Bugonia (2025)

Score: 4.5 / 5

Nobody does black comedy like Lanthimos. His latest, Bugonia, is one of his more accessible and angry films, yet its timely insistence on absurdity fits his oeuvre well. Its premise is deceptively simple: two conspiracists abduct a powerful CEO, convinced that she is an alien intending harm to humanity. The kidnappers, socially awkward and paranoid young men with a plan that goes only about as far as their arms can reach, are led by a beekeeper whose motivations are as hypocritical as they are convoluted. His partner in crime is his impressionable autistic cousin. The CEO, on the other hand, is a sharp, no-nonsense woman who thinks so little of them that it takes some time for her to recognize them as actual humans with real concerns. Their deadly dance, in the men's dingy basement, is the whole of the film's plot.

Reactionary and profoundly irate, the film's heavy-handed messaging is sidelined only by Lanthimos's unique mastery of tone. We're never quite sure if we should laugh at the surreal situation or shudder in fear. After all, this kind of crap has been on our minds for several years in the current American climate. Maybe not about aliens and bees, but certainly about CEOs being disposable, incels acting out violently, and plots against powerful people. It's hard to watch this and not think of what almost happened with Governor Whitmer in Michigan or with Luigi Mangione and the UnitedHealthcare CEO. I also thought more than once of Eddington, this year's other timely bleak comedy-thriller from Ari Aster, who produced this film.

And while the violence in this film is clear and present, so too is its humor. Mind you, I did not laugh out loud in this screening, but you can tell the players likely were between takes. Jesse Plemons and Aidan Delbis are laughably silly as misled conspiracy theorists certain that Emma Stone's biomedical company is responsible for killing the honeybees and, by extension, enslaving humanity. The logic isn't there, of course -- when is it ever in such conspiracies? -- but that's what makes it so funny, at first, when their captive tries to make sense of it. When they further their claims, asserting that she's an alien "Andromeda" and that their own questionable experiments have proven this, we see this for the witch hunt it is. Yet Lanthimos has forced us to see the extent to which the men are certain of their delusions: they have trained for such an act of terrorism. They've even chemically castrated themselves, in one of the film's more insightful details. And it's not all wholly different from what the rich and powerful do regularly (Stone is intercut, in an early montage, running on her treadmill and ingesting vitamins). 

Accomplished cinematographer and sometime Lanthimos collaborator Robbie Ryan does some amazing work in framing the dynamics between the players, especially considering that the bulk of this plot takes place in a single location as a sort of Socratic dialogue/interrogation. Stone's shaved head shines ethereally, usually coated in lotion (there's a hint of The Silence of the Lambs here, too), and the camera is angled just above her, so that she's looking up at us. Plemons's sweaty visage, on the other hand, is often shot from just below his line of sight, so we're looking up at the man in a position of newfound and frightening power. He also utilizes light in haunting ways, bringing surreal hellish vibes to the otherwise workmanlike basement and somewhat otherworldly aesthetics to the stark modernity of the CEO's home and office.

Credit must also be paid to screenwriter Will Tracy, former editor-in-chief of The Onion, who also penned The Menu, the series The Regime and Succession, and who produced (you guessed it) Eddington. The verbal swordplay between characters in absurd yet tense scenes is riveting and ghastly, aided by the A-list actors' unique skills in nonverbal acting. He incisively and wisely avoids totally demonizing any one character, adding emotional baggage to the men that at least humanizes them a bit beyond what could easily have been caricature. He also suggestively resists an easy answer as to the woman's identity and motives, delaying answers in favor of forcing the characters to communicate not only with each other but with us in real time.

We're asked, at various points, to sympathize with each of of the main characters, to the point that, even when the climax and denouement shocked me into stillness, I reeled at the implications Lanthimos seems to be firing away at. What if the issue at stake, the film seems to ask, is just that we're debating issues with incompatible languages? What if, aliens or no, terrorists or no, the real problem is Big Pharma? Sure, we can discuss violence, science, urbanity, financial injustice, culture wars, internet radicalism, but the film isn't trying to preach at us as much as it is attempting to lift the veil on our current social dynamics. Like Plato, Lanthimos urges us to think critically and on a macro-level, to resist succumbing to the invisible powers of our world and the inherent problems of how we interact with each other down here among the commoners. 

