Week Ending 9/1/23
Pre-TIFF crickets
The hope was to have two new reviews in this week’s newsletter, but MGM agreeing to send me a BOTTOMS screener “tomorrow” turned out to be 6:30pm on Thursday night. At a certain point I stopped waiting and fired up another TIFF screener instead (I’ve banked seven so far). So, that one will have to wait until next week where it will hopefully join some thoughts on ROTTING IN THE SUN.
As for TIFF: it looks like a weekly release isn’t conducive to helping “word of mouth” at the festival. Or so the publicists are telling me. Rather than collect everything together from the week and drop them each Friday as normal, I will instead be publishing daily dispatches with links to my reviews at The Film Stage along with full text for any others that don’t end up there.
That means next week’s newsletter will run as usual on Friday 9/8, but it will be accompanied by separate, daily TIFF-only recaps of the previous day’s premieres. I don’t want to spam you all with email, though, so I think I will just publish them without having Substack send notifications. I’m going to test out using tags for this too, so please bookmark this “TIFF” link if you want to stay updated. I’ve also added a new button at the top of my page labeled “Festivals” to start making this division a regular thing with all subsequent fest round-ups collected under a single banner.
We shall see how things go. It’s all a work-in-progress at this point still and I appreciate you following along anyway!
What I Watched:
THE GOOD MOTHER
(now in theaters)
Michael wasn’t using at the time of his death. At least, that’s what his pregnant girlfriend (Olivia Cooke’s Paige) tells his mother (Hilary Swank’s Marissa) after the latter smacks the former across the face at his funeral. Is this something we should believe? How about after a group of masked men break into Paige’s home looking for the two bricks of fentanyl-spiked heroin she found in Michael’s suitcase?
It ultimately doesn’t matter. Miles Joris-Peyrafitte’s THE GOOD MOTHER isn’t as interested in who Michael was or the trouble he was in to get shot on the street in cold blood as it is in constructing a scenario of wall-to-wall mistrust. He and co-writer Madison Harrison have thrown together a mix of duplicitous characters for the sole purpose of keeping the audience in the dark to the nihilistic truth that good people do bad things. And the only way to stop them is for someone they love to choose humanity above blood.
Marissa is a drunk journalist who hasn’t written a story since her husband died, constantly lying about her whereabouts to feed the addiction. Paige has always been messed up in Michael’s drug-life and still covers for their friend Ducky (Hopper Penn) while keeping collateral for herself. And Michael’s brother Toby (Jack Reynor) is a cop—you don’t get more duplicitous than that. While they each grieve in their own self-destructive ways, they do want his killer brought to justice. If only to distract from their own complicity.
That’s what should captivate. Why Michael became an addict in the first place. Marissa kicking him out of the house after he stole from her. Toby not arresting him. Their father dying. Guilt is a powerful drug in and of itself and it drives each of them to blame themselves for their role while suffering the self-inflicted justice they dole out. Sadly, Joris-Peyrafitte doesn’t care enough about this emotional drama to let it be more than afterthought to his plot-heavy crime narrative.
There are plenty of little moments where you see beneath the surface of who these characters need to be for the mystery, but they always seem to arrive too late where investing in them is concerned. I honestly didn’t care about anyone on-screen because, despite feeling fully formed in their performances (the acting is solid), they’re trapped by the purposeful machinations of a familiar reveal hinging upon obvious contrasts and easy preconceptions. Marissa, Paige, and Toby are too busy fulfilling those specific roles to exist beyond them.
I don’t therefore think THE GOOD MOTHER has any real need for subsequent viewings. There’s nothing deeper going on here than initial observation can surmise. Marissa and Paige aren’t even really “working together” like the synopsis pretends. They stumble upon some discoveries on their own by sheer happenstance because the circle of victims and perpetrators is too small to avoid it. The ending hopes to add intrigue with a clumsy bit of faux ambiguity, but not nearly enough to make you think twice.
The film is an empty calorie page-turner. A primetime movie of the week that forgets its compelling true-life tragedies are worth more than being rendered as color for generic twists and turns. There’s just enough to stay interested in the moment before erasing it from your memory as you move on to the next.
- 5/10
Cinematic F-Bombs:
This week saw DEEP IMPACT (1998), ENOUGH (2002), FALL (2022), STEALING HARVARD (2002), and WORDS ON BATHROOM WALLS (2020) added to the archive. Charlie Plummer goes all out in his introduction to the collection, but my fave of the group has to be Jeanette Miller talking back to Jason Lee over the phone in HARVARD—although I’m not sure who Albert Trump is. cinematicfbombs.com
New Releases This Week:
(Review links where applicable)
Opening Buffalo-area theaters 9/1/23 -
BOTTOMS at AMC Maple Ridge; Regal Elmwood, Galleria & Quaker
THE EQUALIZER 3 at Dipson Amherst, McKinley, Flix & Capitol; AMC Maple Ridge & Market Arcade; Regal Elmwood, Transit, Galleria & Quaker
KUSHI at Regal Elmwood
NANDOR FODOR AND THE TALKING MONGOOSE at Regal Transit
NEVER GIVE UP at Regal Transit & Quaker
THE GOOD MOTHER at Regal Transit & Quaker
Thoughts are above.
Streaming from 9/1/23 -
A DAY AND A HALF – Netflix on 9/1
HAPPY ENDING – Netflix on 9/1
PERPETRATOR – Shudder on 9/1
SCOUTS HONOR – Netflix on 9/6
Now on VOD/Digital HD -
THE BAKER (8/29)
THE BOOGEYMAN (8/29)
INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY (8/29)
LAKOTA NATION VS. UNITED STATES (8/29)
THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE DEMETER (8/29)
MADELEINE COLLINS (8/29)
MILLIE LIES LOW (8/29)
THE POD GENERATION (8/29)
WOLF PACK (8/29)
THE ELEPHANT 6 RECORDING CO. (9/1)
KING OF KILLERS (9/1)
From the press kit archive:
