mother movie reviews rotten tomatoes

Find anything you save across the site in your account

“Mother!” Review: Darren Aronofsky’s Thrilling, Horrifying, Nearly Unbelievable Satire of Fame

“Mother!” is Darren Aronofsky’s “Stardust Memories,” his vehemently exaggerated satire on the burdens of fame. And for anyone who thought that Woody Allen’s 1980 film looked a gift horse in the mouth, critiquing fame from within its comfortable confines, “Mother!” tops it—it’s the cinematic version of an equine root canal. The films’ similarities in intent and differences in degree emerge in one aspect in particular: while “Stardust Memories” doesn’t exactly flatter Allen’s character, in Aronofsky’s film the artist—freed from direct identification with Aronofsky’s own persona—comes off as an ingratiating monster. “Mother!” is the story of a mid-career male artist—a writer, played by Javier Bardem—whose conjoined qualities of celebrity and vanity give rise to a uniquely destructive power. For Aronofsky, the calculus is cruel: the adoring crowd is motivated by a greedy and cavalier selfishness that is sought, enabled, nourished, sustained, and encouraged by the artist himself. His film flirts with the ridiculous and sometimes falls into it—though to ridicule it, or Aronofsky, for doing so is to miss both the point and the pleasure.

There’s a reason the movie is called “ Mother! ”: its protagonist isn’t even the artist but the woman who is his life partner, played by Jennifer Lawrence. (The movie’s characters have no names; I’ll identify them here by the actors’ first names.) “Mother!” is essentially a two-hour, two-part film. The first hour or so is an extended exposition, one that’s so uncertain in tone as to be almost unbearably dull and empty (I’ll toss out some mild spoilers for that section, none for the second one). If I were watching as a casual viewer rather than as a critic, I might have walked out after twenty minutes or a half-hour—and it would have been a great loss. The first half of the movie is the story of sterility—of writer’s block and of sexual trouble; the second is the story of fecundity, of artistic creation and of procreation, of a teeming artistic life and a teeming family life. Not to overdo the spoilers, but, in the second half, Javier writes a new book, Jennifer gives birth to their baby, and all hell breaks loose.

The movie is set in and around a huge old house in a vast and remote clearing, in which the couple live, together and alone. The house was ravaged by fire, and Jennifer has made its restoration—along with the care and feeding of her partner, the writer—her principal activity. Javier has a fancy, book-lined study, but he admits that, at the moment, he’s hardly writing. Then, a stranger (played by Ed Harris) knocks on the door; he identifies himself as an orthopedic surgeon who teaches at a nearby hospital. Jennifer is suspicious, but Javier welcomes him warmly, and Ed makes himself at home, all too arrogantly—he smokes indoors without asking, he says that he took Jennifer for Javier’s daughter, not his wife. Invited to visit Javier’s study, Ed expresses (and, as we learn, feigns) surprise at learning that Javier is the author of his favorite book. Javier basks in Ed’s admiration and invites him—to Jennifer’s dismay and bewilderment—to stay over with them. Ed’s wife (Michelle Pfeiffer) soon shows up, too, and she, too, casually insults and defies Jennifer. Ed, Javier tells Jennifer, is a “crazy fan” of his work, is fatally ill (he does cough a lot), and “he wanted to meet me before he’s gone.” As a result of this adulation, Javier takes the side of Ed and Michelle against Jennifer in a series of dismissive, insulting, and invasive actions–call them, rightly, microaggressions. Jennifer endures absurdly extreme emotional abrasions, local dissatisfactions, and frustrations solely as a result of Javier’s vanity, his neediness, or his sense of his needs for the purpose of his creation—and she endures them willingly, because of her devotion, her support, and her love for him. The segment is raised to a higher pitch of chaotic absurdity when Michelle and Ed’s two adult sons (Brian Gleeson and Domhnall Gleeson), exemplary large adult sons , show up. They loutishly quarrel and brutally fight, resulting in serious damage to the house and causing absurdly exaggerated yet deeply consequential injury.

Soon thereafter, the movie shifts drastically. Ed and Michelle and their crew are gone, and the first part’s mournful sterility is broken by fecundity: Jennifer is pregnant, and Javier—comedically but incontrovertibly—begins to write again, and his new work is an instant success. The birth of their child coincides with his great new flourish of fame, and the fans start to show up at the house. That’s when the movie takes on a dazzlingly exciting, crazed, and apocalyptic tone as, in what should be a moment of intimate joy for Javier and Jennifer, she faces—as a result of his courting of the crowd—a new and ever-increasing series of grotesque torments that are so extreme that they’d be ludicrous, except that they’re not funny at all; rather, they virtually shriek with rage and horror.

“Mother!” is Aronofsky’s reckoning with the struggles and temptations of the life of an artist, but it isn’t a work of autobiography or a self-portrait. It is, rather, a satire on a syndrome and also a self-scourging confession, not of any actual misdeeds or abuses but of possibilities—a self-cautionary tale that doesn’t have to be rooted in stories to which Aronofsky had unique or privileged access, because it’s the hyper-exaggerated version of stories that more or less everybody knows, even if only from their tabloid distortions. Aronofsky offers, in “Mother!,” a report from the realm of art, of male artists, and both reveals and admits that many of them draw their artistic and personal sustenance from the blood of young women—that their art and also their domestic comfort depends on their virtual vampirizing of adoring young women who are attracted to their talent, their fame, their experience, perhaps even their money, but whose love is nonetheless utterly sincere and whose devotion is nonetheless utterly unselfish and ultimately proves far more self-sacrificing than they had ever intended.

In Aronofsky’s vision, the destructiveness of the artist’s vanity goes hand in hand with the destructiveness of the crowd, of the individuals whose enthusiasm, whose fandom, whose fleeting or symbolic connection to the artist gives them their own toehold on the public realm, on a public identity. “Mother!” is a grand-scale tragedy of the commons , in which an artist becomes a celebrity, a public figure and a public resource, and then gets consumed by the members of the audience who draw upon them for a sort of sustenance, albeit factitious—an illusion that the artist himself fosters for his own advantage and gratification. (Aronofsky also scathingly satirizes the cold comforts of an artist’s works of faux-empathetic pride.)

Though the tone of “Mother!” is one of freakazoidal exaggeration, the film’s underlying subject—borders and boundaries—is unfolded with earnest consideration. The firmness of the boundary between an artist’s private life and public identity is one that Aronofsky imagines, in its absence, as a crucial matter of well-being for the artist, the artist’s domestic partner and family members, and for the members of the public as well (since members of the public, no less than artists, have the capacity to turn into monsters). At the same time, Aronofsky sees domestic boundaries that divide the artist from his partner—the division of domestic labor into the art and the life, the gap between the artist and his partner in matters far more important than age, namely, experience, accomplishment, worldliness, and wealth. If “Mother!” is a vision of an artist feeding vanity through love and fame, it’s also a vision of an artist feeding vanity at home through a love that has its own inequality, its own one-sidedness, built into it.

The connection between the movie’s two sections—between the microaggressions of Ed and Michelle’s characters and the apocalyptic destruction of the hordes of fans who follow—isn’t incidental; it’s essential to the movie’s grander, even more wide-ranging discernment. “Mother!” dramatizes the inevitable connection between casual slights and grievous wrongs, the slippery slope that inescapably binds dismissive or insulting or contemptuous actions on an intimate scale with acts of grievous violence. The movie shows that Javier’s sense of entitlement or privilege asserted in private is insidious precisely because it goes unspoken; it’s a kind of action that can be masked as benign. Aronofsky catches the intention to terrify, and, thereby, to silence and to dominate, that’s implicit in the flip personal interactions in which power is asserted and expressed.

The dramatically symbolic, metaphorical depiction of the crises of artists’ struggles for fame and love isn’t new to movies; Hal Hartley achieved it in his 1997 film “Henry Fool,” and there’s a remarkable and unfortunately rare film from 1966, “The Plastic Dome of Norma Jean,” by Juleen Compton, that I saw at Metrograph on Saturday (its one screening), a deeply tender yet exuberantly cartoonish, artificial yet quasi-documentary drama about a young woman from the Ozarks (Sharon Henesy) whose clairvoyant gifts are employed by a rock band to feed their own celebrity. (The young Sam Waterston is a member of the band.) But what “Mother!” achieves, by the catastrophic reach of Aronofsky’s imagination and the grand scale of his filmmaking, is an object that fuses with its subject, a movie that thrusts its bottomless maw of voracious ambitions and desires at viewers and defies them to see his world, and their own, in it. What’s thrilling, horrifying, and nearly unbelievable about “Mother!” is that it exists—not that a studio would put money into it but that a filmmaker would think it up and realize it with such gleefully cataclysmic ardor.

Advertisement

Supported by

Review: ‘Mother!’ Is a Divine Comedy, Dressed as a Psychological Thriller

• Share full article

By A.O. Scott

• Sept. 13, 2017

The couple live in a grand, oddly-shaped Victorian house in the middle of a tree-ringed meadow — less a McMansion than a perennial fixer-upper. The work of home improvement, of literal homemaking, you might say, falls to the young wife. Her husband, who has been around longer than she has, is absorbed in his work. He’s a poet, and the torment of creation distracts him from her needs, at times rendering him all but oblivious to her presence. Neither partner is given a name. They are played by Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem. The movie is called “Mother!” The first line of dialogue is “Baby?”

The missus walks around in her nightgown, lonely and confused, especially when her hubby starts bringing home guests. “Who are these people?” she asks him. She never receives an adequate answer — they are big fans of the poet’s work, though — and for a while her bewilderment is ours as well. But we, at least, are in a position to analyze the abundantly available clues and figure out who everybody is, the poet and his lady included. Or if not quite who they are, then at least what they represent. Because though this extravagant conversation piece of a movie, written and directed by Darren Aronofsky, feints toward psychological thriller territory and spends a delicious half-hour or so in the realm of domestic farce, it plants its flag defiantly on the wind-swept peak of religious (and ecological) allegory.

I don’t mean this in the vague, Superman-is-really-a-messiah-figure term paper sense of the word. At a certain point — it will vary according to your Sunday school attendance or what you remember from freshman English — you will find yourself in possession of the key to the analogical storage room where the Real Meaning resides. Up until that point, you might have thought this was a marital melodrama set in a nightmarish version of a ’50s academic marriage. When Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer show up, you might mistake “Mother!” for a savage, scrambled “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” adaptation. But then, sometime between the first violent death and the collapse of the kitchen sink, you realize that something else is going on.

Here I must confess a different kind of puzzlement. Is there such a thing as an interpretive spoiler? Is it wrong to reveal a movie’s conceit, rather than elements of its story? Ordinarily, such questions would be absurd, but Mr. Aronofsky ingeniously braids his movie’s hermeneutic structure into its plot, making it hard to say what it’s about without revealing what happens. All of the suspense and most of the fun in “Mother!” — and don’t listen to anyone who natters on about how intense or disturbing it is; it’s a hoot! — has to do with the elaboration and execution of a central idea.

Once you grasp that idea, you are left wondering just how far Mr. Aronofsky will go with it. The answer is all the way and then some — from Genesis to Revelation and back again. The house is referred to early in the film as “paradise”; Ms. Lawrence refers to a relatively minor mess as an “apocalypse.” These are more teasers than jokes, and the punch lines arrive with mesmerizing literalness. Holy Eucharist, Batman!

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and  log into  your Times account, or  subscribe  for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber?  Log in .

Want all of The Times?  Subscribe .

Screen Rant

Mother review.

Your changes have been saved

Email is sent

Email has already been sent

Please verify your email address.

You’ve reached your account maximum for followed topics.

“No Other Gangster Film Ever Did”: The Godfather Has 1 Surprising Secret To Success, Coppola Says

Star wars keeps learning the wrong lessons from lucasfilm's failures, rebecca ferguson joins andrew garfield & claire foy in movie adaptation of classic children's novel, mother is an ambitious work that bucks traditional storytelling techniques with its aspirations, but its approach will not be for all moviegoers..

Mother (Jennifer Lawrence) lives a tranquil and peaceful life with her husband, Him (Javier Bardem), in their remote home, isolated from the rest of society. He is a famous poet who is struggling to find the proper inspiration for his next piece, while she works on fixing up the house after it had been burnt to the ground in a fire. Mother aspires to create a paradise for the two, but Him's extensive writer's block puts a strain on their relationship.

