Mother! is Darren Aronofsky's companion to Black Swan. Its like when Scorsese made Casino to cash in on Goodfellas: the director improves on some stylistic qualities, but it really was stronger the first time. To Aronofsky's credit, the theme is a bit more illusive and mature, but it really didn't need to be. At the end of the day, he's just showing off which films he likes by mish-mashing references and deconstructing genre tropes, making left turns on horror cliches and playing to the most literate viewers. But this "not remake" of Rosemary's Baby is a bit too blunt. Its trying to visualize the intersectionality between patriarchy & Western morality through the metaphor of childbirth. Again, Polanski did it so poetically and originally that this film can only up the modernity and mainstream surrealism. Aronofksy does what DePalma did to Hitchcock for years by underlining other artists nuances by beating you over the head with them. Am I crazy or does he reference The Giving Tree many times? Its another absurdist Freudian horror film for feminists, but not as entertaining, creepy or surprising as you would hope. There is one really effective scene (the one that caused a festival audience to vomit), but the film is still stale and overly long. Jennifer Lawrence isn't an actress I've ever cared for, but she's starting to show a bit less woodenness, although she's essentially just a sympathetic photography model as per usual. Javier Bardem is his usual warm but creepy self, but Michelle Pfeiffer steals the film and you wish she was the centerpiece of the whole thing.
I gave Alien Covenant a 2nd watch and I'm delighted I did. This is the best sequel of 2017. It works perfectly as a prequel to Alien and delivers enough of the canned formula to satisfy the masses, but diverts to create its own original plot, injecting some much needed newness in the saga (which Prometheus delivered too sloppily). Ridley Scott puts on a masterclass in scifi directing from what is a very thought provoking script about the morality of a superior intelligence that sees humans simply as fodder for a more pure and honest lifeform. Yeah, yeah, its essentially the plot of the first Alien, but the series has never returned to that essential theme with any success. Here, it is the entire premise. Its as if Ridley Scott is remaking Alien the way he originally envisioned it, divorcing it from the feminist gore, weapons & monster genres and deeper into the dark psyche of egomania, fascism, eugenics, Nazism, occult and other pressing fears rarely mentioned in the non-metaphysical commercial scifi we are used to. The villain here is an executioner judging humanity without bias, showing us our own monstrosity in the face of the monsters we have literally made into iconic anti-heroes. And in a way, Scott returns to the basic principles, obsessions and meanings in the old spaceman films of the 50s & 60s that inspired he, Lucas, Tobe Hooper, Lynch, Carpenter and a generation of dark genre directors. Ridley combines those new American influences to his European sensibility (and the experience he's collected working more consistently and with bigger productions). This film wasn't too popular because it wasn't Prometheus 2 or the same, tired Alien formula, but this easily rivals this generation's Star Wars films or Avatar. Its that well directed, written and produced. I'm very sad that this might be the last time Scott touches the saga he started as Disney just bought the franchise through Fox. They will almost definitely return it to a commercial teen action fanboy territory and we won't get a conclusion to what is a fantastic cliffhanger. But maybe Scott can talk his way into making it by throwing in more of those pesky xenomorphs.
The Killing of a Sacred Deer is worth a watch. Its not the memorable, charming, grisly, risky affair that director Yorgos Lanthimos had with his preceding film "The Lobster", but its snarky enough, clever enough and chilling enough to satisfy. Its a great satire on class struggle, a comedy to the working class but a real nightmare for the upper crust "hoi polloi". Here is another film where the villain has a somewhat valiant mission of cruelty and the protagonists are just symbolic meat. The absurdity and shocks are tempered and there's a pronounced fetishism of surfaces and appearances. I kinda felt that the plot and characters were window dressing to arrive at the moody production design, grim performances and bleak moral worldview. It didn't stray too far from The Lobster, which is disappointing because it was that film's originality that won me over, not how highbrow it proved itself to be. But check it out for the lovely directing, clever if predictable script and a very succinct cast, practically carried by the exquisite Nicole Kidman.
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