mother! (2017)

Director: Darren Aronofsky

Notable Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris, Michelle Pfeiffer, Domhnall Gleeson, Brian Gleeson, Kristen Wiig, Stephen McHattie

The artistic and atmospheric slant of horror films has seen a burst of activity in the last handful of years and it has garnered quite a bit of attention from critics AND the more casual film goer. This has seen a handful of films that normally would be pushed down to straight to home video status or limited release get a full theatrical drop. Some of these even have full backing support from studios. It’s this success, even on a small scale, that allowed mother! to get a much larger release than expected. It helps immensely when one considers the stacked casting and the appeal of artistic director Darren Aronofsky, but mother! is the kind of film that was definitely going to rub mainstream audiences the wrong way and it’s now well publicized ‘F’ Cinemascore from viewers solidifies that notion. Yet, mother! is not nearly as terrible as some critics and most audiences would have one believe. In fact, it’s an ambitious, provocative, and fully realized piece of cinematic art that pushes the boundaries. In a way, whether one agrees with the choices made in narrative or style of the film, it should be respected as a film that opens up an entire audience to an artistic version of horror film making that they may not have seen before. For that, mother! deserves some serious credit.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017)

Directors: Joachim Ronning, Espen Sandberg

Notable Cast: Johnny Depp, Brenton Thwaites, Kaya Scodelario, Javier Bardem, Geoffrey Rush, Kevin McNally, Golshifteh Farahani, David Wenham, Stephen Graham, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Paul McCartney

Also Known As: Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar's Revenge

To give a bit of context to this review, my opinion of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise is far from a positive one. Like most people, I was massively surprised by the quality of the first, but the second and third entries left me cold and/or irritated by the sheer and immense spectacle driven focus that they had quickly succumbed to. However, with dire expectations in hand, the fourth film was surprisingly fun. It stripped away a ton of the melodramatic set pieces for a much more efficient (and for some, boring) summer blockbuster formula that left me pleasantly surprised. That is not, however, a statement of On Stranger Tides’ quality as it certainly was not a film to challenge its viewers or was even executed in any kind of artistic fashion. It accepted itself for all its silliness and delivered a fun standalone feature.

This now brings us to the focus of this review, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, a somewhat hilarious title considering that at least half of its main returning characters have been dead or dead-like for at least some portion of this franchise. As the fifth entry into this franchise, it was mildly touted as a finale that would wrap up some threads left hanging while maintaining the classic concepts and even ‘returning to its roots’ to fix some of the issues that fans had with the fourth entry. True to its promises, it kind of does all of those things. Kind of.  And it still delivers a fun summer kick off blockbuster that fans will find enjoyable enough. Truthfully though, Dead Men Tell No Tales is something of a mess narratively speaking, sticking to the formula with almost vicious intent and failing to really add anything truly inspired or new, but not quite sinking to the depths of poorly crafted storytelling that the second and third entry hit. To put it simply, it’s a lot of the same old, same old. For better or worse.