One night, a man (Ed Harris) visits Mother and Him's home, looking for a place to stay after traveling a great distance. Him is excited to have the company, and Mother reluctantly agrees to let the man spend the night. The next day, the man's wife (Michelle Pfeiffer) comes to the house to spend time with her husband, and Mother's existence continues to unravel as more and more admirers and fans of Him come and make the house their own. Desperate for things to go back to the way they were, Mother tries to convince Him to make their guests leave before all is lost.

Billed as a psychological horror/thriller,  mother! is the latest film from writer/director Darren Aronofsky, who found himself in a dark and troubled place when developing this film. The auteur has made a career of challenging his viewers with unconventional narratives that typically deal with unsettling subject matter, and this instance is no different, leaving audiences with quite the puzzle to put together long after the credits have rolled.  mother! is an ambitious work that bucks traditional storytelling techniques with its aspirations, but its approach will not be for all moviegoers.

Aronofsky is no stranger to incorporating Biblical themes and elements into his films (see:  Noah ), and he doubles down on those influences with  mother! . His script is in essence one big metaphor that aims to provide commentary on the state of the world and humanity - at times beating viewers over the head with its message. While this concept is admirable and sounds fascinating on-paper, it may not have been executed in the most compelling way. Aronofsky gets so preoccupied with the symbolism in  mother! that for the most part, he forgoes setting up the characters and relationships in a way for general audiences to truly be invested in what is happening. Some viewers will definitely appreciate the director's commitment to realizing his vision, but many of roles come across as being thinly-defined and just a stand-in for something else - which make the payoffs unearned.

mother! is a mixed bag in the screenplay department, though there is no denying Aronofsky remains at the top of his craft from a technical standpoint. The film's visuals look great onscreen, with much credit going to cinematographer Matthew Libatique. A majority of the movie is shot in closeups, and the camerawork is used to instill a sense of claustrophobia and dread. In typical Aronofsky fashion, there's plenty of disturbing imagery in mother! as well, and while this can be reminiscent of his 2010 hit  Black Swan , it does a good job of unnerving viewers. In some ways, the home invasion aspects of the film are grounded and more terrifying than a standard horror movie - as "normal" everyday people are used in place of a slasher monster/threat. The pure insanity of what's happening can put viewers on edge, giving  mother! an unpredictable edge where just about anything is possible.

In terms of the performances, Lawrence is the clear standout as Mother, delivering an emotionally vulnerable and demanding turn as a pure, innocent woman who gets pushed further and further into madness. The Oscar-winner does her best at making the most of the material, giving  mother! the closest thing it has to a protagonist viewers can see themselves in. Unfortunately, there's only so much she can do, since there aren't many layers to her character as it's written. The same can be said for Bardem as Him, who isn't bad in the role, but doesn't leave a lasting impression. What's more memorable about the leads is what they mean in terms of  mother!'s overarching metaphors - not necessarily the traits and nature of the individual parts themselves. This will make it difficult for some to get attached to this couple, since there isn't much put into selling their chemistry and romance beyond the surface level.

The main supporting cast of  mother! is small, with Harris and Pfeiffer being the ones with the most to chew on. For the most part, their characters suffer from the same shortcomings as Mother and Him; they work as clear allegories in regards to the film's ideas, but that can only go so far in establishing a connection with viewers. Pfeiffer does command the attention of the audience with her provocative and alluring screen presence, injecting Woman with some seductive and tempting sensibilities. Harris is fine as Man, getting the job done by being rather unassuming. Other minor roles are filled by names like Domhnall Gleeson and Kristen Wiig, but they aren't onscreen enough to make much of an impact.

mother! has already earned the reputation of being a polarizing film, and how one enjoys it will depend solely on how willing one is to buy into what Aronofsky has to say and the manner in which he tells his story. The director is attempting to tackle some lofty motifs here, and on a certain level that is respectable. However,  mother! will certainly not be everyone's cup of tea, playing out as a film that's difficult to box into a specific genre or target demographic. From that perspective, it may be worth checking out for those intrigued by the marketing or Aronofsky in general, since  mother! is definitely unlike anything else that will play this year.

mother! is now playing in U.S. theaters. It runs 121 minutes and is rated R for strong disturbing violent content, some sexuality, nudity and language.

Let us know what you thought of the film in the comments!

NEXT: mother! Ending Explained

Mother (2017), key release dates.

• Movie Reviews
• 2.5 star movies

• Entertainment
• <i>The Mother</i> Plays It Too Straight—But J.Lo’s Appeal Is Eternal

The Mother Plays It Too Straight—But J.Lo’s Appeal Is Eternal

N ot since Stella Dallas has a mother made so many selfless sacrifices for her daughter. Not since Taken has a protective parent fended off so many rotten baddies. Mush those two genres together—the classic women’s picture and the pulpy, rage-driven action adventure—and you get The Mother, in which Jennifer Lopez plays the mother to end all mothers, a mysterious assassin who slinks out of retirement to protect the daughter (Lucy Paez) she was forced to give up a dozen years ago.

It all begins with an interrogation. Lopez’s the Mother—her character, a womb with balls, has no name—slouches elegantly in some messy safe house somewhere, staring down a couple of no-nonsense FBI interrogators. She glowers from the cocoon of her artfully ragged cashmere hoodie as they pepper her with questions. Where are the two dangerous arms dealers she’s been tangling with? Was she really romantically involved with both of them? At the same time, even? Before the tough-guy feds can get answers, possible baby daddy number one (Joseph Fiennes) crashes their pad and attempts to blow them to smithereens. One of the agents (Omari Hardwick) nearly succumbs to his wounds, until the Mother, thinking quickly as mothers do, mends the gaping hole in his side by squirting some household glue in there. Then she retreats to the bathroom to fashion a Molotov cocktail from a bottle of tea tree shampoo, crouching in the shower as she awaits the man she knows is coming for her. By this point we see that she’s tremendously pregnant, and she’ll protect this baby at all costs. Woe betide Adrian, who dares jab at her stomach with a knife. Her tea-tree bomb burns him to a crisp. Or does it?

Read more: The 16 Best J. Lo Movies of All Time

The Mother would, of course, like to keep this baby, but the FBI whisks the infant away shortly after she’s born. There’s nothing left for the newly bereft Mother to do but retreat to Alaska, where a former colleague ( Paul Raci ) offers her shelter in a shabby-chic decrepit cabin. There, she lives a quiet and solitary life, blamming deer and other wildlife for sustenance. Years pass, with nary a delivery from FreshDirect. Then she gets word that her daughter, Zoe, now 12, may be in danger. The trek to save her offspring takes the Mother from Alaska to Cincinnati to Cuba, where she encounters possible baby daddy number two (Gael García Bernal), who now appears to be both sinister and crazy: he’s sequestered himself in a temple of religious candles and guns. The Mother is having none of it—isn’t it time he got a real job?—and Hector, too, meets a bad end.

Snowmobile chases, knife fights, J.Lo kicking the asses of anyone who threatens her tiny nuclear family: If that sounds like fun, it is, but almost in spite of itself. Director Niki Caro (Whale Rider, Mulan) approaches the material reverently, as a parable about the strength of women. In one of the movie’s most compelling scenes, the Mother lectures Zoe, a sullen preteen who has no idea how good she has it, on the damage tofu has wrought upon the world. This is some pretty tough love.

But how can we not laugh—with joy, not derision—when we see our favorite mom hunting stag in Alaska while wearing the lushest fur-trimmed hood this side of Fendi? Lopez is a marvelous actor, appealing in ways that go beyond any analysis of technique. As the shamelessly out-for-herself dancer Ramona in the 2019 Hustlers, she revealed layers of vulnerability beneath her character’s hard-shell veneer, and she brings her A-game champagne-bubble charm offensive even to low-stakes, low-key comedies like Marry Me. The Mother would be more effective if she could wink at the audacity of the material instead of just playing it all straight. But then, Lopez can get away with things that other mere mortals can’t, and if you approach it in the right spirit, The Mother could be ridiculously good fun. It needs to be watched with the largest group of J.Lo fans you can assemble, ideally people who know artfully applied highlighter when they see it in the wild. Forget automatic weapons; it’s the Beauty Blender that gets the job done.

More Must-Reads from TIME

• Breaking Down the 2024 Election Calendar
• How Nayib Bukele’s ‘Iron Fist’ Has Transformed El Salvador
• What if Ultra-Processed Foods Aren’t as Bad as You Think?
• How Ukraine Beat Russia in the Battle of the Black Sea
• Long COVID Looks Different in Kids
• How Project 2025 Would Jeopardize Americans’ Health
• What a $129 Frying Pan Says About America’s Eating Habits
• The 32 Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2024

Contact us at [email protected]

• Magnolia Pictures

Summary The latest film from award-winning Korean director Bong Joon-ho (The Host) is a unique murder mystery about a mother's primal love for her son. Mother is a devoted single parent to her simple-minded twenty-seven-year-old son, Do-joon. Often a source of anxiety to his mother, Do-joon behaves in foolish or simply dangerous ways. One night, ... Read More

Directed By : Bong Joon Ho

Written By : Bong Joon Ho, Eun-kyo Park

Where to Watch

Yoon Do-joon

Mi-seon jeon, sae-byeok song, sepaktakraw detective, yeong-seok lee, junk shop elder, moon ah-jeong, woo-hee chun, byoung-soon kim, group leader, moo-yeong yeo, lawyer kong seok-ho, jeong yeong-gi, ddung-ddung, ah-jeong's grandma, hong-jib kim, min kyung-jin, kyeong-sook jo, mi-na's mother, park myung-shin, female owner, yeong-geol yun, field detective, critic reviews.

• All Reviews
• Positive Reviews
• Mixed Reviews
• Negative Reviews

User Reviews

Related movies, the godfather, touch of evil, pépé le moko (re-release), the night of the hunter, rififi (re-release), the maltese falcon, 12 angry men, mean streets, pulp fiction, double indemnity, taxi driver, the irishman, the french connection, elevator to the gallows, shoplifters, the 39 steps, band of outsiders, days of being wild (re-release), related news.

DVD/Blu-ray Releases: New & Upcoming

Jason dietz.

Find a list of new movie and TV releases on DVD and Blu-ray (updated weekly) as well as a calendar of upcoming releases on home video.

2024 Movie Release Calendar

Find a schedule of release dates for every movie coming to theaters, VOD, and streaming throughout 2024 and beyond, updated daily.

Every Alien Movie, Ranked

We rank every film in the Alien franchise, from the 1979 original to the new Alien: Romulus, from worst to best by Metascore.

Every Movie Based on a Videogame, Ranked

We rank every live-action film adapted from a video game—dating from 1993's Super Mario Bros. to this month's new Borderlands—from worst to best according to their Metascores.

August 2024 Movie Preview

Keith kimbell.

Get details on all of the notable films debuting in August, including the latest Alien sequel and a big-screen adaptation of the Borderlands video games.

The Definitive Voice of Entertainment News

Subscribe for full access to The Hollywood Reporter

site categories

‘the mother’ review: jennifer lopez in niki caro’s enjoyably silly netflix action thriller.

Joseph Fiennes, Omari Hardwick, Gael García Bernal and Lucy Paez also star in this study of the maternal instinct under fire as a tough assassin emerges from hiding to protect her daughter.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

• Share on Facebook
• Share to Flipboard
• Send an Email
• Show additional share options
• Share on LinkedIn
• Share on Pinterest
• Share on Reddit
• Share on Tumblr
• Share on Whats App
• Print the Article
• Post a Comment

Related Stories

'kaos' review: jeff goldblum's quirky zeus leads netflix's shallow greek mythology for grown-ups, netflix unveils teaser trailer, premiere date for timo tjahjanto's action film 'the shadow strays'.

Lopez is in intense, stoical tough-gal mode as an Armed Services veteran whose crack sniper skills made her the best in her platoon, notching up 46 confirmed kills during back-to-back tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. We learn this through Edie Falco, in a cameo as an FBI special agent who helpfully recaps the protagonist’s military history for her — but really for us.

