Mother Mary
First screened and reviewed in May 2026
Director: David Lowery. Cast: Anne Hathaway, Michaela Coel, Hunter Schafer, FKA Twigs, Sian Clifford, Kaia Gerber, Jessica Brown Findlay, Atheena Frizzell, Alba Baptista. Screenplay: David Lowery. In Brief:
Visually rich and structurally inventive first act, squandered by Lowery's typical foibles with story, pace, and POV.
VOR:③
As much as I balked at where Lowery takes this material, I do value the risks in style and script. He also pushes two leads to new places.
I was having a fine enough time at this lightly acidic locked-room revenge/apology melodrama, and I was glad to see Michaela Coel being shot better and directed more convincingly than she was yesterday when I slouched through The Christophers. But then the whole thing blew up into a shapeless, obscurantist, Ouijafied pop-temple turgidity, wildly indulgent of itself. I just couldn't figure out whhhyyyyyyyy, or what in the XCX world I was supposed to be getting from the experience. Except, I guess, a renewed conviction that The Green Knight probably was overrated. Y'all had me doubting myself. Grade:C–
