darren aronofsky's mother!

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!"