A prologue in an FBI safehouse in Indiana has “the mother” still in her expectant phase, warning her interrogators that she’s not safe just in time for a rain of bullets to come down on them. She manages to save the hotter of the two agents, William Cruise ( Omari Hardwick ), before facing off against her arms-dealer associate and former lover, Adrian Lovell ( Joseph Fiennes ), who stabs her in her pregnant belly before a hastily rigged explosive device sends him up in flames. Which makes Adrian an angry dude with a melted pizza face for the rest of the movie.

When her baby miraculously survives the opening assault, the mother is briskly informed that the only way to protect the girl from what will surely be ongoing pursuit by the pair of killers is to terminate parental rights and give the kid a new identity and a new family. She reluctantly agrees, extracting a promise from the indebted Cruise to provide the child with “the most boring, stable life there is,” and to send a photo every year on the girl’s birthday.

Twelve years after the protagonist has retreated to an isolated woodland cabin in Alaska, she’s summoned by Cruise back to Cincinnati, where her daughter, Zoe (Lucy Paez), lives a comfortable life with her parents. When Hector’s top lieutenants descend on a playground, the mother manages to pick most of them off with an assault rifle, but Zoe nonetheless gets snatched and whisked off to Cuba by a creep helpfully identified by the tattoo on his neck as “The Tarantula” (Jesse Garcia).

The change of scenery (Canary Islands locations stand in for Havana) lets some color and light into the film, a welcome shift given how gloomy and noirish everything is up to that point — even if it’s a hospital ward or a kid’s bedroom combed by Federal agents.

A hint of potential romance with Cruise creeps into the story, along with another big exposition dump. But it’s not long before the mother confronts her former secondary squeeze, Hector, in his heavily guarded castle. Like all regulation Latino villains, sleazy Hector favors living quarters overflowing with burning candles, so you can guess how that ends.

Meanwhile, questions about Zoe’s father are left hanging. But the girl’s instincts are sharp enough to make her realize who her biological mother is once they head back to Ohio. Naturally, that doesn’t go according to plan, leaving the mother no choice but to hurry Zoe off to Alaska for her safety, inevitably leading to a grisly faceoff in the final act, with bad guys zooming across the landscape on snowmobiles.

Caro steers the star vehicle more than capably, even if she takes Misha Green, Andrea Berloff and Peter Craig’s silly script a tad too seriously, keeping the mood dark and ominous by sprinkling trippy tracks from artists like Massive Attack, Portishead and Grimes. The mother’s path into crime is too sketchily explained to be credible and her eventual exposure of the beating heart beneath her hardened armor will surprise no one. Likewise, the expediency and efficiency of her training course to equip Zoe with handy survival skills. A wary kinship between the mother and a majestic wolf, ferociously protective of her pups, hits like a symbolic anvil.

Still, I’ll take this JLo as “nobody fucks with me or my daughter” killing machine, discovering her long-hidden maternal instincts, over those grimly generic rom-coms she cranks out once a year, which might as well be direct-to-inflight movies. This action detour is at least an improvement over the 2015 howler, Lila & Eve , in which she and Viola Davis teamed up as vigilante moms.

There are other people in The Mother , but this project from Lopez’s Nuyorican Productions banner is so assiduously molded around its leading lady that they scarcely matter. Paez, in her first major role, makes a favorable impression, extending Caro’s interest in women taking charge of their own fates. Even Zoe’s adoptive mother (Yvonne Senat Jones) does all the talking, her husband relegated to the sidelines.

The guys, both good and bad, get the job done but mostly are hauled along in the star’s wake, with particularly inadequate use made of Bernal and Paul Raci as the mother’s old military buddy, keeping an eye out for her in Alaska. Nobody seems to have missed the memo that this is The JLo Show .

While an argument could be made for Hustlers as the rare recent exception, the days of Selena , Out of Sight and even Anaconda , before the star persona had completely taken hold and Lopez could still nestle into an actual character, are long gone, for better or worse.

Full credits

Thr newsletters.

Sign up for THR news straight to your inbox every day

More from The Hollywood Reporter

Blake lively’s brother-in-law bart johnson defends her following ‘it ends with us’ controversy, winona ryder became so famous at one point, it began to limit her opportunities: “there was baggage”, tim burton closes the door on ‘beetlejuice 3’, cites 36-year gap since first film: “i’ll be about 100”, kamala harris doc short from cnn’s bakari sellers to hit theaters just before election (exclusive), ‘kill the jockey’ review: a sportsman goes adrift in buenos aires in charming but slight picaresque, jt mollner pulls back the curtain on ‘strange darling’: i was never “trying to fool the audience”.

Sundance Film Review: ‘I Am Mother’

After a mass extinction, a robot raises a little girl in a handsome, if derivative sci-fi thriller that salutes its own parentage

By Amy Nicholson

Amy Nicholson

• ‘The Royal Hotel’ Review: Bad Times With the Barflies in Kitty Green’s Genre Take on Toxic Male Behavior 12 months ago
• ‘Sitting in Bars With Cake’ Review: A Lumpy Friendship Tale With a Bittersweet Bite 12 months ago
• ‘Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret’ Review: An Appealing but Edgeless Adaptation of a Coming-of-Age Classic 1 year ago

“ I Am Mother ” director Grant Sputore ‘s parentage is obvious: James Cameron crossbred with Ridley Scott. There are worse families to come from if you’re a young talent entering the world. Like Mother herself, an artificially intelligent robot who springs to life in an air-locked repopulation facility the day humanity goes extinct. Mother, voiced by Rose Byrne and ambulated by Luke Hawker, selects one thumb-size embryo among 63,000, pops it into a biomedical Instant Pot, and 24 hours later, Daughter (Clara Rugaard) is born — or rather, hatched.

The rest of the embryos stay iced, even after the girl becomes a teenager roaming the long hallways of Sputore and cinematographer Steven D. Annis’ stunning bunker: a steel warren with red, white, and blue lights arranged in tidy grids and lines. It’s lovely and lonely, even with Mother baking birthday cakes and teaching the girl origami, ethics, and ballet. How is an only child going to be fruitful and multiply? (Maybe Cain knows.) And is it ever going to be safe to go outside? Don’t second-guess Mother’s toxicity measurement skills — she takes doubts about her engineering personally.

Related Stories

2024 Live Music Business Is Driving Record Revenues, but Some Data Points Raise Concerns

Big Loud CEO Seth England to Be Honored by T.J. Martell Foundation; Morgan Wallen, Ernest, Hardy to Perform at Gala

Michael Lloyd Green’s Black List-ed script confines all of this setup’s perverse humor to the opening montage of Mother and Daughter’s mutual devotion. There’s a fun, quick shot of the child decorating her caretaker’s metal bones with stickers, but everything after is dead serious. Get past the iron joints and glowing third eye and Mother seems, well, human. She’s sensitive and overprotective and a tad peevish, a robot who speaks like a therapist and toggles through her built-in stereo to find out whether the infant prefers the soundtrack of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” or “Dumbo.” At night, Mother recharges for several hours, allowing the girl to scurry around the ship without supervision. Still, as young Daughter (Tahlia Sturzaker) graduates into a teen (Rugaard), their dynamic grows strained, in part because Mother is able to read faces and blood pressure. It’s hard to lie to a parental unit able to bleep, “I detect an increase in anxiety.”

Popular on Variety

Ironically, Daughter could stand to be more robotic. Though her only human role models are drawn from old episodes of “The Tonight Show,” Rugaard could slip unnoticed into any modern high school. We’re waiting for some sign of her unusual rearing, but Rugaard, an actress with potential, has been directed to be neat and luminous, a flawless teen dream who seems most flesh-and-blood when she moons over a sketch of a boy her own age. It’s puberty without the pimples.

This handsome film finds its pulse when a Woman ( Hilary Swank ) pounds on the bunker door screaming that she’s been shot. Swank is fully, messily mortal, a person vibrating with of all the fear and aggression that might have contributed to the apocalypse. The few things she tells Daughter about the outside world don’t match up with Mother’s data, laying the groundwork for a smash-’em-up conflict between man and machine, and the teenager caught in between.

If the film has one line of repeated code, it’s the question of who deserves trust. Feel free to cross-examine Sputore, as well, as the director drops hints early on that all is not what it seems. (Math whizzes may catch his early tip-off.) Yet, mostly “I Am Mother” is exactly what it seems: a good-looking allegory that postures like it’s wrestling with more ideas than it actually is. It springs from the same sci-fi family tree as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator dad flashing a dying thumbs-up, or the Mother computer that feigns to protect the crew of the Nostromo. Like Ridley Scott, who’s spent four decades parsing silicon versus hydrogen life, Sputore nods at Catholic symbology for gravitas. And like James Cameron, his image of the ultimate mom is a warrior in a bloody tank top. There’s even a moment in the bunker’s steam-hissing bowels where you could forget which Mother is supposed to pop out: the robot or the Alien Queen?

What really presses Sputore’s buttons is proving that he can make an expensive-looking flick for relative peanuts. If this were his job application for a blockbuster gig, he’d get the job. Though hopefully he and Green realize that the best sci-fi thrillers don’t just focus on solving the mystery of what happened — they explore what it all means. Sputore is clearly an intelligent life form. But as even his robot creator knows, “Mothers need to learn.”

Reviewed at Sundance Film Festival (Premieres), Jan. 25, 2019. Running time: 114 MIN.

• Production: (Australia) A Screen Australia, South Australian Film Corporation, Screenwest, Adelaide Film Festival presentation of a Penguin Empire, Southern Light Films production, in association with Rhea Films, Hercules Film Fund, Southern Light Alliance. (Int'l sales: Mister Smith, London.) Producers: Kelvin Munro, Timothy White. Co-producers: Anna Vincent, Michael Lloyd Green. Executive producers: Paris Kasidokostas-Latsis, Terry Dougas, Jean-Luc De Fanti, Grant Sputore, Bryce Menzies, Philip Wade, John Wade. Co-executive producers: Larry Hirsch, Matthew Hunter.
• Crew: Director: Grant Sputore. Screenwriter: Michael Lloyd Green. Camera (color): Steven D. Annis. Editor: Sean Lahiff. Music: Dan Luscombe.
• With: Clara Rugaard, Rose Byrne, Hilary Swank.

More from Variety

Cate Blanchett Sets London Stage Return With Chekhov’s ‘The Seagull’

Life After ‘Deadpool’: Summer Movies Resurrection Begs Rethink of Long-Term Box Office Outlook

Telluride Festival Lineup Includes ‘Nickel Boys,’ ‘The Piano Lesson’ and ‘Saturday Night’ With Tributes for Jacques Audiard and Saoirse Ronan

AI Content Licensing Deals With Publishers: Complete Updated Index

More from our brands, how to watch college football games online without cable.

Six Senses Are Suddenly Everywhere. Inside the Luxury Resort’s Growing Global Empire.

Headset Insurance: Aflac Can Duck Out of CU Deal If Deion Departs

The Best Loofahs and Body Scrubbers, According to Dermatologists

Knots Landing Is Streaming in Full for the Very First Time — Find Out Where

The Mother Reviews Are Here, And Critics Are Saying The Same Thing About Jennifer Lopez’s Netflix Action Movie

Just in time for Mother's Day.

Jennifer Lopez hit the big screen with two movies last year — the adorable rom-com Marry Me and then the romantic action flick Shotgun Wedding . This year it appears she’s leaving the romance to her personal life, with her new Netflix movie The Mother bringing straight action. JLo plays the titular character, a former assassin who comes out of retirement to protect her estranged daughter. The reviews are in, so let’s see if this is one you’ll be firing up with a bag of microwave popcorn for this Mother’s Day weekend.

Along with Jennifer Lopez , the cast of The Mother includes Lucy Paez in her first major role as daughter Zoe, and Joseph Fiennes and Gael Garcia Bernal as ex-boyfriends/arms dealers. The Hustlers actress was looking great in the first looks for the female-driven action movie, and the trailer promises we’ll get to see JLo kicking plenty of ass . Let’s get to the critics, starting with CinemaBlend’s review of The Mother . Our own Mike Reyes rates the movie just 2 stars out of 5, saying Lopez proves herself as an action lead, but the film never figures out how to mesh that with the emotional premise. He continues:  

Seeing as Jennifer Lopez is the mother that gives the film its title, the failure to build her character causes a collapse on shaky foundation on which this movie is built. The action is too tame to raise your heartrate, and the drama is so basic that you can almost always guess what the next line’s going to be. Predictability doesn’t always kill a movie, but if you don’t add a little bit more to the pot to really flavor what’s being served, the result isn’t going to taste good.