Kinds of Kindness (2024)

Score: 4.5 / 5

Yorgos Lanthimos does tend to zig when we expect him to zag. The recently acclaimed auteur behind the generally accessible postmodern visions of The Favourite and Poor Things has certainly done weirder and more surreal projects, and his latest reminds us of that in gloriously weird fashion. Kinds of Kindness is more in line with his earlier surreal feature films, perhaps partly due to the return of his sometime co-writer Efthimis Filippou. As is the case with Lanthimos, there is far too much going on in this film to coherently discuss in one sitting, and I'm still not entirely sure I "get" his latest project, but it's a fabulously entertaining and challenging example of how the best artists can and should play with form to imagine new ways of being.

Kinds of Kindness, described by the studio's marketing as a "triptych fable," consists of three short films, each just shy of an hour in length. The anthology format sometimes works for me, often doesn't, but here seems just connected enough that I never felt completely ripped from the viewing experience. Each of the major actors of the film appear in each story, though they play different characters in each, some radically and dynamically different, some oddly similar for purposeful intent. There are so many ideas swirling around that, while watching, I was unable to tease out a particular thematic strand and follow it. And I'm not sure you should, because the primary joys of this film lie in its utter unpredictability and brazen swings meant to subdue you with shock and awe.

Generally, I'd hazard that the main points made by the whole work have to be about the nature of control and our agency within that. Why do we let ourselves be controlled by others? What happens to us as humans when we exert control over others? How easy is it to delude ourselves into thinking our interactions aren't ultimately selfish? Where can you go, once freed, but back to some system of control? When do we sacrifice joy and satisfaction in favor of control? Each of the stories involves some kind of unlikely and dangerous power dynamic that forces its central character to do the unthinkable in an attempt at a better life. And the results... well, they vary.

In the first part, Jesse Plemons plays a corporate lackey whose boss Willem Dafoe wholly owns him (note that I'll be using the actors' names; I have enough trouble with character names when actors aren't playing at least three in a single film!). Dafoe controls Plemons's hourly schedule to the finest detail, including his nutritional diet, his exercise routine, and even his sexual activities with his wife. In fact, to this point, Dafoe has ensured that Plemons drugs his wife Hong Chau to miscarry so they will not have children, which Plemons lies about. The inciting incident here, however, is Dafoe's directive that Plemons kills another man. Plemons balks and refuses, and Dafoe casts him out of his life. Plemons is so desperate to reclaim his charmed life under Dafoe that he clings to the unraveling strands as he emotionally spirals out. Then the fire is ignited: he will do whatever it takes to satisfy his boss (and lover, apparently, which adds so much meat to chew in this already rich stew).

The second part opens on Plemons as a police officer wallowing in grief after the disappearance of his wife in a helicopter accident at sea. His cop partner and closest friend Mamoudou Athie tries to keep him calm, but Plemons is messing up at work in a big way and is clearly drowning socially. When his wife Emma Stone suddenly returns, Plemons notices too many inconsistencies and changes, becoming quickly convinced that she's an imposter. He attempts to test her honesty and commitment to him, but the threat becomes too much to bear, leading to his mental break and her becoming inexplicably pregnant. This was by far my favorite section of the film and I don't want to spoil it, but be prepared for some wild shifts and a completely ambiguous ending that only further complicates what we think we know about this film. It's a puzzle box that, I think, cannot be solved.

