u/iamspok

I just watched Mother Mary and I’m still trying to work out exactly where I landed on it. I gave it 3.5 because there are flashes here that are honestly incredible, especially the opening, the score, the song-performance structure, the surreal flashbacks, Anne Hathaway’s performance and the chemistry with Michaela Coel.

The parts that fully lean into the pop psychodrama are easily the strongest. At its best it feels like a more emotionally sincere sibling of The Neon Demon with some Black Swan theatricality thrown in.

But I also found it frustrating because it keeps stepping away from the version of itself I liked most. The balance felt slightly off. I still admire the swing massively, absolutely the kind of A24 film I can see splitting people hard.

For anyone else who’s seen it: did it fully land for you? Did the melodrama work better than it did for me, or were you also waiting for it to return to that opening-five-minutes energy?

P.s “My Mouth Is Lonely For You” is an absolute raging banger of a tune.

Do not be fooled by the poster, the title or the fact that it appears to be about two restaurants fighting each other through low-budget TV adverts.

This is not a normal film.

Symptoms of exposure:
- wondering how anyone wrote this
- becoming emotionally invested in fake adverts
- developing strong opinions about fictional local businesses
- laughing at things that are objectively stupid
- feeling mildly haunted by consumerism

The film appears to operate somewhere between Rick and Morty intergalactic cable, cursed YouTube rabbit holes, local advert brain rot and full-blown retro hellscape nightmare cinema.

It should fall apart within ten minutes. It does not.

It feels like a future cult film in the making. People will either reject it immediately or become insufferable about it for years. I fear I may be in the second group.