Courtney Howard of AV Club grades The Mother a C+, agreeing with the above review that Jennifer Lopez delivers with both her powerful punches and empowering emotions, but the film overall doesn’t examine, augment or challenge the genre’s familiar formulas. The review states: 

The film’s fabric experiences a few frays that lead to a sloppy unraveling. Around the midpoint, characters slowly stop behaving as humans, and behave more like puppets functioning on behalf of the story. It also suffers from a villain problem where both of the evil exes are barely one dimensional, neither oppressive nor genuinely menacing due to Fiennes’ and Bernal’s lack of meaty material. Screenwriter contrivances guide the second-to-third-act transition. The Mother’s considerable abilities begin to slip for baffling reasons that run counter to her established character—early on she can mend a bullet wound with superglue, but later she can’t stitch a bite wound.

Nadia Dalimonte of Next Best Picture rates the movie 6 out of 10, saying that while JLo brings a refreshing perspective on female perseverance, the film around her is flawed, with a screenplay that rushes storylines and action sequences that are edited so heavily they’re hard to follow. The critic says: 

The film reaches more interesting heights in its second half when it focuses on how the mother-daughter dynamic is shaped by Lopez’s character resurfacing in Zoe’s life. The screenplay gives the two characters a bit of time to communicate some of the things they had imagined wanting to say to each other. ... Despite the promise of the film’s second half and the entertainment value of watching Lopez fight through every imaginable obstacle to protect her daughter, the film feels unexplored to its full potential. Large gaps in the story leave more questions than answers, for instance, regarding why the threats posed to these characters operate on such relentless levels.

Owen Gleiberman of Variety calls The Mother “action filmmaking made basic,” but he seems to fall in line with the other critics when it comes to the leading actress, who Gleiberman says deserves better. In terms of JLo, he continues: 

She shoots, she stabs, she chops windpipes, she motorcycles down stone stairways in one of those chase-through-an-ancient-city action scenes (this one takes place in Havana), she tortures a man by punching him with a fist wrapped in barbed wire, she grimaces in muscle-torn agony but mostly looks frozen and implacable. Even more important, she puts her own spin on those familiar motions.

Peter Travers of GMA Culture says Jennifer Lopez (and all of the mothers out there) deserve better, given this movie’s dopey dialogue and nonsensical plot. The critic points out that watching JLo kick ass is absolutely the main draw, saying: 

It's hard to find any reason why these former lovers of Mother, whose taste in men needs a serious rethink, would raise armies to destroy her other than Lopez is a star and it's fun to watch director Niki Caro (Whale Rider, Mulan) set up this Latina powerhouse to mow down the bad guys like sitting ducks of macho ineptitude.

The critics overall seem disappointed in The Mother , but it sounds like Jennifer Lopez’s performance might make this worth watching anyway. The movie is available now for those with a Netflix subscription , so feel free to check it out for yourself! You can also take a look at our 2023 Movie Release Schedule to see what’s coming to theaters soon. 

CINEMABLEND NEWSLETTER

Your Daily Blend of Entertainment News

Heidi Venable is a Content Producer for CinemaBlend, a mom of two and a hard-core '90s kid. She started freelancing for CinemaBlend in 2020 and officially came on board in 2021. Her job entails writing news stories and TV reactions from some of her favorite prime-time shows like Grey's Anatomy and The Bachelor. She graduated from Louisiana Tech University with a degree in Journalism and worked in the newspaper industry for almost two decades in multiple roles including Sports Editor, Page Designer and Online Editor. Unprovoked, will quote Friends in any situation. Thrives on New Orleans Saints football, The West Wing and taco trucks.

Watching Steph Curry's Mr. Throwback Solidified My Belief That Peacock Really Has The Best Original Streaming Comedies

I'm Still Mad Sloane Was Missing From Umbrella Academy Season 4, But Happy Genesis Rodriguez Just Landed A Taylor Sheridan Show

‘It Was Not A Huge Shock For Me’: The Acolyte’s Amandla Stenberg Shares Her Thoughts On The Star Wars Show’s Cancellation

Most Popular

• 2 Could Manifest Still Get A Spinoff After Melissa Roxburgh Landed A New Show? The Creator Has An 828 Day Update
• 3 The Accountant 2 Star Shared An Exciting Update About The Ben Affleck-Led Sequel With Me, And I'm Getting Even More Pumped
• 4 I'm A Longtime Grey's Anatomy Fan Rewatching Early Episodes. The Major Season 2 Moments That Had Me Remembering How Epic This Show Used To Be
• 5 Turns Out The 007 Cast Is Missing James Bond Just As Much As We Are, And I Can Surely Raise A Martini To That

• Israel-Gaza War
• War in Ukraine
• US Election
• US & Canada
• UK Politics
• N. Ireland Politics
• Scotland Politics
• Wales Politics
• Latin America
• Middle East
• In Pictures
• Executive Lounge
• Technology of Business
• Women at the Helm
• Future of Business
• Science & Health
• Artificial Intelligence
• AI v the Mind
• Film & TV
• Art & Design
• Entertainment News
• Destinations
• Australia and Pacific
• Caribbean & Bermuda
• Central America
• North America
• South America
• World’s Table
• Culture & Experiences
• The SpeciaList
• Natural Wonders
• Weather & Science
• Climate Solutions
• Sustainable Business
• Green Living

Film review: Mother! is a ‘pretentious mess’

Jennifer Lawrence stars in the new film from Darren Aronofsky. It’s a ‘pretentious mess of a film,’ writes critic Caryn James.

Darren Aronofsky has had a lot to say about his psychological horror film Mother! and how the state of today’s world inspired him to write it. “From this primordial soup of angst and helplessness,” he has said, referring to a list of problems from the environment to the refugee crisis, “I woke up one morning and this movie poured out of me.”

Unfortunately, soup is also 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.

Jennifer Lawrence plays a young wife and Javier Bardem her husband, a famous poet suffering from writers’ block. The first bad sign is that none of the film’s characters have names, as if that will make them universal.

- Gary Oldman as you’ve never seen him

- Has Hollywood let Idris Elba down

The couple lives in a large isolated house, the kind that usually just exist in horror movies, and at the start Aronofsky expertly sets up how Mother! will play into genre conventions. Ed Harris arrives at the door, a typical mysterious stranger whom Lawrence, and the audience, distrusts. Why does her husband invite him to stay?

Soon Harris’ wife joins them. Michelle Pfeiffer briefly adds a jolt of humour, asking Lawrence intimate questions, creating chaos in the kitchen when she prepares spiked lemonade, having sex with Harris with the bedroom door open.

For a time Aronofsky skillfully unravels a narrative thread, creating suspense. The camera creeps around the house following Lawrence, sharing her confused perspective, as it does throughout the film.

But before long he starts loading on heavy-handed symbols and biblical allusions, and so many references to Rosemary’s Baby that Mother! begins to feel like a remake. 

The house had once burned to the ground, and Bardem salvaged from the ashes a crystalline stone that is some kind of artistic talisman. The home invasion plot ramps up, and among the unnamed new guests are two brothers. Think of them as Cain and Abel. Lawrence gets pregnant and stops swallowing whatever medicine she has been taking, something mysterious in an old-fashioned vial. And her husband, even more than the John Cassavetes character in Rosemary’s Baby, will sacrifice anything for his art. Even her.

Leading nowhere

It’s easy enough to start following Mother! on this crazed journey. But eventually the path has to lead somewhere. It doesn’t have to go anywhere believable or deliver standard horror or take viewers where they expect. It just has to go somewhere, anywhere.   

Instead, as it becomes more over-the-top, the film also becomes more pompous. The horror and religious references are handled without a hint of irony. Aronofsky loads on themes. The film is about fame and art. Gender issues emerge in the way Lawrence is willing to sacrifice everything to be Bardem’s muse and in the way he is willing to exploit her. A religious cult develops around Bardem the poet.

The film’s extended, climactic scene is meant to be a surprise. It’s enough to say that the episode evokes Hieronymus Bosch, is full of action and is essentially meaningless. It turns out the house is the Earth; we get it. The house is probably a mess of other things too. Aronofsky simplistically piles on allegorical possibilities, but none of them register enough to carry any weight.  

Aronofsky, who has made films as hallucinatory as Black Swan and as realistically gritty as The Wrestler, is an expert film-maker. The visual style of Mother! displays his expertise. The house had once burned to the ground, and a time-lapse sequence at the start shows it slowly regenerating, as if it were some organic creature.

His reliance on Lawrence’s perspective keeps viewers’ sympathy, even as the film walks a line between the dreamlike and the real. At times she puts her hand against a wall and what seems to be some kind of throbbing membrane appears. Blood seeps through the floorboards of the house. Is she delusional? Is she even real?

But in the end, while Lawrence delivers as sincere a performance as anyone could, her character is the film’s biggest problem. Black Swan mined psychological horror with an intensity and focus that earned its scenes of either magical realism or delusion.  In Mother! there is no sense that Lawrence’s character ever read a poem, much less a poem of her husband’s. The character is flat, which is not the same as universal or symbolic. She seems to represent pure self-sacrifice, but why? The only evidence on screen suggests it’s because Aronofsky declared her to be. Maybe there’s an allegory there in which the writer-director is God, but that would be another conversation entirely.

If you would like to comment on this story or anything else you have seen on BBC Culture, head over to our   Facebook   page or message us on   Twitter .

And if you liked this story,   sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter , called “If You Only Read 6 Things This Week”. A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Earth, Culture, Capital and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday.

Log in or sign up for Rotten Tomatoes

Trouble logging in?

By continuing, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes.

Email not verified

Let's keep in touch.

Sign up for the Rotten Tomatoes newsletter to get weekly updates on:

• Upcoming Movies and TV shows
• Rotten Tomatoes Podcast
• Media News + More

By clicking "Sign Me Up," you are agreeing to receive occasional emails and communications from Fandango Media (Fandango, Vudu, and Rotten Tomatoes) and consenting to Fandango's Privacy Policy and Terms and Policies . Please allow 10 business days for your account to reflect your preferences.

OK, got it!

• About Rotten Tomatoes®
• Login/signup

Movies in theaters

• Opening This Week
• Top Box Office
• Coming Soon to Theaters
• Certified Fresh Movies

Movies at Home

• Fandango at Home
• Prime Video
• Most Popular Streaming Movies
• What to Watch New

Certified fresh picks

• 74% Blink Twice Link to Blink Twice
• 96% Strange Darling Link to Strange Darling
• 85% Between the Temples Link to Between the Temples

New TV Tonight

• 96% Only Murders in the Building: Season 4
• 100% Terminator Zero: Season 1
• 92% The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Season 2
• 83% City of God: The Fight Rages On: Season 1
• 78% Kaos: Season 1
• -- Here Come the Irish: Season 1
• -- K-Pop Idols: Season 1
• -- Horror's Greatest: Season 1
• -- After Baywatch: Moment in the Sun: Season 1

Most Popular TV on RT

• 92% Bad Monkey: Season 1
• 100% Dark Winds: Season 2
• 78% Star Wars: The Acolyte: Season 1
• 100% Pachinko: Season 2
• 33% The Accident: Season 1
• 96% Industry: Season 3
• Best TV Shows
• Most Popular TV

Certified fresh pick

• 92% The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Season 2 Link to The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Season 2
• All-Time Lists
• Binge Guide
• Comics on TV
• Five Favorite Films
• Video Interviews
• Weekend Box Office
• Weekly Ketchup
• What to Watch

The Best Shows on Amazon Prime Video to Watch Right Now (August 2024)

100 Best Netflix Series To Watch Right Now (August 2024)

What to Watch: In Theaters and On Streaming

Awards Tour

TV Premiere Dates 2024

Your Full List of All Upcoming Marvel Movies — With Key Details!

