"KEEP BUSTIN'."

Posts Tagged ‘Yorgos Lanthimos’

Poor Things

Tuesday, January 23rd, 2024

After THE FAVOURITE gave Yorgos Lanthimos success, acclaim and a game lead actress on a bigger budget than his earlier films, the director aimed those resources at a project he’d been trying to do since 2009: an adaptation of the 1992 novel Poor Things: Episodes from the Early Life of Archibald McCandless M.D., Scottish Public Health Officer by Alasdair Gray. While I’ve read that the novel is set in a realistic Victorian London, Lanthimos has turned it into a colorful (and sometimes black-and-white) gothic cartoon world, with shades of Tim Burton and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, maybe a little BABE: PIG IN THE CITY, while retaining his cock-eyed view, dark humor and fascination with chaotic people upending social mores. POOR THINGS was nominated for Oscars for best picture, director, adapted screenplay, actress, supporting actor, makeup, music, costume design, cinematography, editing and production design this morning because they heard I was posting my review today and wanted to try to capitalize on that. I’ll allow it. (read the rest of this shit…)

The Favourite

Monday, February 4th, 2019

THE FAVOURITE is the best picture nominated latest from director Yorgos Lanthimos, who I know from THE LOBSTER. I’m behind on this guy because I still haven’t even seen DOGTOOTH, let alone THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER, but I get the feeling this is the least weird of his movies. It’s also the only one he doesn’t have a writing credit on, instead using a script by newcomer Deborah Davis (her first produced screenplay, even though she wrote the first draft 20 years ago!) and Australian TV writer Tony McNamara. It’s a historical costume drama about palace intrigue, nothing conceptually crazy going on here, but it has a distinctive off-kilter feel and biting humor not always beholden to things people would’ve said at the time. (read the rest of this shit…)