The Unclean House: mother!, reviewed.
Chris Klimek
Javier Bardem, Jennifer Lawrence and the chorus. (Paramount)
No one is under any obligation to like Darren Aronofsky’s mother! (sic) (or his mother) or any other movie (or person), obviously. Even so, mother! is the sort of challenging picture that offers a good test for whether a critic—regardless of where he or she stands on the question of the film’s artistic merit—has any imagination at all. I’ve seen some fine writing on this movie and some truly dreadful, dumb, reductive writing. I hope my own NPR review is one of the former specimens, even though it takes the form of a long argument against you reading it.