Midsommar Review - Putting An End To Summer Flings - Ep 218

This was alotta movie. There’s a non-spoiler section first, where hopefully, we help you get ready. Then we do our best to explain & speculate & theorize about what it all means in our spoiler section. Finally, we ask - could there be Oscars? AlsoMike’s Caveat - :54 NONSPOILER REVIEW: Cast and Crew - 2:48 Specs - 7:12 Plot Premise/Expectations - 10:07 Production Values: Sight - 12:50 Sound - 19:16 Performances - 20:34 Script Thoughts - 23:34 Oscars Lens - 27:30 (The Jordan Peele Career Comparison - 29:15) Watch or Not? - 31:23 SPOILER WARNING DANCE BREAK - 33:20 SPOILER-FILLED REVIEW: Running Down the Plot: (Getting to the Title Card - 34:26) (Bests/Worsts/Speculation: mHow Deep Does It Go? - 37:11) (Cliff Diving - 48:03) (Josh in The Bad Place - 53:55) (Dancing and Doing - 56:11) Thinking the Worst, Hoping for the Best - 1:02:23 Sorting Through the Subtext - 1:03:46 Political and Cultural Subtext Too! - 1:08:31 (And Well as Shortcomings and Plot Frustrations) Final Grades - 1:13:03 Your Homework/Our Social Medias - 1:14:52 Words of Wisdom/Coming Next On MMO - 1:15:19 The Non-Spoiler part of this Midsommar review does include a caveat. We will drop some clues to what this movie IS NOT. Hopefully, this is useful to you because we think that if you’re listening, you’ll want some reassurances where we can give them, and you’ll appreciate a clue or two. If you’re allergic to us leading you in that maypole dance, then maybe see the movie first. In any case, this was one hell of a deep dive from us. We begin with a cast & crew profile, highlighting Ari Aster & Florence Pugh, and then we analyze all the numbers going into this via our specs section. Our expectations for the movie varied & we discuss our reviews of the exquisite production values, the horrified performances, and we dance around spoilers, but give you a feel with our non-spoiler script thoughts. There’s also an Oscar Lens, even though this is a movie event, where we forecast Midsommar’s chances come next mid-winter’s big award show. We also can’t help but compare & contrast this follow-up effort by Ari Aster to what we already enjoyed with Jordan Peele’s “Us.” The spoiler section begins after a dance music warning, and we dive into the plot. There’s a ton of theorizing about some early Act I moments & how those reverberate & shape the rest of the plot. Then we proceed in a recap that goes off on several tangents, but sticks to our thorough discussion of the major scenes & sequences in the film. Finally, we end with some more speculation on what it all meant as we break down & debate our readings of the themes. It’s another loaded movie review of a 2019 film, our 10th on the year thus far. Check out our Movie Event Reviews playlist or our recent catalog entries to hear Spider-Man: Far From Home & Annabelle Comes Home. Then make sure you listen to our 2019/20 Oscar Sprint Profiles in their own playlist. We’ve otherwise been reviewing a ton of movies this year from previous Oscar seasons with our Pixar & Tarantino re-watches. The former is now complete heading into Toy Story 4, and we’re continuing to build the latter toward Once Upon a Time In Hollywood that we’ll complete by the end of July. This was a whopper of a review for Midsommar. What did you think? Did our clues help your experience? We want to know. We’re at MMandOscar on Twitter, and we are on Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, and Gmail. You can subscribe / rate / review / like / share / & listen to us on iTunes, Soundcloud, Stitcher, Google Play, Tune In, Spotify, and just about wherever you listen to podcasts. When reality sucks, keep watching movies with us. We’re Mike, Mike, & Oscar!