Finally, the third section provides yet another manifestation of control: a cult that seems primarily about sex but also is deeply concerned with reversing death. Its specifics and goals are never made clear, but Dafoe and Chau lead it while Stone and Plemons work to find a miraculous woman (Margaret Qualley) prophesied to resurrect the dead. Stone finds one she believes could be legit, only to have her life fall apart when she tries to reconnect with the family she left behind to join the cult. Then, with nothing left, she becomes determined to prove her theory no matter the cost. It's a thrilling conclusion, one that perhaps makes the capitalist and heterocentric issues of control from the first two parts coalesce a bit due to the fact that cults are by nature about control.

Lanthimos works best in his unique blend of tone, and each "short" is a masterclass in blending hilarious comedy with macabre terror. He also toys with his audience, making each section title about someone (or something) called R.M.F., but that identifier is never wholly clear; indeed, multiple characters could be referenced by those initials, making us wonder to whom each subtitle is actually referring. Apart from the main characters, some of whom could fit the bill, there is also a courier man, a helicopter pilot, and a corpse, who could be the same man but could also not be.

R.M.F. isn't the only mystery left for our musings by the end of the film. Each part contains hours of provocative material, not least of which is how and where to apply the title to each depraved and disturbing story. There are moments of joy and peace and even kindness in each, but they are muddled and spread, tainted with the darker elements of human nature. Technically, the film is impeccable, and it's nice to see Lanthimos scaling things down considerably from his latest features. Here, his focus is on the ideas, to be sure, but also on his actors, and the ensemble collectively provides some of the best performances of the entire year. But, despite his recent more mainstream fame, I expect Kinds of Kindness to be relatively inaccessible and poorly received by mass audiences, added in a footnote to Lanthimos's filmography and largely forgotten. That would be a shame, because it's a testament to the vivacity and ingenuity of his storytelling oeuvre and a welcome challenge to any cinephile eager for the auteur's most inscrutable puzzle yet.

Poor Things (2023)

Score: 5 / 5

Some of the best cinematic scholarship of the year will center on the latest trip-and-a-half from Yorgos Lanthimos, whose auteur streak has just reached profound new heights. If you love him, you love him; if you don't, definitely avoid this film. The most profound, bizarre, and deeply literary film of the year is also one of the most purely entertaining and unforgettable viewing experiences in years. Poor Things is at once a natural extension of Lanthimos's oeuvre and a brazen evolution of timeliness and complexity, sure to launch him into a new strata of filmmaking in ways that The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, and even The Favourite weren't prepared to do.

The Greek auteur here seems interested in his usual theming -- the awkwardness and easy fallibility of human relationships -- and finally embraces the Gothic pastiche with which he's always flirted. Without rehashing the full plot here, suffice it to say that Poor Things is a postmodern feminist reimagining of Frankenstein in a manner analogous to Guillermo del Toro's Cold War-era answer to The Creature from the Black Lagoon in the form of The Shape of Water. Which is to say that it takes the bones of that "source material," if you will, rearranges and redecorates it with contemporary style and ideas, and repurposes it for unique and culturally disrupting ends. It might also be fair to say that this is perhaps Lanthimos's most funny and positive -- or, at least, comedic in the most classically Greek sense -- film yet, which could arguably make it more accessible to those less familiar with his previous, darker films.

The entire production -- all nearly two and a half hours of it -- is impeccably, impossibly detailed with outrageously inventive artistry. Stilted and occasionally horrific dialogue elicits as many embarrassed chortles as it does explosive belly laughs. Sets reminiscent of something in a Tim Burton film or Dr. Seuss story are palpably realized, and I thought more than once of Barbie in terms of production design, practical effects, and theme. Otherworldy costumes fill the usually fisheye lens with popping colors and tactile intrigue. Victorian London becomes steampunk Paris with a few stops at Lisbon and Alexandria along the way, making the protagonist's journey indeed something of a road flick, allowing the filmmakers ample time and space to realize the splendor of their awesome, wholly original world.

