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.

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.