The question you have to ask is - what’s the point?
I liked it but wish I had seen in prior to it’s hype. Unfortunately I had raised my expectations too high. I’m not a huge fan of the time bending sub-genre, the reveal always feels like a deus ex machina (Interstellar as another example).
-I liked exploring the concept the Earth having to solve a big problem, yet not having a central leadership system and the challenges associated with this.
-I liked the concept of exploring the meaning of launguage and it’s affect on how we think and behave.
-I didn’t like the half-assed rebellion and it’s lame attempt to use the film as a political statement against conservatism (climate change the obvious target). A potential concept worth exploring, but not so lamely.
-I didn’t like the final 1/3 of the film. Felt hap-hazardous; how we gonna land this fucker? I realize it was based off a story, and the point of both the story and the film was the final act. I guess I liked it better without it attempting to make a point I guess.
The movie would have been better without a point. See what I did there? Fucking brilliant.
I’d give it a 9 on a scale of 1-14, 14 being the best.
Edit: Jeremy Renner is a great addition to any movie. He essentially plays the same character in every movie, whether playing a bank robber, bomb defuser, super hero archer, scientist, super spy. Always the same guy - a Harrison Ford if you will. I haven’t seen Dahmer yet - maybe he’s different in that, sort of like Regarding Henry.
This is a quality adaptation of the book, which I read a few months ago in anticipation of the movie. Pennywise is one of the creepiest horror villains I’ve ever seen. The kids were all solidly cast. The movie covers a lot of ground, so it did feel a little rushed at times. Overall, I enjoyed this movie, but I wish it had been adapted as an HBO or Netflix limited-run series instead of a feature-length film. I generally prefer longer movies though, so it might just be me.
I hate Darren Aaronofsky, and promised myself that after The Tree Of Life that I’d never give him any more of my time. I wanted to see It, she wanted to see mother!, so we compromised and saw mother! (I owed her after dragging her to Friendly Fire)
Meh. Fans of Aaronofsky will get all hard over how it’s shot, the imagery, etc., like they usually do. I found it frustratingly tedious and boring.
You’re just not intelligent enough to get the super deep symbolism about nature and God even though the title of the film is mother! and that guy who played the gay Bond villian’s character is a control freak who creates shit.
I gotta admit I watched it twice because of the soundtrack. The movie itself was self-indulgent drivel. Black Swan was an overrated student film with an actual budget and a professional film crew. Noah was a fucking slapstick comedy below the standard of the fucktards who made Epic Movie .
I thought it sucked. Yes, you can find some deeper level from several elements of the story but when viewed as a whole, they do not add up. I feel that he knows this and buries them with an overly complex narrative(like he did in The Fountain) and/or throws in certain shocking elements(like he did here) that you won’t get away with in a non arty farty film hoping the audience will be too distracted to notice.
Don’t let hacks like him get away with shit like this.
I’ll have to check it out. It sounds like the McDonald’s of movies. If that’s what you feel like, you’re not disappointed. Quite often I’m not into deep thinking and introspection. I’m in 21 Jump Street model.
Good God go look for the latest articles about mother! after the director came out and told everyone exactly what the film was about. These nitwits intellectually wanked off all over the place trying to find something deep in a film which isn’t deep. Now they’re saying HE’S WRONG!
If the director doesn’t know what his film is about, he’s either an idiot or he deliberately made it that way, in which he would have SAID SO you fucking pompous fucks.
Bloody idiots called the film “great” when they didn’t understand the film now they’re saying the director doesn’t understand the film. Which leads to 1 of 3 conclusions:
To be fair, the same can be applied to both professional critics of most, literature comes immediately to mind, fields. In fact, it applies to academics who study and analyze the works of others in general.
From what I recall, the intention of the creator does not necessarily matter. Lots of people can interpret a work and give it its own particular meaning. Othello comes to mind.
Now…
That being said…
I’ve largely come to the conclusion that people who write fiction in an attempt to impart some sort of grandiose message or in an attempt to get people to talk about some meaning behind it, are generally bullshitters who don’t even know what they’re writing.
I feel that the best fiction is one that tells a story with a clear vision in mind. If something is ambiguous, there’s a clear reason why it is ambiguous. It certainly cannot be simply to get people talking- that’s just a sign that the creator doesn’t know what he/she’s doing but just thought that it seems cool.
So I don’t read fiction anymore, or even have a great desire to watch “serious” films. They seem to be a waste of time for the most part. People say that they don’t need religion to tell them how to live. I don’t need creators of fiction to tell me how to feel about or think about things.
I completely agree with this, actually. Which is why I’m so irritated at all this shit since applying this idea seems to turn it into a parody of itself when it comes to the current state of film making and movie criticism. In this day and age we consider ourselves lucky that a movie like The Witch was even made, and an overwhelming number of critics are giving movies like the Ghostbusters remake a good review.
^This film was a major influence on Hong Kong films for more than a decade after it was made. Critics had blue balls from wanking off for months after it was released. It’s themes and filming style started appearing in everything from big budget movies to commercials and several lines are still referenced or parodied today. You will see hints of it’s cinematography even in movies like The Departed(The cinematographer, Andrew Lau, directed a film called Infernal Affairs which The Departed was based on. But somehow, The Departed looks nothing like Infernal Affairs visually and more like Andew Lau’s other works where he used the same techniques as Chungking Express.).
I actually managed to watch this film in the cinema. Twice. 2/3 of the theater walked out both times lol. People literally swore and threw stuff at the screen. The director was filming a big budget film(2/3 of the theater also walked out halfway on it’s opening day where I watched it lol) which ran into problems with logistics or something that required some time off. So he assembled the same cast and filmed this in 2 weeks while waiting to resume filming the other one. There was no script. They filmed this guerrilla style with most scenes improvised, amassed over 30 hours of footage, edited it down to 1.5hrs and then relied on extended overdubs in post production from the actors for exposition and to loosely tie all the scenes together.
Till today I don’t think anyone involved in the filming process, other than the actor in the cop’s uniform(one of the most popular actors then. He proclaimed the director as his “idol”), has claimed to know what the entire movie is about lol. Neither did the critics. Hell, I have no fucking idea what it’s about. But I do recognize multiple themes that could only have been explored and experienced visually and emotionally because it was filmed it in the manner in which it was filmed. There was probably a clear vision in the director’s head while making this and I don’t care even if I still don’t get it because there were so many other things that satisfied me on several levels. It’s been over 20 years and I still get a different experience every time I watch it. That’s why this film is a classic.
The director’s most used reply at that time when asked about it was, “Don’t analyse so much. Just watch more movies”.
@dt79 -Dude, I was trolling on Netflix and saw “The Wolf Warrior” so I watched it. Was absolutely fascinated by how awful it was, except for one decent fight sequence at the end which had an awful ending, of course.
Are you promising that Wolf Warrior II is worth watching?
edit to add: on pins and needles, hoping DB Cooper sees this, and harshly tells me I used “trolling” incorrectly, and that I should’ve used “trawling”, or something equally more learned; yeah, I’m weird…
It’s like if I see a movie get 10% or less on Rotten Tomatoes, I know it’s going to be “good” because it is so bad.
My favorite part was the “I Fight For China” patches they slapped onto their uniforms when they were chasing after the big bad furreigner mercenaries. It was awesomely, putridly bad!!!
