Midweek Movie Free Talk

I have been watching the majority of Yorgos Lanthimos' filmography now. All his movies deals with people trying to conform to societal norms or expectations and he uses that to basically mock how humans behave. Lanthimos' approach to filmmaking reminds me of Wes Anderson with how they both like the use of very precise and methodical camera work with a clear personal style, and the preference for deadpan almost lifeless style of acting. Though Lanthimos is clearly the more misanthropic disturbed cousin to Anderson.

In Poor Things Bella is rapidly trying to make sense of the adult world and its rules with her childlike mind. In The Lobster we have a strange society with very set rules for relationships. In Kinds of Kindness, which consists of three separate stories all dealing with societal norms in some fashion. Most apparent in the first one about a man who lets his boss control his entire life down to the tiniest detail. Alps also takes a sidestep to reality with a group of people who do a bizarre "roleplay" of a life that is not their own, and being quite terrible at it. The Killing of a Sacred Deer has a somewhat more normal story structure, about a surgeon who befriends the son of a patient he lost some years ago under an operation. Unsurprisingly things turn very dark and cruel and everything is still played in the same cold emotionless style of acting. The Favorite is probably his most "normal" film, in the sense that here the characters actually have some level of emotion and even though it is a satirical depiction of early 18th century England and not meant as historical accurate, I feel like it might as well could be. I think the aim for Lanthimos here was to question (or mock) other historical period films.

However, I kept comparing these films to Dogtooth which I still think is his most effective film where his very strange style becomes an advantage rather than a hindrance. It is also his most messed up narrative by far and unlike his other movies, it kept the mystery and strangeness from start to finish rather than puncturing it halfway. Especially The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer had me interested about half way, but then everything gets more or less explained and I was just waiting for the movie to go through the motions to wrap up. The same thing applies to Poor Things as things started getting repetitive once it was obvious what kind of metaphor Lanthimos was aiming at. The worst however was Kinds of Kindness where he seems to think it was shock value that made his films interesting.

Roughly speaking, I think his movies have gotten worse over the years. Or put more fairly, he just ended up focusing on aspects of his particular style of filmmaking that I didn't find to be the interesting elements of the unique traits he has.

there's no way to say this... but I've never seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind until tonight... and I turned it off halfway through. I was watching the director's cut and the movie is pretty much a din of screaming. In my defence, I do have a bit of a headache, but its still a very loud movie for whats going on.

I'll probably revisit it one day, but that first half is painful.

Click - 4/10

This movie just checks all the boxes for stereotypes of 00's movies:

Racism ✓

Sexism ✓

Homophobia ✓

Transphobia ✓

Fatphobia ✓

Most of it was shockingly awful, but I had some good laughs which is why it doesn't sit at a 2 or 3. It has not aged well. It's that classic stereotype of American dad with the hottest wife imaginable, a 2 story house (3 if you count the basement), great kids, and an incredible job, but for some weird reason hates his life. He learns his lesson in the end and he was an insufferable character to watch the whole time, which I realize was the point, but that wasn't a good movie-watching experience.