Popular reviews

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  Review by Michael Sicinski ★★★½ 1

  [7]

  Excerpt from my review for MUBI:

  Ma uses filmic space to explore the signifying power of bodies and the objects around them. The ride on the car hood, for instance, is a funny gag. But as Ma and Daniel drive through the golden, sun-beaten desert, the image of a half-dressed woman atop a slate blue 1950s automobile, winding into the dusty hills, takes on an awkward imagistic power, somewhere between anachronism and dystopian futurity. We are introduced to Ma first as lost, then as a kind of confused hood ornament. From this point on, we will come to know Ma as someone caught between the identities foisted upon her (sometimes violently), and those she herself develops as she struggles…

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  Review by Chad Hartigan 1

  Please give Celia all the moneys to make more films, thanks.

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  Review by Daniel Johnson ★★★½

  At some moments, the film does lose a bit of its direction and momentum, but as a whole, it is all still clearly and beautifully conveyed. 

  It’s a story of a woman told through the human body and the camera, and even with its faults, I think it’s pretty neat.

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  Review by Ashlea💧🦎 🐜 ★★½

  Interpretative dance is not my thing, so 80 minutes of it stretched my capacity to care. The film doesn't have a lot of coherence outside of the plight of Mary Magdalene, who here appears equal parts childlike naivety and crawling seduction. It just doesn't work. And to top it all off, there were so many unlikeable characters doing awful things that any intrigue or surrender to the dance became unbearable. In summary, it's as nasty as it is sexy and lacks the clarity to tolerate what it is: an 80 minute choreographed interpretive dance.

  Watched as part of Samuel and I's Joint Watchlist!

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  Review by Sarah ★★★

  bodies? in my fluid spaces?

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  Review by LePage ★★★★

  Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Whenever I go to the movie theater I want there to be at least one expansive silent dance western biblical parable playing.

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  Review by bloodclay ★★★★

  hypnotic and surreal 
  quiet, but so powerful

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  Review by C.J.

  A good example of an enigmatic film whose mystery doesn't sustain itself for the entire runtime. That being said, this is one promising debut (and I'm already feeling like I'm underrating it right now). When Rowlson-Hall hits the right notes and combines performance with her penchant for making some great, surreal imagery (including a channel surfing "dance" and a soldier flinging his body around a sand dune) it's striking as all hell. Hopefully she'll crack the narrative and symbolic aspects next time.

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  Review by Noland Vannoy ★★½ 1

  Visually arresting, but too transparent in one moment and then a complete cypher the next.

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  Review by Sam B. ★★★

  Needed to be more cohesive *and* less blunt, and Steve Oram's AAAAAAAAH! does circles around this one, but I generally dug the anything goes cinematic exorcism, everyone writhing and prancing and crawling and gurgling through the tumbling arpeggio of a music video edit. (this is where you give me the look that means of course you did and please know that I nod humbly and accept my brand).

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  Review by Steven Cohen ★★★½

  Ma is Celia Rowlson-Hall's odd modern-day reinterpretation of the story of the Virgin Mary. Rowlson-Hall (who choreographed the titular episodes in last year's The Fits) invests much of her energy into the inextricable link between movement and performance. The film itself tracks the Mary-analogue, Ma (Rowlson-Hall herself), as she and her version of Joseph, Daniel (Andrew Pastides), get to know each other. The movie diverges pretty drastically from the story that inspires it, focusing instead on the ways that Ma manages to fend for herself. I think. Rowlson-Hall's film features no spoken dialogue, so it's all about what the physical performances convey about the characters. Ma is a unique vision, and while I don't grasp all of what Rowlson-Hall intends, I was affected by the images she brings to the screen. Any movie that manages to be so singular deserves attention.

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  Review by Mike D'Angelo ★★★

  54/100

  A.V. Club review. A good film to go into cold—I didn't know Rowlson-Hall's background, and it took me a while to realize what I was watching. It runs out of steam, though.