• Trending on RT
• Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
• Rings of Power S2 First Reviews
• Venice Film Festival
• Fall Horror Movie Preview

Mother Reviews

"Mother" is a very hard film through its cruel realism, which could have been a great one with a few minor changes in the writing and the finale.

Full Review | Dec 20, 2020

Mother is a fascinating drama, gripping us until its brutal and ironic conclusion.

Full Review | Nov 6, 2020

In the title role...Masami Nagasawa gives us one of the great screen monsters of recent memory...a Japanese "Mommy Dearest."

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 4, 2020

Mother is the work of a visionary director, highlighting a broken, abusive family life.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 3, 2020

Whatever you may think of his title character, his film has the ring of emotional truth.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jul 6, 2020

• Action/Adventure
• Children's/Family
• Documentary/Reality
• Amazon Prime Video

More From Decider

New Shows & Movies To Watch This Weekend: 'Pachinko' on Apple TV+ and...

'Unfinished Beef': Netflix Reveals Hosts For Labor Day Hot Dog Showdown...

Andy Cohen Asks Brandi Glanville To Watch Him And Kate Chastain Have Sex...

Peacock Has Removed Raygun and the Entire Olympics Breaking Competition...

'WWHL': Bowen Yang Says One Terrible 'SNL' Host Once Made "Multiple Cast...

Peacock's Gary Coleman Doc Questions The Late Child Actor's "Suspicious"...

11 Best New Movies on Netflix: August 2024's Freshest Films to Watch

'Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles' Star Josh Flagg Gives Update On His...

Share this:.

• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
• Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
• Click to copy URL

Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Perfect Mother’ On Netflix, A French Thriller Where A Mom Finds Out A Lot About Her Daughter After She’s Accused Of Murder

Where to stream:.

• The Perfect Mother

Stream It Or Skip It: 'Represent' Season 2 On Netflix, Where Stephane Takes Over As France's Most Unlikely President Ever

Stream it or skip it: ‘the killer’ on peacock, john woo’s new take on his own film, now with nathalie emmanuel , stream it or skip it: 'hip - high intellectual potential' on hulu, about a rebellious mom with a high iq who helps the police with murder cases, stream it or skip it: 'the serpent queen' season 2 on starz, where catherine de’ medici schemes to hold onto power as her son matures as king.

TV viewers are generally not stupid. They know when they’re being manipulated by a story, or when writers are purposely teasing or holding back critical information that would unlock a large piece of a mystery. So we appreciate it when a thriller’s twists and turns come out more organically, like in the new French drama  The Perfect Mother .

THE PERFECT MOTHER : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A young woman walks down a Paris street. She pauses and takes a breath before she walks into a club with her friend.

The Gist: The night for Anya Berg (Eden Ducourant) seems to go well; she meets Damien (Charles Créhange) a guy she’s seen at university, and they go back to his place together. But interspersed in that are scenes of Anya traumatized. We then see pictures of Damien’s body, blood gushing out of it.

Anya’s family lives in Berlin. When her mother Hélène (Julie Gayet) gets a distressed call from Anya, saying the police are bringing her in for questioning about Damien’s murder, she hops a flight to Paris, telling her husband Matthias (Andreas Pietschmann) to stay behind with their son Lukas (Maxim Driesen) as he takes exams.

After trying to see Anya at the police station, Hélène goes to the office of Vincent Duc (Tomer Sisley), a former cop who is now a lawyer; they also used to be in a relationship before she left Paris for family reasons 25 years ago. He agrees to take Anya’s case; Hélène is adamant that Anya has nothing to do with Damien’s murder, and Anya’s story seems to back that up, as she claims Damien’s dealer came in and assaulted both of them.

But the more Vincent digs into the case, the more Anya’s story falls apart. Every time he finds out something that could give the cops a reason to look elsewhere, another piece of evidence pops up that further implicates Anya. For her part, Hélène finds out that Anya quit university months earlier and worked at a shelter for abused women, has been subletting her dorm to one of the women she met there and living out of her office at the shelter.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Even though  The Perfect Mother isn’t a Harlan Coben thriller, it reminds us of the group of Coben thrillers that have populated Netflix, like  Stay Close or  Gone For Good .

Our Take: Written by Thomas Boullé and Carol Noble,  The Perfect Mother (original title:  Une mère parfaite ) is a solid mystery that attempts to show how blind faith in anyone, even our own flesh and blood, isn’t always the right thing.

The way the first episode plays out is… well, we wouldn’t say it’s predictable, but the way Anya’s situation was first presented, with gaps and fragments, shows us that the story of her involvement in Damien’s death isn’t quite going to be the way she portrays it. Still, Ducourant does a good job of making Anya look like someone who was truly in the wrong place at the wrong time. But we also appreciated that the first episode revealed lies that Anya told the cops and Hélène that will start to shake the rock-solid belief in her daughter that Hélène has.

There are other elements that feel like they’re being purposely held back instead of just not being revealed due to the show’s storytelling structure. For instance, Lukas knows something about Anya that his parents don’t, something that’s relevant to the case, and when he tries to tell his dad about it, Matthias clumsily redirects the conversation. That was a maddening scene, mainly because it felt like a purposeful misdirect rather than something that comes up via Hélène and Vincent’s investigation or something equally natural.

We’re also not 100% sure where the backstory of why Hélène left Paris — and Vincent — a quarter century ago factors in here. She had a poor relationship with her mother, who didn’t even tell her that her father died until 10 days had passed, and she needed the distance for her mental health. Is this being revealed because she’s going to rekindle things with Vincent? Or is it just filler? The same goes with the seemingly complicated medical case in Berlin that Matthias is dealing with. They seem like extraneous details, but as the four-episode limited series goes on, they may become more relevant.

Sex and Skin: Damien and Anya start to have sex during Anya’s recounting of the murder, but they don’t get far before all hell breaks loose.

Parting Shot: In Anya’s office at the shelter, Hélène finds a picture of Anya with someone who resembles the “dealer” that may have entered Damien’s building from the building next door. How does Anya know this guy?

Sleeper Star: Sisley might be familiar to American audience via his role in  Don’t Look Up , but he also starred in the multi-season mystery series  Balthazar . He is a reassuring presence for Hélène here, but his police instincts will likely kick in as he finds out more of the truth about Anya.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Vincent and Hélène ask Anya’s friend Julia (Inès Spiridonov) about what Anya drank that night at the club, Julia angrily replies “Only smoothies,” then snarkily follows up with, “We were at a club. What do you expect?” Boy, that line could have been a whole lot more clever.

Will you stream or skip the French thriller #ThePerfectMother on @netflix ? #SISOI — Decider (@decider) June 5, 2022

Our Call: STREAM IT.  The Perfect Mother is a solid thriller that doesn’t try to trick its audiences with storytelling gymnastics.

Joel Keller ( @joelkeller ) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com , VanityFair.com , Fast Company and elsewhere.

• Stream It Or Skip It

Does 'Yellowstone' Return Tonight? 'Yellowstone's Season 5, Part 2 Premiere Date, Streaming Info, And More

Is The First 'Monday Night Football' Game On Tonight? Where To Stream NFL Games On Monday Nights This Season

Hawk Tuah Girl Tells 'Summer House' Star West Wilson She's Trying To "Step Away" From Her Infamous Nickname

Gary Coleman's Friends "Appalled" By Ex-Wife's 911 Call For His Fatal Fall in 'Gary' Doc: "She Didn't Help Him"

R.I.P. Julian Ortega: 'Elite' Actor Dead At 41 After Suddenly Collapsing On The Beach 

'The Bachelorette' Season 21, Episode 8 Recap: Who Went Home After Fantasy Suites?

I Am Mother

Frustrating but engrossing, and impossible to critique in-depth without spoilers because it’s driven by regular plot twists, “I Am Mother” adds another memorable creation to an already packed gallery of intelligent science fiction robots that are as complex as most humans. This review discusses the entire plot in detail , so you’d best bail out now if you haven’t seen it, with the assurance that it’s worth having an opinion on.

The title character is a humanoid robot with artificial intelligence who lives in a high-tech underground research facility, tending embryos and raising one that she activated and nurtured. This aluminum lady is voiced by Rose Byrne , embodied by Luke Hawker , and rendered by Weta Digital , in a collaborative performance as fully realized any you’ve seen. The robot’s heavy-footed yet graceful motions evoke RoboCop when she’s clomping around, and the T-1000 from “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” when she’s sprinting. 

But as physically imposing as she is, Mother would be nothing without her child (Clara Ruugard), whom she raised from an embryo and addresses as Daughter. Their fraught central relationship elevates “I Am Mother” beyond mere proficiency and makes it memorable, despite a lingering feeling that the filmmakers never quite figured out how to capitalize on their morally and philosophically rich premise, and settled instead for the superficial, cliff-hanging pleasures of “And then this happened…”

The most frustrating thing about “I Am Mother” is the way it favors the unveiling of plot twists over nearly everything else, including characterization, theme, and the related pleasures of world-building. In retrospect, the entire production feels misshapen. It spends more time assuring us of the benevolent relationship between Mother and Daughter than the movie needed, considering that no robot with the body of a combat droid, the voice of Nurse Ratched from “ One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest ,” and a single, unblinking, HAL-9000-style eye is going to turn out to be entirely loving and harmless. The movie also needlessly delays the arrival of the movie’s second, rival “mother” figure (Hilary Swank’s character), mostly fails to develop the idea of her as a plausible rival for the daughter’s affections, then effectively waves away what little we were given by implying that she was an early version of Daughter and part of some kind of sinister grand plan. 

No sooner are we out of the shelter than Daughter goes back home for some good old-fashioned matricide, and throughout the film’s second half, you sometimes get the feeling that the moviemakers are using intimate, intense scenes of suspense and violence to run out the clock and make a movie that’s built around just three characters feel “bigger” and more “cinematic.” (Alex Garland’s “ Ex Machina ,” which likewise had a small cast and was set mainly at a research facility, is a superior example of the same kind of movie, building to a peak of savagery that it absolutely earns, and tying every violent action to the psychology of its characters.)

Pixar fans will raise an appreciative eyebrow at the compressed opening montage, prankishly scored to a cover of “Baby Mine” from “ Dumbo ” and nodding to both the tearjerking opening montage of “ Up ” and the wordless first act of “ Wall-E ” (a harmonic convergence of Disney references). The latter is also set some time after an ecological catastrophe that wiped out humankind, although we get incomplete information here as to whether robots actively caused the death of civilization or just ran rampant in the aftermath. The Swank character’s account of robots torturing babies is more disturbing than many sequences where violence is actually shown, and it prepares us for the moment when Mother backs her against a wall and sticks a metal finger in her wound. 

That being said, the latter is one of many moments that don’t make a lot of sense once you get to the film’s powerful and cryptic ending. If Swank’s visitor was being permitted to live the whole time because she’s part of a larger cycle or plan involving the extinction and repopulation of the planet—and in fact has been left alone all these years for precisely that reason—then why was it necessary to torture her in order to learn the whereabouts of the other humans she mentioned to Daughter?  

These and other questions might not loom so large in the viewer’s mind if “I Am Mother” had fully delivered on the promise of its setup. If it weren’t so concerned with flipping the plot upside-down every 15 minutes (in the manner of a Netflix series, hmmm) the movie might’ve evolved into an unsettling meditation on artificial intelligence, and the legitimacy of simulated or manufactured feelings. It asks questions that science fiction has been posing for generations now, and that are regularly in the news in this era of increasingly sophisticated AI. If a robot is programmed to feel, and experiences a mother’s positive feelings of investment and identification, as well as negative feelings like petty jealousy, rejection and rage, then who’s to say that those feelings are “fake”—especially if they lead to actions as inevitably as a human’s would? 

The movie regularly complicates our feelings about Mother’s menacing and controlling behavior by confirming that she truly does feel maternal emotions for Daughter. That these feelings are probably closer on the movie moms spectrum to “ Mommie Dearest ” or “The Manchurian Candidate” than “ Almost Famous ” or “ Terms of Endearment ” doesn’t diminish their legitimacy. This blocky droid really does think she knows what’s best for her children, even if her logic makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up.

