I finally saw this the other day. It only stayed in my local theater a week so I had to make a drive.
It had its flaws but I liked it overall. It was maybe the funniest movie I've seen this year. It also wasn't really that much of a covid movie.
I thought Joaquin was great as always and Emma Stone was good in a really understated role. She really faded into the background as an abuse victim who just withdrew from the world. It was really sad given that her own mother still deified her abuser. Austin Butler was well cast and gave a good performance as a smarmy pizzagate cult leader.
I thought the jabs at the left came off better and funnier. Pedro's re-election commercial was hilarious. The BLM protests were also good, especially the kid using white guilt to try to get laid who then went full Rittenhouse by the end of the movie. The jokes at Joaquin's expense were more cartoonish - Aster didn't solve the cliche that some stuff has become too crazy to effectively satirize.
I didn't quite like the Tarantino-like cartoonish ultra-violent shootout ending, although I guess it was good he finally paid off Chekhov's gunshop that was in the background of like half the shots in the movie. I'm not sure how the data center company benefitted from the antifa false flag operation. I did laugh at how they had the drone ready to capture their "No justice, no peace" fire in order to send the footage straight to fox news.
The ending was bizarre with Joaquin as the figurehead mayor and his MIL as the power behind the throne and then the two of them and the live-in nurse all getting in bed together. I feel like I must have missed something.
Anyway, I'll still eagerly await Aster's next one and be sure to catch everything he makes.