Other writers will cover the endlessly fascinating characters with better insight and theory than I could summarize here, but this is one of the most radically feminist stories I can recall seeing in ages. It's helped, yes, by a magnificent cast, all here performing at their very best. Emma Stone pulls out yet another performance for the ages as Bella Baxter, the protagonist, whose journey of self-discovery and external discovery forms parallel plotlines; her intellectual enlightenment is woven with threads of her sexual and emotional maturity, and as she learns about the fantastic world around her, she learns to trust -- and to what extent -- the odd characters she meets, most of whom angle to use her in some way. She'll have none of it. Stone's performance is a tightwire act of impetuousity we rarely see from any leading actress; completely unpredictable in every scene, one wonders the extent to which she was allowed to improvise versus calculated specificity. The cast is uniformly great, but I'd note especially Mark Ruffalo as the greasy villainous cad (whose sexual proclivities reach a certain Streetcar Named Desire climax that had me weeping from laughter) and Kathryn Hunter as the powerhouse madame of a French brothel (whose comparatively brief screen time offers devastating and challenging nuance in what could easily be a one-note character).

The continuous references to Dr. Godwin (Willem Dafoe) as "God" deserves unpacking, as does most of the film in general, and I confess to know nothing about Alasdair Gray's novel of the same name which this screenplay by Tony McNamara adapts. It would be nice to know, but I'm hesitant to borrow the book from a library because I don't want to tarnish the raw experience of seeing this film's beauty and strangeness as filtered through Lanthimos's vision. But it is precisely the language of dialogue that I'm most curious about, having seen the film, because of the way it evolves along with Bella, both in terms of subject/substance, yes, but also in terms of rhetorical style and increasingly complex turns of phrase that bear multiple meanings. Witty in the best, most devious sense, McNamara pulls no punches with his biting sensibility. The smorgasbord of artists assembled here are all performing at the top of their craft, aligned to perfect effect by a director coming into his own with each new project. Poor Things is one of the best -- read: most important -- films of the decade.

The Favourite (2018)

Score: 5 / 5

Yorgos Lanthimos does it again with The Favourite, a brilliant comedy-tragedy that might also be his most accessible film yet to those not familiar with his auteurship.

The year is 1708, but that's mostly incidental, and the characters are based on real historical figures, but that's almost an afterthought. You don't need to know about Queen Anne's reign, her confidant and lover Sarah Churchill, and Sarah's cousin Abigail who rose in power and became the titular favorite of her majesty. I certainly didn't, although apparently it's been extensively documented through letters, memoirs, and even a lengthy biography by Sarah's descendant Winston Churchill. Ignoring, as I do, did, and will, the political and historical details about their biographies, we're left with the film as a masterful portrait of women in power and loving every moment.

The ailing Queen Anne, falling apart from gout and miserably forsaking her own crown in favor of eccentric indulgences, relies fully on her adviser Sarah, who is immediately seen to be the real power behind the throne. Sarah manages the household, the country, and, yes, the Queen's sexual appetites as well; she's also strong-willed and proud, manipulative but not sycophantic, and so tension follows in her wake as sure as sin. Olivia Colman deserves accolades for her role as the queen here, in the kind of powerhouse role women usually dream of and never get. She cries and screams and throws herself around with reckless abandon, speaking to the spoiled monarch in all of us. Meanwhile, Rachel Weisz plays her cards close to the chest, rocking some intensely androgynous costumes with stony-faced intelligence.

Enter, then, Emma Stone as the once and future favorite Abigail, who starts earnestly enough to situate herself in the queen's household. Despite her hostile work environment, she climbs the ranks before we (and her endangered cousin) realize she may be climbing with malicious intent. Her performance doesn't quite match her capabilities, nor does it quite match the output of her co-stars, but the trio of women make a fascinating and brilliant group for us to watch on screen. Their power play is endlessly entertaining, and I found myself laughing and gasping aloud in an otherwise pretty silent theater. Some people just don't understand quality comedy.

I have no complaints whatsoever about this film, except to say there wasn't more of it. It's irreverent, brutally funny and sad, and casts a lasting spell that will keep you giggling and thinking long after the credits roll. Dig the female power. Dig the awesome cinematography, performances, music, screenplay, costuming, and editing. It's all fabulous. One of the best this year, by far.