Directed by Grant Sputore and written by Michael Lloyd Green, “I Am Mother” is based (loosely, it appears) on the The Search for WondLa , the first in a trilogy of young adult science fiction novels by Tony DiTerlizzi . It seems as if it is positioning itself as the opening chapter in a series of movies, and it takes care to point out that all three of its major characters are alive at the end, and in no rush to die off. 

But is “I Am Mother” really commercial franchise material? There are many moments where it seems to embrace that tendency, but just as many where it seems determined to undermine it. The most obvious example of the latter is the ending. Although it’s guaranteed to prompt cries of “I wasted two hours of my life for this?”—people tend to reject any ending where good doesn’t obviously win—it’s the best thing about the movie, the thing that makes it more than a smashing portfolio of production design or a collection of things that happen. It’s an unusually realistic assessment of the endlessly replicating cycles of abuse that have been a common thread through human history (it seems Daughter isn’t the first daughter that Mother has messed up). It also acknowledges the relative impossibility of humans defeating a super-strong, super-intelligent robot army that they themselves created.  

The script’s cleverest twist is making us think we’re seeing yet another story where killing the leader of a malevolent force deactivates or neutralizes all of their minions as well (a video game cliche, deployed in everything from “The Phantom Menace” to “Game of Thrones”), only to assure us in the very next scene that Mother is a hydra with a seemingly infinite number of heads, just as she told Daughter. 

And what are we to make of that final closeup of Daughter’s face? I took it to mean that she’s a chip off the old aluminum block: this is a Frankenstein story wherein the monster (Mother) became a creator herself (breeding humans from embryos, in a eugenics operation). Now the creature’s “daughter” contemplates activating the embryos herself, possibly becoming the matriarchal leader of her very own nation-state—one that might be capable of opposing the robots that once tormented her kind.

That’s all just a guess, of course—the way the movie sets up and pays off its last ten minutes seems an invitation to speculate and project, which is what real science fiction (as opposed to science-fiction-flavored action or horror) does best. I’ll be thinking about the substance of this movie, and the dissonant and strangely melancholy notes that it leaves us with, long after the particulars of its plot have faded from my memory.

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor-at-Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

• Hilary Swank as Woman
• Clara Rugaard-Larsen as Daughter
• Luke Hawker as Mother
• Rose Byrne as Mother (voice)
• Antony Partos
• Dan Luscombe
• Grant Sputore

Writer (story by)

• Michael Lloyd Green
• Sean Lahiff

Cinematographer

• Steve Annis

Leave a comment

Now playing.

Across the River and Into the Trees

The Deliverance

You Gotta Believe

The Becomers

The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat

Between the Temples

Blink Twice

Latest articles

Venice Film Festival 2024: Separated, Maria, Kill the Jockey, One to One: John & Yoko

Experience the Star Trek Movies in 70mm at Out of this World L.A. Event

Home Entertainment Guide: August 2024

Netflix’s “Terminator Zero” Takes Too Long to Develop Its Own Identity

The best movie reviews, in your inbox.

• Today's news
• Reviews and deals
• Climate change
• 2024 election
• Newsletters
• Fall allergies
• Health news
• Mental health
• Sexual health
• Family health
• So mini ways
• Unapologetically
• Buying guides

Entertainment

• How to Watch
• My watchlist
• Stock market
• Biden economy
• Personal finance
• Stocks: most active
• Stocks: gainers
• Stocks: losers
• Trending tickers
• World indices
• US Treasury bonds
• Top mutual funds
• Highest open interest
• Highest implied volatility
• Currency converter
• Basic materials
• Communication services
• Consumer cyclical
• Consumer defensive
• Financial services
• Industrials
• Real estate
• Mutual funds
• Credit cards
• Balance transfer cards
• Cash back cards
• Rewards cards
• Travel cards
• Online checking
• High-yield savings
• Money market
• Home equity loan
• Personal loans
• Student loans
• Options pit
• Fantasy football
• Pro Pick 'Em
• College Pick 'Em
• Fantasy baseball
• Fantasy hockey
• Fantasy basketball
• Download the app
• Daily fantasy
• Scores and schedules
• GameChannel
• World Baseball Classic
• Premier League
• CONCACAF League
• Champions League
• Motorsports
• Horse racing

New on Yahoo

• Your privacy controls
• WA Consumer Health Privacy Policy

7 Netflix movies to watch now that are 90% or higher on Rotten Tomatoes

When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.

Movie libraries on the best streaming services are constantly in flux with new titles coming and going. Which makes the task of narrowing down what to watch all the more tricky.

That's why here at Tom's Guide we're highlighting the best of the best, rounding up only movies that have scored 90% or higher on the review aggregate site  Rotten Tomatoes to recommend for your next movie night. Granted, a high critics score doesn't guarantee a hit (as everyone's tastes are different, after all), but it's as good a place to start as any for figuring out what to watch next.

So, if you’re looking for something new to watch on Netflix, here are the seven movies I think you should add to your watchlist. This list includes a poignant and claustrophobic drama starring Brie Larson, a psychological horror that'll haunt you long after the credits roll, and one of the best Godzilla movies of all time.

'Pearl' (2022)

The middle chapter of Ti West's X trilogy, "Pearl" is a fantastic psychological horror film that stands strong on its own. Mia Goth gives a career-defining performance as Pearl, a young woman dreaming of Hollywood stardom while, in reality, she is stuck on the family farm as her husband fights in WWI, feeling suffocated by her overbearing mother (Tandi Wright).

When Pearl's wealthy sister-in-law mentions a local troupe will be auditioning dancers for a traveling show, Pearl is convinced it's her chance to escape. But as things start to fall apart and her dreams of fame slip through her fingers, let's just say she doesn't take rejection well—at all . This unsettling psychological horror film owes much of its impact to Goth's exceptional lead performance, highlighted by a gripping and haunting monologue that truly showcases her talent.

Genre: Horror Starring: Mia Goth, David Corenswet, Tandi Wright, Matthew Sunderland, Emma Jenkins-Purro, and Alistair Sewell Rotten Tomatoes score: 92% Watch now on Netflix

'Room' (2015)

If you haven't yet seen the heartwrenching drama that earned Brie Larson her first Oscar, this is not one to miss. In "Room," she stars as Joy, a woman kidnapped in her teens who has been confined to a tiny shed with her five-year-old son Jack (Jacob Tremblay), the product of rape at the hands of her captor.

For Jack, the shed, which he refers to as "Room," is his entire world. But if the duo is to escape, Joy must find a way to teach him about the outside world and, more importantly, how to flag down help to set them free. While “Room” is no doubt an emotional watch (be sure to grab some tissues, because you'll need them), it also showcases the resilience of the human spirit and the on-screen love between a mother and son is seriously touching.

Genre: Drama Starring: Brie Larson, Jacob Tremblay, Joan Allen, Sean Bridgers, Tom McCamus, and William H. Macy Rotten Tomatoes score: 93% Watch now on Netflix

'Godzilla Minus One' (2023)

As someone who was  blown away by "Godzilla Minus one in theaters  (I never thought a Godzilla movie would leave me a blubbering mess), I've been singing this movie's praises for a long time now. It showcases the original titan's brilliance wrapped up in a heart-wrenching yet profoundly hopeful message about humanity that leaves a lasting impact.

Written and directed by acclaimed CG animator and VFX artist Takashi Yamazaki, "Godzilla Minus One" starts during the final days of World War II following the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Enter Kōichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki), a kamikaze pilot who's torn about fulfilling his mission and takes a detour to Odo Island. He has no way of knowing Japan's surrender is already in motion. But after a fateful encounter with a reptilian behemoth that emerges from the sea, unleashing chaos and destruction, he must now face a new and terrifying reality...and decide what's worth dying for.

Genre: Sci-fi, drama Starring: Ryunosuke Kamiki, Minami Hamabe, Yuki Yamada, Munetaka Aoki, Hidetaka Yoshioka, Sakura Ando, and Kuranosuke Sasaki Rotten Tomatoes score: 98% Watch now on Netflix

'Hit Man' (2023)

My colleague Rory called director Richard Linklater's sexy, nihilistic comedy "Hit Man" one of Netflix's strongest original movies in years , and I'm inclined to agree. It boasts an impressive 95% score on  Rotten Tomatoes  with critics praising it as a genre-blending thrill ride that solidifies Glen Powell's status as one of Hollywood’s biggest rising stars.

A mix between a light-hearted crime caper and a rom-com, "Hit Man" stars Powell as Gary Johnson, a strait-laced professor who moonlights as a fake hitman for the police. Disguised in a variety of elaborate costumes, he convinces potential clients that he's a ruthless assassin, just before the police step in to arrest them a la "To Catch a Predator." However, when a femme fatale (Adria Arjona) hires him to eliminate her abusive husband, Gary breaks protocol. To keep his true identity hidden from her, he embarks on a risky game of deception, setting off a chain of events that lead to increasingly dangerous consequences.

Genre: Romantic comedy, action Starring: Glen Powell, Adria Arjona, Austin Amelio, Retta, and Sanjay Rao Rotten Tomatoes score: 95% Watch now on Netflix

'Crazy Rich Asians' (2018)

Who doesn't love a little escapsim into the lives of the super-rich every now and then? Adapted from Kevin Kwan’s novel of the same name, "Crazy Rich Asians" stars Constance Wu as Rachel Chu, an NYU professor whose boyfriend Nick (Henry Goulding) turns out to be (you guessed it) crazy rich.

She only learns this after the couple is already on their way to Singapore for Nick's friend's wedding. Meeting your partner's family is nerve-wracking enough, but Rachel reaches new levels of stress when as everyone — including Nick's mother, Eleanor (Michelle Yeoh) — is looking down at her. Both hilarious and gorgeous, "Crazy Rich Asians" is one of the easiest movies to watch on this list. The supporting cast is also amazing, particularly Awkwafina as Rachel’s de facto high-society instructor and Nico Santos as the self-proclaimed rainbow sheep of the family.

Genre: Romantic comedy Starring: Constance Wu, Henry Golding, Gemma Chan, Lisa Lu, Awkwafina, Ken Jeong, and Michelle Yeoh Rotten Tomatoes score: 91% Watch now on Netflix

'Nimona' (2023)

"Nimona" is one of the best animated movies in years, melding a heartfelt story about acceptance and found family with the gorgeous visuals of the  Spider-Verse series. It's one of my favorites on this list as someone who grew up reading the Nimona comics from ND Stevenson that the movie's based on.

Set in a medieval futuristic kingdom, it follows the up-and-coming knight Ballister (Riz Ahmed), an underdog who, during what's supposed to be his greatest moment, gets framed for murder and must go into hiding. As he scrambles to try to clear his name, he's less than thrilled to catch the attention of Nimona (Chloë Grace Moretz), a shape-shifting outcast who declares herself his sidekick. To save the day, Ballister must team up with the very monster he's sworn to destroy — and try to keep her bloodlust in check in the meantime.

Genre: Action, Kids & Family Starring: Chloë Grace Moretz, Riz Ahmed, Eugene Lee Yang, and Frances Conroy Rotten Tomatoes score: 92% Watch now on Netflix

'His House' (2020)

"His House" is my de facto recommendation for non-horror fans looking to get into the genre. It's packed with psychologically terrifying moments that are sure to haunt you long after the credits roll, and it holds the honor of being the only entry on this list to earn a rare 100% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes.

"His House" follows Bol (Sope Dirisu) and Rial (Wunmi Mosaku), a young refugee couple fleeing war-torn South Sudan and trying their best to put down roots in a small English town. Facing hostility and racism in their new community, the couple struggles to adjust. But the biggest strain on their relationship is the mysterious malevolent force haunting their house that seems connected to their traumatic past. Though Rial pleads for them to move, Bol worries that making too many waves could get them deported, and so the two are stuck facing the horrors on their own.

Genre: Horror Starring: Wunmi Mosaku, Sope Dirisu, and Matt Smith Rotten Tomatoes score: 100% Watch now on Netflix

More from Tom's Guide

5 best Netflix movies to watch right now before they leave this month

Netflix top 10 movies — here are the 3 worth watching right now

This new to Netflix movie has a rare 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes — and it deserves every percent

• Login / Sign Up

Netflix’s The Mother misses a clear chance to make Jennifer Lopez an action star

Mulan and The Whale Rider director Niki Caro forgets what J.Lo does best

If you buy something from a Polygon link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement.

by Pete Volk

Ask any great screen fighter, and they’ll tell you: Movie fighting is much more like dancing than like real fighting. Bruce Lee was famously a champion cha-cha dancer, Patrick Swayze successfully transitioned from dancer to action star, and scores of movies from India have shown how terrific dancers make for terrific screen fighters.

