The Bad Batch (Ana Lily Amirpour, 2017)

[Cronenfly]

This may well deserve its own thread at some point, but the reviews for Ana Lily Amirpour's The Bad Batch seem to be fairly mixed out of the gate at Venice. I'm seeing it next week at TIFF (along with the year's other lady-made cannibal offering, Raw), so here's hoping it is less flawed than some of the initial reviews have indicated. The Playlist's Jessica Kiang places it somewhere between Mad Max Fury Road and Southland Tales at a C (link includes clips), while IndieWire's Eric Kohn gives it a B+ (though given that he wrote A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night's liner notes, methinks he was a tad predisposed to like it). The movie is still seeking distribution, and I would be very surprised if it does not end up with A24 or someone similar.

[chiendent]

Glenn Kenny was very positive in his Ebert writeup so I'm pretty optimistic. It does seem like a good fit for A24, hopefully it won't take too long to come out.

[ianthemovie]

Also on the plus side Glenn Kenny is calling it "as of this moment my favorite American picture of 2016," so it definitely has my attention now.

[Cronenfly]

From a production design, music, and overall style perspective this seems like a slam dunk to me, but it sounds like the characters/political satire are somewhat thinly developed. If you want to see a drug-pushing Keanu Reeves with an Escobar mustache straddling a harem of women carrying his spawn, however, I imagine you have few other options.

[swo17]

Wait, this movie is about cannibals? Has there ever been a bad movie about cannibals?

[ianungstad]

Will this even get theatrical distribution? Netflix announced that they purchased streaming and VOD rights to this film. I doubt anyone will pick up theatrical and physical media rights when the film will be readily available for free to netflix customers. Seems like it will get dumped on Netflix and nowhere else ala other recent films like Fundamentals of Caring. (while not technically being a "netflix" exclusive.)

[Cronenfly]

Didn't see that coming for this title. While I would like to think that this has stronger theatrical prospects than Paul Rudd Sundance-bait, I imagine it will now be an uphill battle to get this projected on any kind of a wide scale. Cannot think of a good precedent for a case like this, or understand why the film's backers would divorce streaming rights from theatrical (if that is indeed the case, which it seems to be based on initial reports).