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

THE COUNSELOR

"Be careful about getting in over your head" is a simple message that's common in life, in movies, and certainly in The Counselor.  This drama has a terrific cast in a very formulaic story.

The Counselor (Michael Fassbender) seems to have it all: rich friends, extravagant lifestyle, and a beautiful girlfriend named Laura (Penelope Cruz), for whom he buys a very expensive diamond engagement ring.  But he's also getting involved with his friends -- the carefree Reiner (Javier Bardem) and the far more cautious Westray (Brad Pitt) -- with a huge deal involving a Mexican drug cartel and a cocaine shipment worth millions.  Despite Reiner and Westray trying to scare the Counselor with tales of how ruthless the cartel is, the Counselor is all in.  And Malkina (Cameron Diaz), Reiner's girlfriend from Barbados, is a sexual, amoral, greedy being who Reiner rightly fears is smarter than him.

Of course, the drug deal quickly goes south, as the shipment (hidden in an old sewage truck) keeps switching hands.  The Counselor panicks, as his confidence and friends quickly abandon him.  And those horror stories about the cartel weren't exaggerated...

The Counselor is a fairly ordinary movie.  With a screenplay from Cormac McCarthy (whose No Country for Old Men was far superior), we wind up with a protagonist who spends the whole movie running around not knowing what to do.  There are plenty of contrasts -- the innocent Laura and the scheming Malkina, the seemingly expensive world of the main characters and the dirty poverty of those handling the truck with its dangerous, expensive cargo -- but in the end it's watching someone dabbling in a dangerous world he's unprepared to handle.  The cast is very good, yet their roles are pretty one-dimensional.  And the movie's frequent departures into theories and philosophy (including a discussion with a cartel leader that's all about creating worlds) often feels quite artificial.  The Counselor has some interesting elements, such as the contrasts and often telling instead of showing what could happen, but it's still pretty routine.

Overall grade: C
Reviewed by James Lynch

VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA

While Woody Allen's more recent comedies have been fluffy, screwball antics, his older ones combine humor with thoughts and musings on life and love. Woody is back to deeper comedy with his latest film, Vicky Cristina Barcelona. In this film, what could have been a mere sex romp becomes an exploration of what it means to love, and to get what one wants.

Best friends Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) are vacationing together in Spain. Vicky is the more level-headed of the two: She is engaged to a nice, ordinary, somewhat dull man named Doug (Chris Messina) and is traveling in Spain to do research on Spanish culture. Cristina is an artist who just finished months making a 12-minute movie and feels like wandering. Vicky considers love as stability and security, while Cristina wants love to be filled with passion, drama and pain. The two ladies are staying in Barcelona with Vicky's friend Judy (Patricia Clarkson) and her husband Mark (Kevin Dunn). And Vicky and Cristina soon become enamored of the sights and sounds of Spain.

At an art gallery, both ladies notice handsome painter Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem) who Judy says had a passionate divorce. A short time later Juan Antonio meets the women and offers to take them with him for the weekend to see the sights, drink fine wine, and make love -- hopefully with both of them. Cristina is intrigued and smitten, Vicky is insulted and a little offended -- but they both go with him. And when a stomach ailment interferes with Juan Antonio and Cristina's getting together, he and Vicky wind up sharing a night of lovemaking.

The movie jumps forward a few weeks, when Doug has joined Vicky in Spain and Cristina is living with Juan Antonio. Only Vicky keeps weighing the stable but dull prospect of life with Doug with the reckless but wild time she had with Juan Antonio. Cristina, meanwhile, finds herself enjoying life with Juan Antonio and discovering a love of photography -- but faces new challenges when Juan Antonio's crazy and somewhat dangerous ex-wife Maria Elena (Penelope Cruz) not only shows up, but also moves in with Juan Antonio and Cristina!

In lesser hands Vicky Cristina Barcelona could have become a frivolous film about male fantasies. Woody Allen, writing and directing the movie, transforms it into two separate views of what happens when people wonder if getting what they want means having what they want. Rebecca Hall is a female version of the characters Woody Allen used to play in his movies -- someone clever, intellectual, and prone to overanalysis which sometimes leads to inaction -- and she makes Vicky a genuinely nice person who suddenly wonders if her desired life of predictability is all she really wants. Scarlett Johansson (a regular in Woody Allen's movies these days) plays Cristina as a modern bohemian, someone ready to fall into love and defy society, but who may not be able to handle all she receives. Javier Bardem is immensely charming and seductive -- but his character is also passionate about life and art and Spain, a gourmand of life rather than a libido-driven stud. Penelope Cruz is wonderful as the ex-wife who's alternately suspicious and accepting of Cristina, who loves and hates Juan Antonio, who is an artist herself -- and a true wild and tortured soul. Cruz and Bardem demonstrate consistently Juan Antonio's assertion that he and his ex-wife are "meant to be together and not meant to be together." And Woody Allen treats Spain as the ideal of romanticism, full of color, life, and the omnipresent strings of the played Spanish guitar.

I could have done without the narration, which often stated what would have been evident from the dialogue and the acting; and a subplot where Judy has a situation mirroring Vicky's crisis was a little heave-handed. Still, there are plenty of laughs and plenty of musings in Vicky Cristina Barcelona. It's good to see Woody Allen back in fine form.

Overall grade: A-

Reviewed by James Lynch