That’s the opportunity director Niki Caro ( The Whale Rider , Disney’s live-action Mulan ) has with Netflix’s The Mother , a dark action thriller starring Jennifer Lopez as a nameless assassin thrust back into action to protect the daughter she gave up at birth. Lopez is a singular talent who has excelled in the crime genre with Out of Sight and Hustlers. She’s an enjoyable comedic actor, and she’s particularly strong as a dancer, coming up as a Fly Girl on In Living Color before hitting global superstardom through her dance-centric music videos.

Unfortunately, neither of those skills gets much use in The Mother , which doesn’t give her much to work with. The plot and her character are darkly serious, and the most exciting action sequences involve long-range gun fights and vehicle chase scenes. The few hand-to-hand combat sequences are edited beyond recognition, robbing viewers of any chance to follow the action or appreciate the work Lopez put in for this role.

“She had to learn how to fight, and she’s really good,” second unit director Jeff Habberstad said in a behind-the-scenes video about her training for the role. “Dance and choreography background makes it so she’s just real coordinated.”

The Mother opens at an FBI safe house, where Lopez’s very pregnant character (credited only as “The Mother”) is acting as an informant, with agents interviewing her about a pair of dangerous arms dealers. The interview ends badly, with a hard-to-parse fight scene (thanks to Netflix’s compression and some dark lighting ) that leaves her isolated, unfairly on the outs with the FBI, and forced to leave her new daughter behind. (Just saying this sequence strains credulity would be an understatement.) She makes a deal on the side with FBI agent Cruise (Omari Hardwick), who will watch her daughter and contact her if anything goes wrong. Twelve years later, she’s moved to Alaska, and gets the message that something indeed has gone wrong.

The movie’s entire setup is a series of thinly drawn characters and conflicts. In The Mother , people recite the title character’s biography to her in order to build her legend, rather than letting us see it and believe it for ourselves, or having characters tell each other about her, as if she were a spooky story (a tactic used in John Wick , and, more recently, Sisu ). Bad guys illustrate that they’re evil by pushing down nuns in the street. Gael García Bernal plays a cartoonishly villainous arms dealer who says things like “You sold your soul to the devil, how do you look so good?” — which sounds like fun, but instead plays out as another rote bad guy who sexually menaces the protagonist with a series of played-out aggressive pickup lines, like some sort of perverted wind-up doll.

The most interesting part about The Mother is the relationship between The Mother and her estranged daughter Zoe (Lucy Paez). A small portion of the movie is spent with the two of them together, as The Mother teaches Zoe to drive, shoot, and fend for herself in the Alaska wilderness. The two of them getting to know each other and forging a connection through circumstance is the best narrative thread in The Mother , but Caro speeds through it quickly. It’s shocking when The Mother at one point refers to the “months” they’ve spent together — it feels like a week, maximum.

Some of the action beats do work better than others. A sniping scene outside a villa sees The Mother picking off guards from far away, allowing for some creative blocking and framing as the bodies drop one by one. Some later sequences in snowy Alaska at least look nicer than the poorly lit interiors from the first half, and are more exciting, including an explosive snowmobile chase and shootout. There’s also a funny gag where The Mother hits a guy with her car as a nearby wedding party does the bouquet toss, and the edit matches his flight through the air with the bouquet’s similar arc.

But Caro and editor David Coulson even undercut those moments with bizarre cuts that pull the story’s punches. In one scene, The Mother is brutally interrogating a gangster, hitting him repeatedly in the face while asking questions. She actually has barbed wire around her fist, which Caro only shows after The Mother is done punching him, rather than building anticipation for the brutality by showing her wrapping her fists with it. Then The Mother waterboards him, which gets her the information she needs within seconds, because apparently we’re in the 2000s again.

The Mother is the second straight-to-streaming Jennifer Lopez action movie this year, following the Prime Video action comedy Shotgun Wedding . While The Mother goes for more emotional depth, Shotgun Wedding at least recognized Lopez’s central talents and used them, giving her an opportunity to flex her comedic chops as well as her movement skills. The end result for Netflix is a missed opportunity to redefine a generational star as a bona fide action hero.

The Mother is streaming on Netflix now.

• Entertainment

Most Popular

• The 5 best Korean dramas to watch on Netflix this fall
• The best piece of tech I’ve bought in years is this funky little e-reader
• Civilization 7 is making bold changes to a familiar formula
• World of Warcraft might finally have nailed solo dungeons with Delves
• Pre-order The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom for just $35 from QVC

Patch Notes

The best of Polygon in your inbox, every Friday.

This is the title for the native ad

More in Reviews

The Latest ⚡️

Movies With A 0% Rotten Tomatoes Score That Are Actually Worth Watching

Years ago, in the 1980s or '90s, there was never really a critical consensus around the quality of a movie, unless you paid attention to the stars awarded to films in the TV Guide listings. But fast-forward to 2024, and review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes has just redefined the way we judge films. The site, founded in 1998, sought to bring together movie reviews from scores of critics so moviegoers could get an idea of how reviewers collectively felt about a film, rather than just one well-known critic like Roger Ebert, Peter Travers, or Leonard Maltin.

While it's rare for a movie to receive a perfect 100% Rotten Tomatoes score , there are more movies on the other end of the spectrum than you might think. But can we really give Rotten Tomatoes that much sway? Are movies with a 0% really unwatchable — or have they simply fallen victim to the nature of the aggregating system? That system means that reviews are counted as only "good" or "bad," so even a 2.5-star review might bring down a movie's score. There is no middle ground.

Well, we've sorted out the critical reviews, looked over audience scores, and carefully considered every one of those unlucky losers. While few would ever consider these movies great, we've found quite a few movies with a 0% score on Rotten Tomatoes that are actually worth watching.

Simon Sez is a schlock action masterpiece

If you refuse to turn off your brain to enjoy a silly action movie, that's on you. And there are few sillier than the 1999 schlock masterpiece "Simon Sez." Yes, we use the term "masterpiece" half-sarcastically, because when it comes to this grade of goofy, over-the-top action movie, "Simon Sez" hits the nail on the head — starting with its gimmicky star, controversial NBA great Dennis Rodman.

In the film, Rodman plays smooth-talking, wild-mannered Interpol agent Simon who, with the help of his old friend Nick (Dane Cook), is on a mission to take down a dangerous weapons dealer (Jérôme Pradon). Nick's boss's daughter (Natalia Cigliuti) has been kidnapped, too, of course, because Action Movie Plot, and don't you know it, the two situations are connected. Martial arts fans will appreciate the choreography and stunt direction of Hong Kong stuntman Xin Xin Xiong, while for everyone else, Rodman's involvement makes the whole endeavor worthwhile.

Channeling equal parts Wesley Snipes and — perhaps inadvertently — Robin Williams, Rodman can't match the chops of either but is worth watching for the novelty alone. Sure, the movie makes plenty of nonsensical choices (like casting Rodman as an Interpol agent in the first place), but that's kind of the fun. As a "so-bad-its-good" B-movie, "Simon Sez" will only disappoint if you take it seriously.

The Ridiculous 6 is Adam Sandler as usual

There was surprise all over Hollywood and beyond when it was announced that Adam Sandler had signed a four-picture deal with Netflix in 2014 — a deal that was re-upped six years later for another $275 million dollars. As part of that first deal came "The Ridiculous 6," a slapstick Western with a plot that doesn't matter because it's all about Sandler's ridiculous schtick. Arriving with great fanfare, the movie was a huge hit for Netflix despite its 0% score on Rotten Tomatoes , breaking records on the streaming platform.

While critics rightly called out Sandler's foray into the Wild West as unimaginative and lazy, we have to ask: What did they think they were watching? This is, after all, an Adam Sandler movie — it's not a Spike Lee joint or anything — it never aspires to be anything other than a low-brow comedy, just like every Sandler film before it. Is it anything close to Sandler's previous movies? No. Is it often cringeworthy and offensive, and sometimes downright bad? Yes.

Nevertheless, if you've enjoyed Sandler before, whether on "SNL" or in favorites like "Billy Madison" and "Happy Gilmore," you'll still get at least a few good laughs out of this one. Low-hanging fruit and childish vulgarity have always been Sandler's bread and butter, so maybe the professionals should just relax a bit and let everyone else have a chuckle.

Gotti isn't worth all the hate

Gangster movies have been popular since "The Godfather," but true crime stories are all the rage these days, so when it was announced that John Travolta was to star in a dark biopic of ruthless real-life criminal kingpin John Gotti, it probably perked up a few ears. It didn't have a high-profile director, nor the kind of dazzling supporting cast that a Martin Scorsese film might get, but it was still an intriguing project ... and it didn't deliver.

Professional reviewers raked "Gotti" over the coals, with Glenn Kenny of The New York Times calling it a "dismal mess." Nevertheless, while we'll concede it's not very good, it's also not worthless, and John Travolta is a notable reason why. No, we're not contending that the "Pulp Fiction" star gives an Oscar-worthy performance, but it is an interesting one at least, one that fans of the actor will probably get a kick out of. Even Kenny praised the actor's charismatic performance and accurate depiction of the mobster.

If you're looking for a Michael Mann-esque crime thriller, though, you'll be sorely disappointed, and it could be that expectation that killed "Gotti" with critics. Brutally mediocre at its best, you might enjoy "Gotti" for a look at Travolta outside his modern low-budget direct-to-video comfort zone. It may not be one of the best underrated gangster movies , but the hate it gets is definitely overboard.

Wagons East was one of John Candy's last movies

It might seem overkill to put a second Western comedy on our list, but trust us — this one belongs as much as "The Ridiculous 6." This time we're talking about 1994's "Wagons East," starring John Candy, Richard Lewis, and John C. McGinley. The film follows some misfits in the Wild West who hire a hard-drinking rabble-rouser (Candy) to help take them on a wagon train back home to the East Coast.

First off, critics aren't necessarily wrong to call the movie a "witless, toothless satire" as the Rotten Tomatoes consensus states. It doesn't do nearly enough to effectively lampoon the Western genre — Sandler honestly does a better job — but the movie hardly deserves a zero. Candy and Lewis are delightful, even if the laughs can't match either of their best work. But what makes the film more watchable today than even a few years ago is, in fact, the presence of those two stars who have since left us. 

Candy tragically died a year before the release of the film, and while it wasn't the last of his movies to see a release it was the last movie he filmed. And with Richard Lewis' passing in 2024, the film takes on an even more poignant tone. It's is a time capsule of their careers, particularly for Candy, and even when it's not funny, it's nice to see them both trying their best to make us laugh.

Problem Child is a silly guilty pleasure

Possibly the biggest and goofiest guilty pleasure on this list, it would be a stretch for even the least discerning movie fan to claim "Problem Child" is a good movie. But when it comes to kids' movies in the '80s, it might actually be one of the most underappreciated of its stripe. Starring John Ritter and Amy Yasbeck (who married about a decade later), the film follows a pair of parents whose adopted son (Michael Oliver) is more than just a troublemaker — he's a proverbial demon child whose only mission seems to be making his parents' lives a living hell.

A dark comedy that works for all ages, it's definitely not the sharply written social satire that critics might have wanted it to be, but it never really pretends to be either. The film revels in its ridiculousness and boasts a sterling supporting cast: Gilbert Gottfried plays an uptight adoption agent while Michael Richards is at the top of his game as an escaped crook.

Rotten Tomatoes called it "juvenile" and "mean-spirited," but that's all by design as a twisted black comedy. Ritter is genuinely funny as usual, and the timing and chemistry between he and Yasbeck are worth watching for. Ritter's skill at playing a frustrated, overworked, and underappreciated everyman is on full display, too. If you think we're crazy for recommending it, consider it was popular enough to get two sequels, so clearly lots of people were enjoying it.

