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90Witty to the point of hilarity, blood-soaked and thoroughly politically incorrect, Mother of Tears: The Third Mother follows 1970s cult classics "Suspiria" and "Inferno" to complete Argento's "Mother" trilogy.
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90The Mother of Tears is silly, awkward, vulgar, outlandish, hysterical, inventive, revolting, flamboyant, titillating, ridiculous, mischievous, uproarious, cheap, priceless, tasteless and sublime.
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80So unapologetically loopy and lush and ridiculous that I found it irresistible.
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80The first two thirds are gangbusters, with marauding bands of tarted-up young witches who look only slightly less scary than Lindsay Lohan and her pals on an average night.
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80This hectic pileup of supernatural nonsense is a treasure trove of seemingly unintentional hilarity. Although lacking helmer's usual aesthetic panache, this "Mother" is a cheesy, breathless future camp classic.
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75A gloriously tacky horror movie with an inclination toward the occult, The Mother of Tears hails from the Italian schlockmeister Dario Argento, who photographs his Euro movie star daughter, Asia Argento, with something more than paternal pride.
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75Argento set a standard a lot of moviemakers are desperate to surpass. It's not simply that he's crazy about gore and supernatural hokum. It's that he understands that storytelling is both an art and a craft. His filmmaking carries you along on the illusion of effortlessness; amusement, suspense, a certain elegance follow.
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70Although The Mother of Tears teeters on the preposterous and awkward, it is diverting and reveals that the filmmaker's signature bravura flourishes and use of sinister settings are still intact.
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67As a lissome art restorer, Asia Argento (the director's daughter) comes off as the sanest human on screen, which is pretty scary.
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63Mother of Tears can't rival the David Lynchian otherworldliness of "Suspiria," but at least you know you're in the hands of a director.
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50Argento is admired for his voluptuous use of color and his operatic bloodletting; this is lovely to look at, if you can stand to.
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42Compared to a recent Argento dud like "The Stendhal Syndrome," Mother Of Tears at least has some of the go-for-broke gothic spirit of his earlier work. He's just lost the ability to shape it into something artful.
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38A crude, artless bogey tale.
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A once-great director's near-worst work passes through its funhouse plumbing and emerges from the crapper as intentional mischief: self-sabotage explained away as mad genius.
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25There is, of course, a maximum of blood and gore. Sometimes the director's ideas work; often they don't.
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20At 67, maestro Argento's taste still runs toward bloody entrails and eye-gougings, but Asia's sexy sour-lemon smile is underused in his movies.
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20This lurid celebration of shock, schlock and the shamelessly perverse finds the 67-year-old grandfather of torture porn scraping the bottom of his admittedly limited creative barrel.
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0Aside from being vile and repellent, it's mainly dull - old-fashioned in its shock tactics and culminating in a ho-hum climax.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 3 out of 4
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Mixed: 1 out of 4
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Negative: 0 out of 4
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Rico8Maybe strictly for Argento fans. I count myself in that group. I didn't expect the humor. Much better than many recent Argento films.
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JayH.4
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ChanningT.10A super entertaining film. A fitting finale to the trilogy and a much better film than INFERNO. Loved it!