my initial post was about how the movie is so compelling visually, sonically, and psychologically. worth seeing just for that imo. I just don't dig the allegory or what Aronofsky was trying to say. wouldn't have been any different if it were by some no-name director at an empty art house. also, lots of people I expected to totally hate it ended up loving it, the movie is so so polarizing, & I only hate it so much because the allegory is so dumb but visually & sonically it's pretty amazing. go see it!

i think Requiem for a Dream also has that really extreme LOVE/HATE thing for people.

none of the CGI struck me as particularly bad tbh and I'm usually pretty attentive to effects

xp scott seward: yeah there's some amazing shots, tension, etc. A friend actually said to me that this basically is just a generic indie horror flick in a lot of ways, though I would say it's beyond that for the "good" parts. CGI was fine to me. It's the last section that gave me bloodcurdling viewer rage.

visually & sonically it's pretty amazing

this has never redeemed his films before. and his best film (The Wrestler) eschews all that.

The Wrestler looked great!

https://thefilmqueuedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/the-wrestler.png?w=900
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zXgdZ3sjGqM/UzX6tbDEnJI/AAAAAAAARb8/TuLtI8dm9Iw/s1600/The+Wrestler+film.jpg
https://filmgrab.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/01-classroom.png?w=1024

I don't find his films visually amazing. I can't separate visuals from content.

Why is the allegory dumb? The film's theme — how creation and destruction are embedded in each other — is pretty broad and universal. The movie isn't any more explicit than that, and none of the different readings (e.g. it's an eco parable, it's about relationships or religion or parental anxiety or the narcissism of artists) are any more or less valid, which is a neat trick to pull off.

the Wrestler was not flashy or full of editing tricks + CGI the way, say Pi or the Fountain or Noah or Requiem for a Dream were. Visually it's his most understated and conventional film.

xp

I can't separate visuals from content.

^^^also this

As in visuals are part of the content?

the one thing that someone mentioned on here that made me want to see this was the movie BUG which is seriously one of my favorite movies of all time. i've probably seen it 20 times. i would kill to see a genre film even half as good (or crazy) as that in 2017.

this has never redeemed his films before. and his best film (The Wrestler) eschews all that.

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, September 26, 2017 1:00 PM (fifty-eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I didn't say it redeemed the movie, & I can't separate visuals from content either. But I would still recommend seeing this movie in a theater for the experience & bc I've been wayyyy off on predicting who would love it & who would hate it. I thought It was really shallow upon reflection, but it was a great movie theater experience - packed crowd in a huge auditorium on a Saturday night.

you liked EMOJI: THE MOVIE

um it was called The Emoji Movie

lots of movies have great creativity and quality in their visuals and bad everything else (editing, acting, story etc) so i don't quite get what you guys are saying. are you saying that no movie with great visuals can be truly bad, or that if a movie is that terrible the visuals are irrelevant?

If the movie's terrible, I don't care how well it's shot.

I can take pleasure from evocative visuals in an otherwise ordinary film, and if I really like the look of a movie, that's enough right there to preclude me calling it bad. (Example...lots of them; can't think anything offhand.) But the look of Mother was one of the things I hated most about it; ugly brown and oppressive close-ups the whole way through.

Me at the weekend getting rid of films.
"GREAT film... but I'll never watch it again.
Now this one is total shit... but wasn't that garden lovely, it's a keeper"

p.much! that's why i try to avoid the temptation to buy films these days

I normally go for aesthetics rather than narrative, as I find it speaks to me on a more emotional level. But Aronofsky is someone where the aesthetics often feels cold and technical. And it doesn't help that he insists on aronofsplaining his films afterwards, and how it was meant to be experienced.

I don't get why it's bad to watch a film with a lovely garden, though. That's a totally legitimate response.

Narrative and aesthetics -- I'm not sure how you're defining it -- are indivisible. I can't sever the engine of the plot from, say, how Tsai and Assayas tell and photograph it.

Always intended to see Elvira Madigan, just never have (don't ever remember a theatrical screening here).

I don't get why it's bad to watch a film with a lovely garden, though. That's a totally legitimate response.

― Frederik B, Tuesday, 26 September 2017 22:51

Unsure if there was a misunderstanding but I was saying that I was keeping films for things like that, while getting rid of generally much better films that had no visual juice for me.

Like, I think Cold Fish is a superior film to Strange Circus but I'm only keeping Strange Circus for the more bits of juice.

I think the whole movie was just part of Aronofsky's strategy to fuck Jennifer Lawrence, and it was a successful film from that standpoint.

lmao otm

For me it's an allegory about the nightmare that is DIY

Saw this last night after avoiding all the chitchat around it - the above comment on this thread strikes the biggest chord with me, as I experienced the film as a 'property terror' genre piece, like The Amityville Horror - it could just as easily be called 'House!', or 'In Every Dream Home a Heartache'.

The accusations of misogyny strike me as especially witless; the film goes out of its way to critique the expectations put on women to be 'the good mother', the good housekeeper, while the Bardem character is a ludicrous jerk throughout.

Excellent movie.

Saw it. It's actually the Letterboxd MD'A entry I agree with more so than anything...

I don't love mother! for its Deep Meaning, though. I love mother! for its simulation of a rollercoaster that ratchets you uphill for miles, until the lack of oxygen makes you lightheaded, then plummets you at 200 mph through one of those haunted-house rides in which something horrific pops out at you around every turn, except here "something horrific" = humanity.

It's been that kinda year, I guess.

(Except I wouldn't really say I love mother!, tho. Not that that matters.)

At its core, it's a basic, stupid black comedy about the basic, stupid black comedy of people in general.

Would make a good double feature with Paterson.

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!)