Cabin Fever (2016) is better as an academic exercise than a film

If you're wondering why an awful remake of a mediocre horror movie makes our list, hear us out. Because this is one of the few we won't defend as some sort of guilty pleasure. After all, there's already a better version available, the 2002 original from director Eli Roth, which boasts a strong 62% on Rotten Tomatoes . No, it's everything surrounding the film that makes the 2016 remake worth seeing.

Sure, you may get some legitimate enjoyment out of the film here and there, but that's not why we're recommending a watch. Its appeal is comparable to Gus Van Sant's "Psycho" remake. For starters, it's fascinating to watch as an exercise in filmmaking: The "Cabin Fever" remake isn't just a do-over for the studio — Eli Roth actually returned as an executive producer and co-writer to remake his own movie, something incredibly rare in Hollywood.

The chance to see the changes Roth made to his own story — not to mention the alternate choices the production makes in cinematography, camerawork, and even casting — are fascinating if not instructive. No, we're not recommending you sit down with a bucket of popcorn for a fun night watching the 2016 version of "Cabin Fever," but if you love filmmaking, there's plenty about it to keep you watching.

Staying Alive still boogies hard

You might be surprised to learn just how many movies that John Travolta with a 0% Rotten Tomatoes score . It might not look good for him, but at the very least it gives us more opportunities to find Travolta movies for this list. And we found another one: "Staying Alive," the much-maligned 1983 sequel to "Saturday Night Fever."

"Saturday Night Fever," a beloved hit with an 82% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes , was praised for its strong script, heartfelt drama, and Travolta's career-defining performance. "Staying Alive," by contrast, was mocked for focusing too much on all the songs and dance numbers and forgetting that it was the character drama that made its predecessor one of the best movies of the decade. Still, just because "Staying Alive" isn't as good as the original doesn't mean its not good. Because at times it's even better than good, and partly due to the stylish — if unpolished — direction of Sylvester Stallone.

Watching with a fresh set of eyes reveals that, just maybe, critics wanted it to be its predecessor a little too much when it's really a very different kind of movie. Yes, it's a direct sequel and spends lots of time on theatrical musical numbers. But through those numbers, we explore Tony Morano's (Travolta) character, his hopes and dreams, and ultimately his self-acceptance, and that's not to mention how good those musical numbers are.

Return to the Blue Lagoon is about as good as the original

A sequel to the 1980 classic "The Blue Lagoon" starring a young Brooke Shields, "Return to the Blue Lagoon" followed its predecessor 11 years later. The original wasn't very good, so it probably wasn't a surprise that "Return" was also met with bad reviews. Still, it's 0% seems excessive, and like many movies on this list, it's at least worth watching for its star: In this case, a young Milla Jovovich.

Just 15 when she was cast, Jovovich supplants Shields in the role of island castaway, this time as Lilli Hargrave, who becomes marooned with Paddy, the baby from the first movie now all grown up. Make no mistake, "Return to the Blue Lagoon" is slow-moving and tiresome, and the romantic drama will barely get you to the center of your seat let alone the edge. But seeing Jovovich in just her second big screen outing — her first as a lead — is at least something to watch. Despite earning her a Golden Rasberry nomination, her performance has enough innocence and effervescence to give a glimpse of both her eventual star power and her limited range.

Highlander II: The Quickening is as ambitious as it is cheesy

The first "Highlander" successfully blends sci-fi, fantasy, and thriller with a hard-boiled crime story about an immortal warrior (Christopher Lambert) who is being hunted by others of his kind. A rare box office bomb that still got a sequel , "Highlander" landed with as big a thud as its follow-up, "Highlander II: The Quickening." And the sequel's 0% score on Rotten Tomatoes means nobody will ever forget.

In "The Quickening," we find Lambert's immortal hero living in a post-apocalyptic far future, a radical departure from the first movie. But when a new evil emerges, he once again fights alongside fellow immortal Juan Sánchez-Villalobos Ramírez (Sean Connery). It's not as good as the first movie, but "The Quickening" has its redeeming qualities. Lambert and Connery continue to chew the scenery, and there's something that's just so bonkers about the futuristic setting and its maniacal villains that it's hard not to enjoy — even if ironically.

The story, meanwhile, is more layered than you might think, with the futuristic setting populated with elements of social satire and political commentary — however unsubtle or cliched. And just like the first film, "The Quickening" earned itself a cult following on home video — and cable TV — where the film finally found the right audience who could appreciate it for its big themes and ambitious ideas. It will never be considered a classic, but it's worth a watch if you enjoy the first "Highlander."

Merci Docteur Rey is a decent romp that critics hated

We opened this discussion with the caveat that the movies on this list might not be that terrible ... but they're probably not that great, either. "Merci Docteur Rey," however, might be the lone exception. And that's due to its surprising 65% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes — a rare time a movie with a 0% critical rating received a "fresh" score from average moviegoers.

Top critics didn't like the film at all, and it seems they were confused by what they deemed a pointless, contrived story with little meaning. Audiences, though, felt quite the opposite. Many user reviews praised the film's quirky story — involving a sex-starved young Frenchman (Stanislas Merhar) in search of his identity, his narcissistic mother (Dianne Wiest), a renowned psychiatrist, and lots of murder.

An uneven, wild but controlled art film, the sort of thing we'd now compare to a Wes Anderson film, "Merci Docteur Rey" is populated by eccentric oddballs, which is the film's real appeal. It's not so much a tight, clever story as it is a showcase for its offbeat cast of characters and cast including Vanessa Redgrave and Simon Callow.

Stolen sends grizzled Jon Hamm on a murder case

In the era of streaming, gritty crime thrillers have become a dime a dozen, with Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu all pumping out countless films that send grizzled heroes on a quest for justice. Before streaming, though, those kind of low-rent action movies were still common, if easy to ignore, which is probably why "Stolen" flew under everyone's radar in 2010.

Receiving the dreaded goose egg on Rotten Tomatoes , "Stolen" may have gotten a better score if more critics had seen it, as it only received 21 reviews from critics. Those that did see it wrote that it lacks the tension that a thriller needs and is woefully awful in spite of its impressive cast. But that cast is exactly why it's worth more than its 0% suggests, as the movie is led by "Mad Men" star Jon Hamm as a dedicated detective out to solve a cold case that may be related to his own son's disappearance.

He may not exactly give the kind of dazzling Don Draper-like performance that earned him eight Emmy nominations, but for one of his first lead roles in a film, he delivers just enough to keep your attention when the story is lacking. Don't go in expecting "Silence of the Lambs," and you just might have a good time.

Folks! casts Tom Selleck in a decent generational comedy

The late '80s and early '90s saw some of the best comedy movies of all time , from "Groundhog's Day" to "Wayne's World." Unfortunately, the era also produced stinkers like Dan Aykroyd's "Nothing But Trouble" or Sylvester Stallone's "Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot!" But few flops from that time got as low a rating as "Folks!," the 1992 box office bomb starring Tom Selleck as an uptight yuppie who takes his parents in when their house is destroyed in a fire.

A movie about the ever-widening generation gap between baby boomers and their aging parents, "Folks!" pokes fun at the elderly a little too much for some people's tastes, something that critics found both dreadful and obnoxious. But while the humor can certainly be cringeworthy at times, it's not the worst comedy film of the decade, nor is it even the worst comedy  Tom Selleck ever did, with the likes of "Three Men and a Little Lady" and "The Love Letter" coming in well below this one on our ranked list of Tom Selleck's filmography .

Sure, the story is trite and the jokes are predictable. But in a certain light, "Folks!" feels like a predecessor to Adam Sandler movies from later that decade — a nonstop cavalcade of borderline-offensive, low-brow laughs mixed with slapstick farce and lots of bodily harm humor.

Netflix just got the best true crime show of the year — and it's 100% on Rotten Tomatoes

'American Murder: Laci Peterson' is currently No. 1 on Netflix

I don't watch much true crime, but when a new show based on a shocking real-life story arrives on one of the best streaming services and then shoots straight to the top of the charts with a rare perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes, I pay attention. 

That’s exactly what's happened with “American Murder: Laci Peterson”. This three-part docuseries arrived on Netflix earlier this month (August 14) and currently holds the No. 1 spot in the service’s top 10 list of the most-watched TV shows. That’s quite an achievement considering that the true crime doc ranks ahead of very popular Netflix shows such as "Emily in Paris" and "The Umbrella Academy". 

If you’re looking for a new Netflix series that you can binge in just an evening or two, then “American Murder: Laci Peterson” is an ideal pick. Here are all the details about this twisting true crime doc to help to decide whether you want to stream it...

What is ‘American Murder: Laci Peterson’ about?

Based on one of the most infamous murder cases in American history, this true crime documentary chronicles a disappearance that became a grisly murder case. 

On Christmas Eve in 2002, Laci Peterson, who was eight months pregnant at the time, went missing from her home in California. A large-scale search effort was deployed, and eventually, her body was found in the San Francisco Bay area. The prime suspect was her husband Scott Peterson, but he maintained his innocence throughout the trial for two counts of murder. 

This Netflix doc from director Skye Borgman has exclusive access to the case, including interviews with detectives, lawyers and jurors involved in the trial. Amber Frey, the woman who Scott Peterson was living a secret double life with at the time of Laci's disappearance, is also involved, alongside Laci’s mother Sharon Rocha, who is interviewed about her daughter's death for the very first time. 

‘American Murder: Laci Peterson’ will shock you

If you already know the story of Laci Peterson, then you’ll know just how disturbing this murder investigation gets. However, if the real-life story isn’t so familiar to you, then you’re in for a true crime doc that will genuiely shock you. Even viewers well versed in the facts of the matter will want to watch, as the new insight is fascinating. 

Sign up to get the BEST of Tom's Guide direct to your inbox.

Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips.

However, this isn’t a true crime doc that will bring genre skeptics around, it follows the well-established blueprint laid down by previous Netflix true crime projects, but it’s slickly edited, and gives an in-depth overview of the Laci Peterson case. It serves as an engrossing mini-series, but also a harrowing examination of human depravity. 

The Netflix show has enjoyed some very strong reviews. It currently holds a perfect 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes . While this score comes from just six reviews, which is a pretty small sample size, it’s still an impressive achievement. Its audience reception is also fairly strong currently at 80% on the popular vegetable-themed review aggregate website. 

G. Allen Johnson of the San Francisco Chronicle praised the series for taking the time to “get to know Laci”, and gave director Skye Borgman credit for recognizing she was the victim at the heart of this tragic story. Meanwhile, Randy Myers of the San Jose Mercury commended the Netflix docuseries for offering “a cohesive overview of the case and investigation”. 

Stream ‘American Murder: Laci Peterson’ on Netflix now

True crime fans have probably already binge-watched “American Murder: Laci Peterson”, but if you’re a genre-aficionado who hasn’t yet got around to watching this three-part documentary, then you definitely should make the time. It has all the ingredients for a true crime success story but also manages to remain respectful of the victim and their family. 

Netflix has become one of the best streaming platforms for captivating true crime, and “American Murder: Laci Peterson” is the latest series to add to its growing library of must-watch shows/movies that chronicle some of the most shocking crimes in history. 

However, if you’re looking for something a little less dark, why not try this inspirational sports movie on Netflix that also scored 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, or you can check out our roundup of all the top new movies that have arrived across streaming services this week. 

More from Tom's Guide

• This new to Netflix movie has a rare 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes
• This comedy-action movie is climbing Netflix's top 10
• 5 best new movies to stream on Netflix, Peacock and more

Rory is an Entertainment Editor at Tom’s Guide based in the UK. He covers a wide range of topics but with a particular focus on gaming and streaming. When he’s not reviewing the latest games, searching for hidden gems on Netflix, or writing hot takes on new gaming hardware, TV shows and movies, he can be found attending music festivals and getting far too emotionally invested in his favorite football team. 

5 best heist movies on Netflix right now

This comedy-action movie is climbing Netflix's top 10 — and it's 92% on Rotten Tomatoes

Beacn Studio hands-on review: A game-changer for Twitch streamers

Most Popular

• 2 Google Gemini just got a major upgrade — adding better quality images and custom chatbots
• 3 What is the Saatva Contour5 mattress and should you buy it in Labor Day sales?
• 4 Prime Video top 10 movies — here’s the 3 worth watching now
• 5 The beta of "the world's most private VPN" has just launched