Mother! is what happens when a dude has an idea he thinks is brilliant and no one checks him on it.

| Mar 1, 2021

[Darren] Aronofsky wants mother! to have the intensity and inner logic of a sweaty nightmare. But it's a fake cinematic fever dream-the kind made by a director so self-conscious that he's always checking his own temperature.

| Mar 8, 2018

Ultimately, you may be left pondering not so much the allegory as to why [Darren] Aronofsky would want to push not just his audience but his girlfriend through such an extreme wringer.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Oct 11, 2017

If this is Aronofsky's acknowledgement of those he's hurt in his life, then it is grossly remorseless.

| Oct 4, 2017

It doesn't all work; long stretches, in fact, don't play at all. But it's formally impressive and deeply disturbing, and the mere fact that it exists at all is a testament to either Aronfsky's salesmanship, Lawrence's star power, or both.

| Sep 27, 2017

Mother!... is just as gorgeous, bombastic and uninterested in presenting fully formed characters as those movies, but it's also pretty spectacular.

| Sep 22, 2017

At times horrifying, at times riveting, at times baffling, and at times like nothing you've ever seen before.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 22, 2017

[Darren] Aronofsky confronts the brutality of fame and fandom and the conflict they present in our growing society of individuals whose social reflexes have evaporated and whose self-worth is dependent on external forces.

| Sep 22, 2017

The film's pretension becomes cumbersome and reliant on the audience buying into its "ambiguity."

| Original Score: 3/10 | Sep 22, 2017

mother! is a film that demands to be seen and reckoned with.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Sep 21, 2017

The film is a one-size-fits-all allegory, gloriously visceral in the moment but too easily decoded to endure.

| Sep 21, 2017

Soup is... the perfect word to describe this pretentious mess of a film. It is full of vapid characters and overwrought imagery, which Aronofsky seems to think add up to allegory.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 21, 2017

The gutsy [Jennifer] Lawrence [is] badly miscast as a shrinking violet.

| Sep 21, 2017

It's brilliant, horrifying, dreamlike, and has a helluva lot on its mind. Chances are you'll be trying, in vain, to get it off your mind and out of your own dreams for some time to come.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Sep 21, 2017

It's a real widening gyre of a movie, set adrift by the vicissitudes of both theological and cinematic history, with no human center to hold it down.

| Sep 21, 2017

I don't want to invest another minute of my time thinking about Mother! I respect Aronofsky's gutsiness, and Lawrence's as well, but I found the movie to be an ordeal. All I want is to move on.

| Sep 20, 2017

The film wears out its welcome fast.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 19, 2017

I hesitate to label it the "Worst movie of the year" when "Worst movie of the century" fits it even better.

| Original Score: 0/4 | Sep 18, 2017

Disciples of the filmmaker will surely preach about and argue over the film's message for years to come. But one thing is certain: Mother! is a nightmare.

| Sep 18, 2017

If you gave an extremely bright fifteen-year-old a bag of unfamiliar herbs to smoke, and forty million dollars or so to play with, "Mother!" would be the result.

| Sep 18, 2017