IMDb: The Favourite

The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)

Score: 5 / 5

It's just one of the weirdest, coolest movies around. The Killing of a Sacred Deer is a loose adaptation of a Greek tragedy, but you'd probably know that even if it wasn't mentioned in the movie. There's something profoundly sad and absurd about it that's deeply theatrical and feels Just, in an archaic sort of way.

The film concerns a heart surgeon (Colin Farrell) who befriends a young man (Barry Keoghan), though their relationship is left mysterious for about a third of the movie. It turns out that the doctor had operated on the boy's father after a car accident and he had died. The boy blames the surgeon for destroying his family, and now says the surgeon will have to kill a member of his own family to balance his crime. Until he does so, each member of his family will suffer and die, one by one. When the surgeon's youngest child is suddenly paralyzed, the horrors begin.

While at first we hate the young man, whose creepy and awkward interactions do little to endear him to anyone, we eventually learn too that the surgeon is a former alcoholic, which may have played a part in the death. All that began with violence will end in violence, and moral disarray is cast out of thought by the presence of a primal, blood-for-blood sense of justice. It's a gripping story, and in the hands of writer-director Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster), it's a weird, wacky, totally fascinating work of psychological horror.

The performances, especially those of Farrell and Nicole Kidman, are masterful works of deadpan humor. Much like them, the director seems to handle everything with a morbid sense of comedy that grows more perverse as things get dark and dangerous. That doesn't make it any less brutal or brooding, but it does make you feel worse for enjoying it. Lanthimos, for all his curious and flamboyant style, doesn't undermine the story with his antics; rather, he pours in his creative energies into the slower parts of the film to make them spectacular, and when the drama kicks into high gear, he simply lets it go for the guns. It's a cool, calculated, and totally awesome method of moviemaking in a film all about cruelty and desperation.

IMDb: The Killing of a Sacred Deer

The Lobster (2016)

Score: 4.5 / 5

This is what filmmaking is all about. Aggressively weird and disturbingly tender, The Lobster defies effective description because it is so many things packed into one. A pitch-black romantic comedy that is too clinical and distant to be romantic and too deadpan and creepy to be LOL-ed at, the film seems to exist in a vacuum. In it, single people are observed Big-Brother-style in a hotel, where they are tasked with finding a romantic partner within 45 days despite bizarre and punishing house rules. Failure to mate within the allotted time results in the subject being transformed into an animal.

Enter our not-quite hero, played by a distinctly un-self-aware Colin Farrell. Channeling his brilliant comic timing from Martin McDonagh's films, Farrell plays a man adrift in this dystopian world, who goes with the flow so much he often blends into the strangely familiar sets and landscapes. As he begins to assert himself into the world and make autonomous decisions, however, he learns the cost of nonconformity and takes drastic steps to find his happy ending. Matching his lost soul and dry wit is Rachel Weisz, a member of the lone singles hiding from society in the woods, and as the two embark on a romantic journey they learn that love is not without its consequences.

A star-studded cast populates this picture, but the focus is strictly on Farrell. That's not quite fair, as the script steals the whole film right away. Beautifully crafted, bewilderingly complex, and lyrically absorbing, the dialogue and pacing control the film in wondrous style. Especially noteworthy is Weisz's narration, which adds distance to our perception of the film and lends formidably bleak satire to the proceedings.

It's not a feel-good film, and I'd even be wary of calling it a comedy. This flavor of vicious black humor and absurdism is an acquired taste, and its scathing satirization of superficial courtship (think of our increasingly virtual interactions with potential lovers) and our cultural ideal of the nuclear couple is so dense and allegorized that it will leave you thinking long and hard for days after viewing. The best part? I'm still not sure the film has a message; it just lambastes our norms and mores, leaving them pulpy and quivering on the screen for us to digest at our leisure. Daring cinematic surrealism at its finest, right here.

IMDb: The Lobster