mother!

Well, I think I found my worst movie of 2017.  mother! is pretentious, artificial, and really made me wish that I didn't sit through every movie until the end.

None of the characters have names, but here goes.  Mother (Jennifer Lawrence) lives in a house in the country with her husband, Him (Javier Bardem).  She spends most of the time working on the house, which belong to Him (His?) before it burned down.  Mother also has hallucinations, including imagining that the house is alive.  As for Him, he's a poet working on a new work but suffering from writer's block.  He also has a large crystal that's the only thing saved from his original house.

The couple is interrupted by Man (Ed Harris), who mistakenly thinks the house takes visitors.  Him is delighted to let Man stay with them, while Mother is annoyed.  Then Woman (Michelle Pfeiffer), Man's wife, shows up and makes herself at home -- and pesters Mother with lots of personal questions.  Pretty soon there's a virtual parade of people coming through the house -- which, somehow, leads to a nightmare of crowds, war, celebrity, motherhood, religion, and whatever else happened to be running through writer-director Darren Aranofsky's mind when he made this.

I don't think there's a single thing I liked about mother!  A cast of normally fine actors is wasted here, as every line feels phony and no characters interact in any way remotely approaching the real world.  The story (such as it is) wants to comment on everything but winds up saying nothing.  And I wanted the movie to end far, far before it finally wrapped up.  This one was painful from beginning to finish.

Overall grade: F
Reviewed by James Lynch