Now Playing — Bugonia
The combination of Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone remains one the great pleasures of modern cinema Continue reading Now Playing — Bugonia
Tag: yorgos lanthimos
Now Playing — Kinds of Kindness
Three different dips into Yorgos Lanthimos’s murky cinematic waters. Continue reading Now Playing — Kinds of Kindness
Then Playing — The Killer; Maestro; Poor Things
The Killer (David Fincher, 2023). Following the prestige passion project Mank, David Fincher returns to the sort of glossy pulp that seems to most stir his cinematic heart. The Killer focuses on a hitman (Michael Fassbender) whose previously perfect professional … Continue reading Then Playing — The Killer; Maestro; Poor Things
Top Fifty Films of the 10s — Number Twenty
#20 — The Lobster (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2015) An important cinematic storytelling strategy, too often overlooked, is to treat the outlandish as if it’s as plain as white paint on a wall. In Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Lobster, people who are romantically … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 10s — Number Twenty
Top Fifty Films of the 10s — Number Forty-Seven
#47 — The Favourite (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2018) When powdered wigs, heavy dresses, and ornate waistcoats are hauled to set, the resulting movie is likely to be stiffened by affected refinement. Adhering to patterns set by countless period dramas before, action … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 10s — Number Forty-Seven
Top Ten Movies of 2018 — Number Six
Director Yorgos Lanthimos surveys society and sees corroded souls, all of them sending out alternating waves of hurt and affront, like sonar that delivers wounds. He also, to the benefit of misanthropic cineastes everywhere, finds the resulting eternal struggle to … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2018 — Number Six
Now Playing — The Favourite
It’s been twenty years since Deborah Davis’s screenplay for the film that would become The Favourite first made the rounds. Of course, that was well before director Yorgos Lanthimos got his sharpened, toxin-tipped talons into it. The particulars of the … Continue reading Now Playing — The Favourite
Playing Catch-Up — Lady Macbeth; The Killing of a Sacred Deer; Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond
Lady Macbeth (William Oldroyd, 2017). Adapted from a similarly-titled nineteenth century novella by Nikolai Leskov, Lady Macbeth follows a young woman named Katherine (Florence Pugh), who is plopped into a chilly marriage to Alexander (Paul Hilton), the unkind scion of a rural estate. She carves out what satisfaction and happiness she can find, largely through an affair with one of her husband’s brutish employees (Cosmo Jarvis). William Oldroyd, making his feature directorial debut has a fine eye for visual composition and a brave sense of restraint. The film’s most dramatic moments play out with striking understatement, and the score (by … Continue reading Playing Catch-Up — Lady Macbeth; The Killing of a Sacred Deer; Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond
Top Ten Movies of 2016 — Number Three
I think Colin Farrell is exceptional across the entirety of Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Lobster, but I have a clear favorite moment. In dire circumstances while roaming the woods outside of the compound where he’s been staying through much of the film, Farrell’s character, David, encounters a newly disgruntled acquaintance (John C. Reilly). Farrell meets the animosity with a desperate attempt to once again ingratiate himself to the person, delivering compliments and reassurances with a stilted calm. It’s a single scene, but it encompasses so much of what I adore about The Lobster: a genial off-filter quality and unhinged creativity that … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2016 — Number Three
Now Playing: The Lobster
Thanks to a rigorous strategy of willful media blindness (which is mightily difficult for me to pull off in the midst of my almost compulsive consumption of the entertainment news and reviews blipping across the internet), I sat down to … Continue reading Now Playing: The Lobster
Coffee for Two 