Now Over 5500 Reviews and (near) Daily Updates!

WELCOME! Use the search engines on this site (or your own off-site engine of choice) to gain easy access to the complete MAKSQUIBS Archive; more than 5500 posts and counting. (New posts added every day or so.)

You can check on all our titles by typing the Title, Director, Actor or 'Keyword' you're looking for in the Search Engine of your choice (include the phrase MAKSQUIBS) or just use the BLOGSPOT.com Search Box at the top left corner of the page.

Feel free to place comments directly on any of the film posts and to test your film knowledge with the CONTESTS scattered here & there. (Hey! No Googling allowed. They're pretty easy.)

Send E-mails to MAKSQUIBS@yahoo.com . (Let us know if the TRANSLATE WIDGET works!) Or use the Profile Page or Comments link for contact.

Thanks for stopping by.

Thursday, March 8, 2018

MOTHER! (2017)

Unlike the usual LOVE IT or HATE IT split reaction to a Darren Aronofsky envelope-pushing provocation, MOTHER! was pretty much all HATE IT. Disingenuously sold as an intellectual horror pic, it’s really more of a modernized NOAH/’14 reboot, his previous Biblical misstep. (Though told without a Noah character as God-chosen conduit to ‘reboot’ the world.) Hard to imagine that a less deceptive ad campaign would have kept this from flat-lining. Mismatched couple Jennifer Lawrence (dewy, self-reliant homemaker) and blocked Hemingwayesque writer Javier Bardem unexpectedly find their isolated country home is being rapidly invaded by the strangest of strangers in exponentially growing numbers, with the house & their relationship falling apart from the stress. (Or maybe it’s those hand-held cameras working so darn close in.) And once the allegorical nature of the film kicks in, things spin even faster out of control with ultra-violence & gore. What’s going on here? Shhh, it’s all about creation . . . er . . .CREATION; and learning about God, unhappy with his score after the first 9, taking a ‘Mulligan.’ (A modest self-portrait for writer/director Aronofsky?) Even a pithy (if unspoken) moral: If at first you don’t succeed, try & try again. But maybe at a different studio.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: What a good opportunity to revisit ROSEMARY’S BABY/’68.

No comments: