Yorgos Lanthimos and other filmmakers of the Greek 'New Weird Wave'

In anticipation of The Lobster. (You should've seen Dogtooth by now, even if you are a cat person.)

https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/for-the-love-of-lanthimos

New Athina Rachel Tsangari is pretty good. Chevalier. (She also made Attenberg).

Loved the first half of The Lobster, was bored and annoyed by the second.

Was it just me/here, or did alps get completely ignored? Felt like dogtooth got a lot of buzz, and the marketing push for the lobster was insane, and in between there was alps which just came & went (I think it only got a single weekday afternoon showing here). Could just be a picturehouse thing, they are sometimes just randomly shit like that - tangerine got similar treatment. Just thought it was weird cause this guy's last three films are all kinda the same

I might prefer Alps to Dogtooth? Dunno, would have to see them again, prob. But Alps seems less heavy handed.

i liked dogtooth. lobster, i was very excited about, and loved the concept, but found the tone quite uneven, and the concept not quite fleshed out enough, or not concluded/followed through satisfyingly after the first half (the ending was also pretty jarring). beyond that, i wish he perhaps just did it in greece rather than with such a multi national cast. something about it didnt quite 'land' for me.

xpost - chevalier was excellent. one of my favourites from last year.

no more waves.

"There are no new waves, there is only the ocean" - JLG

How "new" is this wave thought to be? While Steve Rose's 2011 Guardian article reaches back no further than Panos Koutras's 1999 The Attack of the Giant Moussaka, the late Nikos Nikolaidis's See You in Hell, My Darling came out that same year. By that point, Nikolaidis had been serving up aggressively bizarre Greek cinema to international audiences for at least a couple decades. Does his Singapore Sling (1990) deserve a place in this discussion, or is it more closely aligned with weird waves gone by?

plus howdy, y'all

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_of_Death_(film)

Without having seen anyone of those films, from their description they sound more exploitation/genre-y than Lanthimos and Tsangari? Like, they would seem like stuff that the new directors build upon? It sounds interesting, would like to check them out.

Greece still makes that kind of films. A film called Norway was at CPH:PIX this year, it's a Jarmuschy vampire-pic with amazing lighting where the bad guy turns out to be (SPOILER) Hitler (/SPOILER). Again, the lighting was just incredible, all neon green with streaks of yellow lamplight.

Another kinda interesting guy is Syllas Tzoumerkas who's A Blast played here last year after being at Locarno. His debut Homeland was even better. It's a bit like the dreaded style of early Inarittu, but better, with absolutely amazing editing, where scenes often play out intercut three at a time, for maximum thematic effectiveness. A Blast did give me a headache, but he's one of a few newer directors whom I consider to have developed a unique style.

Without having seen anyone of those films, from their description they sound more exploitation/genre-y than Lanthimos and Tsangari?

Yes and no? Biggest difference I'd call out is that NN didn't traffic in the sort of stoic deadpan that's become fashionable lately. He isn't a genre filmmaker, but his use and view of female sexuality does reflect the sensibilities of an earlier era. Often overtly salacious, male-gazey, comically overheated. You can tell he's got roots in "the counterculture", but his later work is sui generis.

Cool! I will try and check out. But I would perhaps put that stoic deadpan pretty central to the 'wave'?

Yeah, and the contemporary (for want of a better phrase) art film in general.

i didnt know this many ppl were into these

I think Alps got less attention than Dogtooth in the US bcz of lower nuttiness quotient (also not Oscar nominated).

from Fandor interview, this theme intrigues me

Tatarska: It feels like this film is, in a sense, an ironic polemic on the current conception of adult life. Although, unlike in The Lobster, right now being single is, seemingly, pretty OK.

Lanthimos: I’m not sure if it is pretty OK everywhere. It might be OK to talk about it, make fun of it, but it’s not necessarily OK for people who actually are single. They don’t necessarily feel OK or [rather] are not made to feel OK by others. So, I think, there is still, you know, a lot to be discussed and it expands beyond being single. For me it is a very important theme of our film. It’s about how we structure our society and the rules around the house: how it’s supposed to be, what it means, you know, how we characterize these failures or successes by other people and by the systems that we create. How free we are in reality, to choose whatever it is we do. There are many many things one can start thinking about when they start exploring those ideas.

Just saw the Lobster. Yep, best film ever for the first half, like an Alasdair Gray story set to film. Then the second part dragged and dragged and was strangely predictable too. What a shame.

so strange. we rewarded Dogtooth just the other day and went into thus one not knowing it was by the same person. The number of parallels between the two films - from being a willing prisoner in a place with strange rules, to the self mutilation scenes, they're very similar films even if The Lobster has a slightly more comedic style

*rewatched, not rewarded

distro switch for The Lobster, US release postponed GRRRRRRRRRRR

http://www.ew.com/article/2016/03/01/the-lobster-release-date-postponed

Up next for Lanthimos, Farrell and Kidman in “a psychological revenge thriller with a hint of supernatural thrown in.”

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/nicole-kidman-talks-join-colin-903288

i rewatched Alps... probably the subtlest and grimmest of Lanthimos's last three films.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kohqtJANjQI

this seems like a stranger project for Lanthimos than the last couple of rumors:

http://deadline.com/2017/02/nicholas-hoult-emma-stone-rachel-weisz-the-favourite-movie-1202030153/

ooh, someone here liked Killing of a Sacred Deer!

was it you? I was kinda nonplussed by it

haven't seen yet

It was me. This type of thing is waaaay in my wheelhouse tho.

See also: We Need to Talk About Kevin, mother!, etc.

did you like any earlier YL?

yeah i consider your invoking Kevin a major warning...

I also loved Dogtooth, fwiw. Didn't catch Alps.

I seem to like Yorgos better when there's a pretty clear satirical anchor (as in Lobster/Dogtooth), otherwise it's just p(r)etty sadism. if there's a target here beyond the audience I couldn't detect it.

The audience and humanity in general, abstracted here to satirical ends imo.

I liked The Lobster, purposely missed last Monday's screening of Deer.

The blank affectless performances definitely elicit a few lols in this one but I couldn't escape the feeling of pointlessness.

I liked it best when it seemed to be straining to break out of Lanthimos™ territory, especially with the performances

:(

It's not that it was 'bad' per se, it's a smart script, the acting is great, especially Farrell who was made to play this type of stupid man. But The Lobster felt like such a step forward to me, and now he drops almost everything that made me love that film so much. Great use of digital in Lobster, Deer really seems to be shot on film. Such a wondrous world in Lobster, Deer just seems typical American suburbia. Exceptionally camera framing in Lobster, Deer mostly just seems typical arthouse, many steady cam movements, angles that mostly seems going for 'untypical' to make it different from Hollywood.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SojHxpqswV8

looks promising

I p much hated Deer though, as noted here: THE LOBSTER (2016) - dystopian absurdist love story or something with Colin Farrell & Rachel Weisz

Wow, the cinematography looks so much better than in Deer. That looks kinda great, actually. Excited!

funny, the reaction throughout my corner of Film Twitter was "this guy is over"

Lol. What are they even looking for?

I think they think he's become a set of stylistic tics divorced from the thematic focus of his earlier features. I think it's way too soon to level that accusation even if I wasn't wild about KoaSD for more or less that reason.

Ok. Then I guess I think they really overrate the thematic focus of his earlier features :) But I'm mostly a fan of The Lobster. Also, I do think his films are quite different stylistically, mostly to his detriment.

Coleman, Weisz and Yanthimos doing a 18th century period satire? The only way this could be more in my wheelhouse would be if it were set in the 17th century.

...and had a Ian Holm cameo.

tbf I do think Dogtooth was pretty focused - still haven't seen Alps.

It's focused, but I've never found its themes and the way it handled them as interesting as other people do. Alps was probably less focused, but more interesting.

Coleman, Weisz and Yanthimos doing a 18th century period satire? The only way this could be more in my wheelhouse would be if it were set in the 17th century.

― Roomba with an attitude (Sanpaku), Monday, July 9, 2018 6:30 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

new board description

Simon what film twitter ppl do you follow i need to expand the bird's horizons

def follow Eric Allen Hatch (v funny + occasionally tweets about film programming), Miriam Bale (queen of salty takes), k austin collins, Phuong Le if you like lots of Bollywood imagery on yr feed

thank you. Eric is a friend of mine but I don’t know the others

oh snap!

very happy to see his work out in the wild! & can't wait for the video store here to open

2.5 hour interview with Eric, very good so far i've only listened to half of it http://www.nowplayingnetwork.net/supportingcharacters/episode38

I actually wanted to start a podcast specifically about the history of videostores, including interviews w/ stores still managing to survive, but my would-be co-host and I decided it would just be way too much work for us to do the topic justice. Huge respect to him for that project.

yeah I really hope it lasts, god knows they have an uphill battle. I was in Toronto last fall and went to Bay Street Video, that was a cool spot, how do they survive though Simon? proximity to TIFF?

SF's got one left (Lost Weekend) which is now in the lobby of an Alamo Draft House (tbf the lobby is gigantic), I will be a loyal customer until they die.

really, the only place I can find a lot of stuff

Toronto actually has a few! Though a couple notable ones have closed. I honestly don't know how they're managing it.

I know Lost Weekend is struggling and tries all kinds of random stuff to stay afloat. Their inventory is gigantic though, and they also have the inventory of the other last big SF video store that closed (Le Video). Their collection is definitely of archival value at this point.

it drives me insane when people are like "oh why bother, everything's available on streaming/the internet" which is *definitely* not the case, it's weird how ignorant people are happy to be about our cultural past (even our relatively recent past!)

AFAIK these are all still open:

https://www.blogto.com/toronto/the_best_video_stores_in_toronto/

xp

When people say "every movie ever made" can be found online pic.twitter.com/YD5qO6lbUt

— Eric Allen Hatch (@ericallenhatch) June 4, 2018

I was pleased to discover the best video store I've ever frequented, Four Star Video Coop in Madison, WI, has persisted.

Wonder what's happening with that Italian town that took over the Kim's Video collection.

This may have been the last I heard: https://www.laweekly.com/news/mondo-kims-video-was-shipped-from-new-york-to-sicily-then-things-got-really-strange-2176383

All of you do what you must, but after seeing the trailer I'm looking forward to The Favourite.

jeez, Lanthimos is doing Jim Thompson's Pop. 1280 next.

From someone else’s script? I’m up for that.

iMdB has it scripted by Lanthimos and his producer, one John Alan Simon.

I just read Pop. 1280! It's unfilmable imo, looking forward to an interesting failure.

It was already made into a damn good movie (w/ a different setting) by Bertrand Tavernier as Coup de Torchon.

Yorgos Lanthimos should have Poor Things, an adaptation of Alasdair Gray’s 1992 novel, ready some time next year. Emma Stone stars as Belle, who tries to drown herself in order to escape her abusive husband (Ramy Youssef). When she’s rescued, her father (Willem Dafoe) replaces her brain with that of her unborn child. Mark Ruffalo, Margaret Qualley, and Kathryn Hunter appear in supporting roles.

I've followed Lanthimos into some weird territory, but this sounds deeply fucked up.

Have you read the book? I was only thinking today about how I need to revisit it

I haven't. At first the premise struck me as unimaginably cruel, but I guess it's presented as "the only way to save mother and fetus is to save part of each"...? So I veer from "aww, love" back to unimaginably cruel.

no one else see poor things yet? thought it was excellent

It's fine. I'd have fucked Ruffalo.

I thought it was pretty much the good romp it sets out to be. I enjoyed the set design as much as anything. Emma Stone is really funny, great performance. It may or may not be too long but feels a bit bloated. Overall a fairly sweet film, by Lanthimos' standards.

Surprised there isn't a dedicated thread for Poor Things. It's my film of the month (and quite feasibly the year) in the new Uncut.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GDosHwQXgAEWrAH.jpg

i thought this was simply amazing. through much of it I simply could not believe a movie like this was financed and made and released to a huge audience.

Prestigecore
About 52,200 results (0.29 seconds)

Given the acclaim, I'm kind of surprised this movie is playing at sort of random theaters near me, nothing particularly convenient, lots of exclusive runs, it looks like.

Also just read that Guillermo del Toro is working on his own Frankenstein movie, and so is Maggie Gyllenhaal. I know this movie is not exactly that, but I guess it's the start of lots of people riffing on the general idea.

I thought it was too long, Jerrod Carmichael’s character was particularly bad and pointless, and Lanthimos’s whole deal with this and The Favorite is just fundamentally irritating to me, but I still basically enjoyed it.

Lanthimos was put on this earth to adapt this book, so as a fan of him and an even huger fan of Alasdair Gray, I'm really pleased the synergy worked and that this was a banger. Loved it. Definitely my favourite of his since Dogtooth. And yeah it's a bit long - all his films are a bit long. But this one didn't outstay its welcome or dry up in the second half like The Favorite and The Lobster did. Emma Stone is amazing

I watched this knowing absolutely nothing about it and kept thinking of Lanark (amongst other things*) so was delighted to see it was an A. Gray adaptation at the end - Lanark is one of my all-time favourite books but I haven’t read many of his others

enjoyed the film a great deal

I'll need to revisit the book of Poor Things. Read it in sixth form so my memory of it is very dim, but I bought it again recently with the intention of reading it again. So it was great to see this come out.

My only qualm is that they didn't set the British parts of the film in Glasgow. Feels like a concession, but a bad one

I really loved this movie. emma really might be the best actor doing it right now

certainly between this and The Curse she's making a case for herself

It's kind of wild, I looked back at the films she has made thinking there was some big switch, or even a subtle switch, like maybe when she got a new agent or something, but from the start she has been all over the place when it comes to projects. Big Hollywood movies, smaller films, misfires, animated crap. Hell, all her characters talk in The Curse about cultural sensitivity reminds me she was in Aloha. But she's always been good, iirc.

yeah she is great going back to Easy A which could have been a really stupid movie but is not, largely because of her

She's not afraid of being a goofball. I treasure that moment in Crazy Stupid Love where she bites Ryan Gosling's shoulder in public because she can't believe she's having sex with Ryan Gosling.

i thought this movie was so wonderful. helps that after a few months of being on hrt i feel like a toddler operating my own body

Watched Easy A with the kids the other night and she is superb even in a middling high school romp.

I have a bias against Emma Stone that I don’t even myself understand— loved her in The Favourite (and Superbad, oddly) but tend to avoid her. Promised the bf that I’d watch Easy A w him because he’s determined to convince me of her genius

Also I love the term “prestigecore” that is perfect

I’m def gonna use it going forward

Can't stop thinking about this film. So many great lines. "I went out into the world and it was full of sugar and violence" (paraphrasing, but well)

heavy lols on this. mark ruffalo was great! so pretty and amazing in its details and design as well.

i keep thinking of willem defoe burping

I just watched Poor Things and I thought it was beautifully made and well acted (particularly Emma Stone).
I just didn't enjoy it and also I felt it did not capture the feeling of Gray's work at all.
The last film I had this feeling about was The Shape of Water

Couldn't see "prestigecore" in that article.

Loved this film too, strangest soundtrack I've heard in a while.

I can understand admiring this film and yet not enjoying it. It’s a singular vision and the attention to detail is amazing - but if you’re not sympathetic to that vision…

This rules

officially registering that I am interested in this film, and that I will be seeing it

Loved Poor Things and I’ll drop it if no one agrees, but I viewed it as a spiritual sequel to Barbie.

loved this movie

the brothel sequence began to drag a bit, and i was disappointed the moral questions raised in the Alexandria sequence didn't feel fully embodied in the end of the movie, but god it was just silly and magical and smart and funny and imaginative.

xp both me and my friend compared it to Barbie at the exact same time as we were leaving the cinema. Felt it had more to say than Barbie though

xp This is my one complaint about Lanthimos is that almost all his films have a sequence about two thirds of the way in that goes on a little bit too long and leaves me wishing I could hit the "I get it" button (the hunting scene in The Lobster is another one). Still I don't think Poor Things was so bad for this, even if it did feel like an attempt at the most sex scenes in a major movie

barbie WISHES

but i agree inasmuch as both gestured explicitly toward the idea that they were allegories - that the characters and action are stand-ins for an abstract dilemma. however barbie's allegory was incoherent complicated gibberish, just a total mess of accrued signifiers. (contrast this with the clean, clear cleavage of Poor Things' climax.)

The ILX embrace of this movie has surprised me tbh

Whereas the ILX rebuff of Barbie feels vmic

what about emma's cleavage

This movie looks cool and the acting is good but the story is stupid as hell and it's so so long. The ending is bad and stupid too! But man Emma and Ruffalo are really good. It was funny that there was a trailer for The American Society of Magical Negroes before I saw this and this movie contained not one but two MNs (one teaches her about suffering! The other teaches her about queer socialists!)

loved this and Barbie but dont really find that much profit in comparing them tbh.

if you would have told me back when i first saw Dogtooth that this guy would be having this kind of success 15 years later with his lunatic psychosexual nightmare comedies i would never have believed it, what a career.

tbh I don't think those characters count as Magic Negro types — they weren't really different than all the other characters who teach her about things throughout the movie.

Poor Things is the better film, but as with Saltburn I'd have to temper my responses around enthusiasts.

The film's manic energy sometimes can tip toward Amelie-style cuteness. But Emma Stone mostly saves it from that imo.

But I know one thing that sells this movie for me is that Art Nouveau is a real aesthetic weakness for me — even when it's too much, I want more of it.

i'm gonna have to read the book at some point bc the ship sequence made me think of what a film adaptation of the magic mountain might be like

And I watched Easy A and it was amazing as advertised and I have joined the Emma Stone Club

btw I also thought of barbie when watching this movie and I think the comparison is pretty obvious!

I thought Stone was great in the Favorite. It was a nice surprise because she had never made an impression before, but I haven’t seen many of her movies.

she's good in Birdman too (a movie I know annoys lots of people but her performance isn't the weak spot)

and, you know, in la la land (which is a dumb movie but again, not because of her)

I mentioned Crazy Stupid Love upthread too.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/17/entertainment/emma-stone-poor-things-sex-scenes-scli-intl/index.html

Is BBC Radio 4 host Samira Ahmed always this puritanical in her line of questioning or is this article just pulling out these questions for clicks?

Back in my day, it was sex scenes that got clicks sonny, not jeremiads against 'em

I didn't find the film long at all

saying the film makes 19th century sex work look appealing is a very weird takeaway

saying the film makes 19th century sex work look appealing is a very weird takeaway

one of the five worst films I've ever seen. fuck you Lanthimos

imago, i imagine your post delivered explosively in ruffalo's fwightfuwwy posh dwawl

Ruffalo's accent is all over the place, but somehow I suspect that's intentional. By the end he seems to be flitting between something like a French and South African accent, just a broken robot

I don't mind movie accents, and he's less objectionable than Adam Driver

I liked his whole performance. He was funny.

Left to right: most of the posters on this thread, imago:

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/d1/7b/b9/d17bb93ced9c31dd9fc26f7f3f1d149b.jpg

xp yeah, he's great. i decided to go watch this again and appreciated his flouncing and pouting a lot more this time - hard not to be upstaged by Emma Stone on first viewing

I didn't have an issue with the movie's length but that's probably because I was in one of those theaters with reclining chairs that go all the way back.

I don't know why people are so obsessed with the (sometimes garish) production design and CGI when Emma outclasses everything and everyone around her. She is the reason to see the film. What a year she had between this and giving the best performance of 2023 in The Curse.

I think this movie has been well-received -- and is a good comparison with Barbie -- because it offers a lot of self-confidence tips in lieu of interesting thought, which it tries to mask with show-off-y sets and overwriting (the "sugar and violence" line above, for example, doesn't work for me). The film has a very 1980s/90s "let's freak out the conservatives" sensibility, but in 2024 it's only controversial in terms of identity politics and manufactured hot takes.

it offers a lot of self-confidence tips

One way of looking at it

I just didn't enjoy it and also I felt it did not capture the feeling of Gray's work at all.

I went to this almost determined to hate it and to feel that it was going to be an insult to Gray but I was completely and utterly won over. I adore the book and live a stone's throw from 18 Park Circus where a lot of the book is set. I pass it literally every day. Somehow Lanthimos seemed to perfectly recreate how I have always imagind the interior of Gray's vision of 18 Park Circus to be. Apropos of nothing I feel Gray would have approved and in the end it mattered not a jot that the story had been transported out of Glasgow.

fuck you Lanthimos

"fuck you YORGOS Lanthimos"

it mattered not a jot that the story had been transported out of Glasgow

I haven't read the novel, so I wondered if Bella Baxter was a nod to Baxters soup - that was about the only thing where I thought the Scottish aspect was missed!

Soup? Do you mind, he's still here.

https://collectionimages.npg.org.uk/large/mw50226/Stanley-Baxter.jpg

one of the five worst films I've ever seen. fuck you Lanthimos

― imago, Sunday, 21 January 2024 bookmarkflaglink

imago, i imagine your post delivered explosively in ruffalo's fwightfuwwy posh dwawl

― massaman gai (front tea for two), Sunday, 21 January 2024 bookmarkflaglink

🤣🤣🤣

Ruffalo's accent was very much a piece with him trying to make himself seem as interesting as possible to whoever he's talking to. He's an excellent puffed-up pigeon of a man - the whole cast seems amazingly ego-free

The sexiest he's ever beem

I just heard that Lanthimos skipped all the scottish stuff because he didn't think he was the right person to deal with all that

I really liked all the shots at the end credits

Just imagine the attempts at Scottish accents if he hadn't :-O

In thar respect I guess I feel more sympathetic towards the decision

I've seen some reviews describing Dafoe's accent as Scottish - didn't sound that way to me (more Irish if anything), but the slight 'offness' of Stone and Ruffalo doing English accents obviously adds to the overall effect of difference and otherness - these aren't 'real' places with real histories, they're as constructed and stitched together as Bella herself.

Also, Tom D - Hanna Schygulla, clearly enjoying herself.

I couldn't decide if Dafoe's accent was supposed to be Irish or Scottish but I've read he spent a lot of time listening to tapes of Alasdair Gray speaking.

It was definitely Scottish, softer than, say, a Glaswegian accent - but a little hit or miss for all that.

Well, Alasdair Gray was from Riddrie!

i'd say he was going for a soft glasgow, bbc / west end accent. definitely not riddrie!

To begin with Dafoe’s accent sounded more Irish to me but it settled into a Scottish accent - soft Glasgow/West End sounds about right.

Such an entertainingly eccentric character he was. There's a little bit about Poor Things towards the end of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwWzNBvGoT8

thanks for that!

Ruffalo’s accent slippage was so pronounced that early on I thought it would be a plot point & we might get a Lee Evans in something about Mary twist, esp when he drunkenly threatened to beat up “that guy”

Doubt it was a deliberate strategy, actors are usually bad at sustaining accents the more other stuff they have to do, but agree it works in the context & his performance is v good & funny

I don't know why people are so obsessed with the (sometimes garish) production design and CGI when Emma outclasses everything and everyone around her. She is the reason to see the film.

Are “people” neglecting her performance, I feel like it’s the main thing anyone talks about

Bella reaching university levels of thinking and speaking in multi clause sentences but still sort of doing Tarzan speak is a classic gag

I couldn't decide if Dafoe's accent was supposed to be Irish or Scottish but I've read he spent a lot of time listening to tapes of Alasdair Gray speaking.

Haven't seen the film but judging by the trailer he is trying to channel Alasdair Gray.

Way too many people are being asked about this film.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/24/bound-gagged-poor-things-feminist-masterpiece-male-sex-fantasy-oscar-emma-stone-ruffalo

Bidisha Mamata has spoken for me

Funny how I found that to be the most film-illiterate comment, of the ones I read.

That Guardian article nearly killed me

That url is a Billy Joel lyric

you oughta know by nowwww

the never-ending Guardian article

wtf you are right it goes on and on. strike 2 against british feminists in the 21st century

I’m mostly with Anna Lee in that article - “I revelled in all of these until the sequence where Bella becomes a sex worker in Paris”.

I think the problem is that Lanthimos can’t resist going for maximum shock value in his films. And what you gain in shock value, you often lose in subtlety and nuance.

*Ann Lee

I Love Sciamma but Samira Ahmed's line about "the genuinely erotic drama Portrait of a Lady on Fire" inevitably made me think of this SNL skit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgaLlP0xmqE

This movie is on my "x movies to avoid" list but will give the ad hominem that during a Venice ceremony where plenty of artists actually spoke out for writer's and actor's rights Lanthimos did a mealy mouthed "we all hope the strike ends soon".

Portrait of a lady on fire is so not erotic

This GUardian roundup should inspire conversation.

https://cansesclasseled.files.wordpress.com/2024/01/screen-shot-2024-01-25-at-9.14.28-am.png

People you thought were dead...

I find Thomson worth reading despite/because of his Thomsonisms

Thomson irritated me a bit:

And I wondered, as I was surfing on Poor Things, whether there would be fresh objections to a display put on by and for men. But I set that aside because of the exuberant commitment Stone brings, not just on screen but in her talking about the picture.

Guardian in "sucking the absolute last drop of life out of things" shocka

I enjoyed this, especially its crass silliness (silly crassness?), but I also thought it was very dumb. It was like "Emmanuelle" by way of Jean-Pierre Jeunet. I'm glad it was made, and it was made well, but I'll never see it again.

I thought everyone was good/fun, although while I appreciated Stone's commitment to the bit I liked her more in "The Curse." Funny these bravura showcases both came out at the same time.

Portrait of a lady on fire is so not erotic

― B. Amato (Boring, Maryland), Thursday, January 25, 2024 8:04 AM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

What on earth is this take

a boring one

Ruffalo so very much the best part of this, tho I also laughed in spite of myself at some of the dialogue dyslexia. Actually liked a lot of the cast members floating throughout, Hanna on the boat, Kathryn in the brothel…

Ruffalo annoyed me at first, then I realized the arc of the performance is a big wink -- and like Stone he's plainly having a great time.

This film was very attractive and entertaining. The sets were very impressive, particularly the hotel in Lisbon. I liked all the cast and enjoyed the gratuitous costumes and nudity. I can't imagine I'll think very much about it again.

Portrait of a lady on fire is so not erotic

― B. Amato (Boring, Maryland), Thursday, January 25, 2024 8:04 AM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

What on earth is this take

― Its big ball chunky time (Jimmy The Mod Awaits The Return Of His Beloved), Sunday, 28 January 2024 bookmarkflaglink

a boring one

― poppers fueled buttsex crescendo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 28 January 2024 bookmarkflaglink

Actually anyone arguing Portrait was lame on an erotic front would be anything but boring.

I remember thinking it was a fine film but that aspect was too calculated.

I will grant that Girlhood is the better erotic Sciamma film.

I’m mostly with Anna Lee in that article - “I revelled in all of these until the sequence where Bella becomes a sex worker in Paris”.

I think the problem is that Lanthimos can’t resist going for maximum shock value in his films. And what you gain in shock value, you often lose in subtlety and nuance.

― Dr Drudge (Bob Six), Thursday, January 25, 2024 4:56 AM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

adam_driver_more.gif

Portrait of a lady on fire was way too dignified and tasteful. Eroticism needs some tastelessness.

it was still fucking hot

I’m mostly with Anna Lee in that article - “I revelled in all of these until the sequence where Bella becomes a sex worker in Paris”.

I think the problem is that Lanthimos can’t resist going for maximum shock value in his films. And what you gain in shock value, you often lose in subtlety and nuance.

― Dr Drudge (Bob Six), Thursday, January 25, 2024 4:56 AM (three days ago)

I'm curious where the shock value was in the brothel? After seeing a corpse stabbed (squishsquishsquish) and the possibility of a baby being punched was raised, I don't know what would pass that

There was initially a lot of nervous tittering and giggling and other noises from the old people at the screening I saw, but by that point I felt that they were fully invested in the silliness and/or inured to the non-step sex and nudity.

I wish she had punched the baby, this goof of a movie wasn't transgressive *enough*.

Shock is subjective, but for example you may be unaware that there was a slight cut required here in the UK for the sequence “depicting sexual activity in the presence of children”, as the British Boy are of Film Classification described it.

* Board

That was a Monty python bit 40 years ago

lol that was my first thought as well. was that part in the book?

Is it based on Alasdair Gray?

I didn’t love this movie? for most of the reasons expressed in that Guardian roundtable up thread. Also I started grinding my teeth at every fish-eye shot and feeling twinges of Luddism (or something) at all the AI-looking mattes

That said, I didn’t read enough (or any) mention of the amazing, amazing score, probably my favourite debut score since Under The Skin, Poor Things might’ve superceded that film in terms of picture-music symbiosis. It is a triumph of world-building, it makes me feel like the (mostly great avant- syncs) on The Favourite was not just a fluke in terms of what Yorgos wants. 100% pulling for Jerskin to win an Oscar for this, I was dazzled and jealous and inspired

the amazing, amazing score

Really is!

This thing is 2 hours and 21 minutes? Definitely looks like something that should be 90 minutes long.

it doesn't feel that long, or didn't to me

I thought it was a little baggy, but in the way of discursive wandering novels. It didn’t bore me.

I don't think it felt too long at 2:21, but I think it could have also worked at 90.

Most movies would work at 80.

My wife and I have decided that the ideal length for a movie is 100 minutes, plus or minus 10. We not infrequently factor that into our watching decisions. (tho yes we have seen Killers of the Flower Moon, Oppenheimer, and Poor Things, and any complaints we have about them aren't related to their length. So we're not doctrinaire about it.)

It helps that the sequence in Paris is probably the most compelling. Kathryn Hunter steals every scene she's in, in everything. It was so odd to see a film with such amazing costuming and amazing practical set design (I gasped when they showed the Alexandrian café), but then all these bizarre other-things that looked like Rob Liefeld using AI to design Magic cards

Lots of fantastic script moments, too. "Your sad face makes me discover angry feelings for you."

The dialogue really was the highlight

I loved all the pseudo-anachronistic profanity. How much of that is true to the book?

God I found that so tiresome. The Favourite is full of it too, of course. I just don't get it.

I never saw that one. I think I appreciated the tacit acknowledgement that this movie was aware of its own dumbness and not to be taken remotely seriously, lol.

I think I fundamentally just don't share Yorgos Lanthimos's sense of humour and I'm not sure why I keep watching all his films.

I liked The Lobster and ...Sacred Deer, admired bits of The Favourite and this one. His sense of humor consists of launching broadsides against imagined squares, which, well, you know, can be uneven.

I think Sacred Deer is his best movie so far, but it's also one I will probably never watch again.

usually where I am with him

Took me a while to stop thinking of Bella as a Nathan Pyle's Strange Planet alien, but ultimately really enjoyed this. Saw it with someone seeing it in the theater for the fifth or sixth time.

That said, I didn’t read enough (or any) mention of the amazing, amazing score

― a hyperlink to the past (flamboyant goon tie included), Sunday, February 4, 2024 3:01 AM (yesterday)

I said above that it was the strangest soundtrack I've heard in a while but I should have said it's really great, I'm looking forward to getting it someday and its probably the most original aspect of the film. Some moments of it remind me (this is a real stretch admittedly, very vague similarity) of the little semi-musical sound effects in Eve Of Ivan Kupalo.

Kathryn Hunter steals every scene she's in, in everything.

Loved her in The Tragedy of Macbeth a few years ago and also in this (and she also was amazing live in some Peter Brook-directed short Beckett plays and Caryl Churchill's The Skriker).

That grotesque tango music they dance to, where everything is played on the "one" but with a disgusting amount of swing, is especially striking

Felt very Tom Waits, iirc.

I loved all the pseudo-anachronistic profanity. How much of that is true to the book?

― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, February 4, 2024 2:24 PM (two weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

God I found that so tiresome. The Favourite is full of it too, of course. I just don't get it.

My guess is that this is a Tony McNamara (the screenwriter of both) thing. It was very much the style of The Great (which I still think is underrated) too.

I noticed that "The Lobster" will be playing at my local AMC theater on Feb 21, and I thought "Hmm that's weird" - did a web search and found that it's part of a A24/AMC series for February (plus "The Lighthouse" will be shown on Feb 28):
https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/1afjnsj/a24_presents_a_lovers_series_february_7_pearl/

Oh and I second all the comments about the score, absolutely loved it and I'm curious to listen to it on its own.

Read some interviews and the approach felt very familiar to me (all the instruments were recorded independently for max control over texture, moving things around rhythmically, digitally pitching up and down and bending notes, etc). But I was shocked to learn that the dance scene was apparently all done with live music on set, with the composer actually playing that crazy steampunk instrument (?!).

I thought Ruffalo was Paul F. Tompkins at first and then couldn't stop seeing him as Paul F. Tompkins. It's such a Paul F. Tompkins role.

haha that's totally otm

I really liked this though felt Ruffalo was miscast. Stone held it down. The score is terrific - like Michael Nyman on 'shrooms.

loved the confession from Dafoe

https://thumbs4.imagebam.com/d4/51/4c/MESUVYJ_t.png

https://www.imghippo.com/i/631xA1712450583.png

https://tinypic.host/images/2024/04/07/vlcsnap-2024-04-07-01h18m49s487.png

Anyway, this movie was worth it for that one moment of Dafoe breaking character

Stone was fantastic, just like in The Curse, but Lanthimos needs to grow up a bit imo

This movie was good but I'm getting pretty tired of Tony McNamara's dialogue, and am glad to see that Kinds of Kindness isn't written by him. I also thought the score was the most striking element, really one-of-a-kind. Surprised that it was Fendrix's first movie score, because it feels very assured

I'm sort of scratching my head over why they kept the fact that Emma Stone shaves her head in his new movie a secret, and yet, in the more immediate lead up to the release she's been talking in interviews about shaving her head and in fact they put a picture of her shaved head (more or less) on the (great) official poster.

https://i.redd.it/tmo8wwvxgolf1.jpeg

Why didn't they just leave it a surprise?

Saw a trailer for that the other day--I'm actually somewhat excited after Kinds of Kindness.

Remake of a South Korean film, right? I've never seen the original.

I wasn't a big fan of Save the Green Planet! or Kinds of Kindness, I'll go to see this but Lanthimos is heading towards the last chance saloon for me. Or at least the 'have a good sniff before you bother going in' saloon, if such a thing exists.

I remember liking Save the Green Planet! a lot but it's tonally a lot closer to a Zucker Bros farce or a Troma movie, and I don't like the idea of this version overshadowing that one, so I'd rather see Lanthimos adapt Airplane!

Shirley you can't be serious is almost already a Lanthimos-style joke.

I'm not a big Lanthimos fan but that is a fantastic poster

This was amazing. Succeeded where Eddington failed.

oh shit stavvy is in this

Saw this tonight. Glad you brought up Eddington--I plan on posting about it in the Trump-film thread, and I sometimes make that connection when it's probably a little tenuous...so I'm glad someone else saw that here.

mixed bag for me. seeing a lot of praise for stone’s performance and while I’m a big fan of hers, I just don’t think she had much to do here. thought the first 45 mins or so was pretty plodding and I found the incessant music in the 20 mins or so before the title card to be extremely irritating. also thought the compositions were just boring. the last act, beginning when officer stavvy shows up at teddy’s house, was pretty fun though

bugonia hit me a lot harder than i expected it to. the last act was pretty astounding.

How are people taking the very end? is the right thread for spoilery discussion?

||Liked it and don't think it could have ended any other way.||

Haha, sorry for the Discord spoiler tags. Good thing I didn't say anything actually spoilery

Didn't like the end or most of what went before, ending was way too "yuk yuk, you see? Had you dummies fooled all along!" Is it possible to make a worthwhile film about people disappearing down online wormholes? Maybe that Tom Hanks D&D TV movie from 1980, haven't seen it for many years. (also not online but you know what I mean)

I didn't like the ending at all; the rest, yes.

(xpost) "Is it possible..."--I thought this one addressed that well.

Saw it in the cinema, but had already seen the character Stone played described in passing, so the ending failed to have much impact. I think it was played out well enough that the various reveals wld have been enjoyable otherwise though

Ok spoilers ahead for this film and also Taxi Driver: It's pretty clear from the conversation around the movie that this is almost certainly a misreading, but I can't shake the feeling that it's a Taxi Driver ending, a fantasy in the head of the dying man. Everything up until Plemons enters the closet is essentially plausible within the "real" world we know, while everything after he blows up is "unreal" and also serves to validate his conspiratorial imagination. Deep down, what he really wants isn't to triumph over the Andromedans as he's been saying all along, but just to have his darkest visions echoed back to him. Fuck the whole world if it confirms nothing's his fault, fantasizing about the apocalypse is easier than living, etc. (One might wonder why she then waits around in the basement to confront him, but this doesn't make a ton of sense whether she's a human or an alien.) This also forces us to sit with Stone, our protagonist, being an actual callous corporate monster, and with her agency in what happens to Plemons's mother (Alicia Silverstone!), both in the past and the present.

I actually like that reading, and would be more comfortable with the ending if that was the intent (as opposed to taking it at face value).

Astounded by finding out Alicia Silverstone was in this, most of all.

Otherwise I didn't care too much for it, like DC's reading of it

the ending of bugonia made me feel depressed and frightened and they did my boy stavvy dirty

I thought "Bugonia" was good and would make a good stage play a la "Bug." Stone and Plemons are strong.

How are people taking the very end? is the right thread for spoilery discussion?

― Hiphoptimus Rhyme (Doctor Casino), Monday, December 22, 2025 11:17 AM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

honestly, unnessary from a narrative perspective (she’s evil enough without being an actual alien), and gratuitous

question: i saw Poor Things and thought it was absolute fucking trash. is it representative of his filmography or should i give this guy another shot?

well, that movie was really good and this one was not as good

Dogtooth, The Favourite and Poor Things are good, Alps is OK, the rest not so worthwhile. So maybe he's not for you. Dogtooth is probably the one to see depending on your tolerance for ultra-ultra-black comedies.

I'm not sure what movie is representative, per se. I liked this better than "Poor Things," but I liked, say, "The Lobster" better than either.

i just watched this the other day, still kinda dont know what to think of it bc my gut reaction is the 'omg humanity, we have killed ourselves with our greed, DO U SEE' finale felt kinda cheap even if the shots were beautifully staged or whatever, but i thought maybe i wasnt giving the film enough credit, like i cant get past the surface level read

also had no idea this was a remake until after i watched it and then the contours of the plot were less wacky to me, i was just like 'oh they are trying to stay faithful to the og version which is just already kinda wacky anyway'

I didn't mind the ending. We watched it as a family, actually, and I think everyone liked it even if we all had different opinions on the ending. I'm not sure what the movie could or should have done differently, because the alternative option might have been just as divisive. So I was fine with the literalness of the conclusion.

I want footage from the room where Stavros initially read the script and was like "oh yeah, I can do this"

I feel like that's a role that uh, many people might have had some reservations about

he’s been really funny in interviews about that. he seems to have understood the assignment lol

I was talking to my coworker who had already seen the movie a couple weeks ago and when I asked "How's Stavros in it? Good role?" he just replied with something like "hmm, well... uhh"

I saw it in theaters and liked it, but didn't like as much as Kinds of Kindness or Poor Things but a lot of the movie has really stuck with me and found myself thinking back on it quite a bit. I am looking forward to watching it again.

And I rewatched Dogtooth the other night and still what a picture!

xpost What was weird about that role? He's just the creepy cop, right?

I feel like "Bugonia" belongs in the same contemporary basket as "One Battle..." and I guess "Eddington" this year, movies about conspiracy theory-fueled divisions boiling over. Anything else this year fit that theme?

uh I think the creepy part is more about what he keeps insinuating happened when he was a babysitter, and he keeps bringing it up

after the second time I was thinking "oh no, not again"

I'm not sure why it would give a comedian pause or anything. It wasn't exactly shocking, just kind of a creepy character bit.

Famously, all comedians are happy to have their first prominent international film roles as child molesters.

Yes, I'm sure playing a peripheral child molester cop character with just a few lines will hold Stavros, founder of Cum Town and who definitely has never said or done anything controversial, ever, back from advancing through the film industry. We're not talking Dylan Baker in "Happiness" here.

I hope Plemons's career can recover from him shooting a kid on TV 15 years ago.

I’ve encountered both people in their 20s who know of his stand-up career and current podcast but didn’t know anything about his prior podcast, and film viewers in there 30s/40s who were unfamiliar with him in general. Thankfully, not everyone is that online. On the other hand, half of them know him as the Bugonia sheriff now

I’ve encountered both people in their 20s who know of his stand-up career and current podcast but didn’t know anything about his prior podcast, and film viewers in there 30s/40s who were unfamiliar with him in general. Thankfully, not everyone is that online. On the other hand, half of them know him as the Bugonia sheriff now

This is me; I'm 41 and only figured he was someone noteworthy because people in the theater started preemptively chuckling (plus one "woo!") when he appeared on screen the first time. But it's also that my only exposure to the comedy scene is seeing thumbnails of whoever is a guest on Tim Heidecker's Office Hours.

I just finished this and had no idea who this Stavros cat was until I read the thread, but then I know nothing about contemporary standup.

Also, this is his worst film to date. It dawdles for about half an hour so that the audience has no ambiguity about the extent of Plemons' batshit conspiratorial thinking. None of the interrogation scenes were interestingly staged. This is like Death and the Maiden meets Joe Rogan.

Yeah it seemed like a film that shied away from any deeper interrogation of its character's motives in favour of cheap yuks and yeah-whatever plotting. Then again I said that about One Battle After Another lol

on the other hand, it's Stavros's very best film to date

I'm glad Stone and Plemons keep taking actorly risks, but onscreen what Lanthimos asks them to do is stilted, obvious, and often just stupid. By the end of the film I'm not sure what comment on "culture" or whatever Lanthimos intended; the nyuk-nyuk staging of the violence undercut whatever points.

I'll give you obvious and stilted, but I dunno about stupid. Silly, maybe? Anyway, I'm not even sure it was trying to make a point, which has been my reaction to the other films I've seen of his. Just an entertainment, imo, with some (very) loose elements of satire.

Also, this is his worst film to date. It dawdles for about half an hour so that the audience has no ambiguity about the extent of Plemons' batshit conspiratorial thinking. None of the interrogation scenes were interestingly staged. This is like Death and the Maiden meets Joe Rogan.

― The Luda of Suburbia (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, January 5, 2026 4:27 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

and then totally chickens out with the ending!

Death and the Maiden meets Joe Rogan otm, no matter what one ultimately thinks of the film.

i have now reflected on this and i think i am cold to this film for the same reason that i didn't catch on with another movie where jesse plemons played a really convincing creep (civil war) in that they both are shallow but portend something deeper that never materializes

I didn’t like this much but joe rogan is not a legible touchpoint imo. the paranoia scans as distinctly left-wing

does it? the chemical castration so sexual desires dont cloud their focus bit felt v manosphere to me.

hmm. maybe left-wing is overstating it, but neither of those really scan as rogan-pilled. rogan listeners are not interested in disempowering CEOs

manosphere is bigger than rogan, def a corner of dudes who want to deny their sexual desire (vulnerability) as a way to resist/feel powerful over women and jesse plemons was 100% smoking that pack

(or, you know, his character obv)

not saying he's a bona fide maga bro by any stretch, his politics are inchoate (as ppl who believe aliens walk among us typically are inclined to be)

hmm. I will admit to being not super familiar with the manosphere but I think incel tendencies run a bit wider than just rogan’s audiebce

all that being said, he was right! the ending completely took the air out of the drama imo, I thought it would have been a lot better just not to say

is there not a Bugonias thread?

That's what they want you to think

I think, on reflection, that the entire torture setup wasn't at all about interrogation or coercion to get to the mothership, it was about validation.

If you replace "aliens" with "pedophiles" and frame their goals as creating a populace that's compliant with whatever their whims may be... ok, I'm not sure where I'm going with this

Plemons' character seems to shrug off any personal apologies/explanations or offers that'd better his life on earth, he just wants to be part of the grand scheme and escape from his life entirely. But the former is the best anyone is going to get, because they're not going to let you on their ship or let you be one of them no matter how many people you torture in your basement. He seemingly gets that and that's why he's so skeptical of any offer until everything falls apart.