Failed Experiment

Bugonia (2025) - Lanthimos It is pretty obvious why Yorgos Lanthimos chose to remake a wacky Korean sci-fi comedy, Save the Green Planet: it has all the elements we've grown to associate with his films - the cynicism, cruelty and absurd sense of humor. With Bugonia, starring very committed Emma Stone in their 4th collaboration, and Jesse Plemons, Lanthimos shoots for the most absurd film to date.

It's a hit or miss for me when it comes to Lanthimos films. For me, like his other fans, it all started with Dogtooth (2009), a perennial hit that started the Greek New Wave or Weird Wave or whatever it was labeled as. It was when Greece was battered with waves of crushing austerity measures and governmental restructuring. Greeks, being a rowdy bunch who didn't really have faith in their government anyway, made a series of films that vividly depicted generational divide and discontent of the younger generation with little prospects for the future. But however penetrating Lanthimos's observation of the world has been, it's his cynicism and cruelty that kept me at bay to be a full fledged fan. I admit that it's hard to do in comedy, considering he is not Haneke or Bergman.

When a Lanthimo's is balanced right, with the right amount of sweetness and heart, it's really great - Lobster, The Favourite, Poor Things. But when it is just cynicism, such as Bugonia or Kind of Kindness, it loses me.

Bugonia concerns Teddy (Jesse Plemons), a conspiracy-addled worker at an Amazon style processing facility. The conglomerate is headed by a ruthless Michelle (Emma Stone), by all appearances, Michelle is a powersuit wearing, posh CEO with all business and no heart. Teddy and his dim-witted cousin Donnie (Aidan Delvis), believing Michelle is an alien from The Andromeda Galaxy, bent on destroying the human race, kidnaps her and puts her chained to the floor in the basement of their rural house. Teddy tortures Michelle to admit that she is an alien and to arrange a meeting with her emperor in their space craft which is heading to earth during the next lunar eclipse which is three days away.

Things get complicated when Michelle manipulates them into harming themselves and their loved ones. Is she really an andromedan intent on eradicating the human species or are we just one of those cruel experiments by higher power, on the verge of failure?

If Bugonia is a satire of billionaires controlling the fate of humanity and we are all just their play things - either just pawns in the game or rebellious crackpots, it's just too bleak and too close to home to laugh about.

As Bugonia progresses to an absurdist territory with much blood shed, you are left with that cold feeling that we are supremely manipulated to and fro for laughs. But who is laughing anyway?

Satire Gone Wrong

Eddington (2025) - Aster A small New Mexico town, Eddington (shot in Truth or Consequences, NM) is a backdrop of what is supposedly the cross section of America during Covid-19 pandemic. Ari Aster, a millennial director made his name for his family-based trauma horrors (Hereditary, Midsommar), with a hip studio backing (A24), embark on his take on what our divided America looks like. The result is a half-baked satire gone wrong that suffers from the worst case of both-sideism and falls for very obvious conspiracy theories it thinks it's making fun of.

The sheriff of the town is Joe Cross (Joachim Phoenix), living with his child-abuse-surviver wife, Louise (Emma Stone) and her conspiracy-addled mother, Dawn (Deirdre O'Connell) who moved in during the pandemic for the time being. Joe's boorish anti-establishment sentiment extends to not wearing masks in public, and therefore not following the mandate imposed by the town's mayor Garcia (Pedro Pascal), who shares a history with Louise. It's an election year and after a lot of confrontations about masking policy, Joe decides to run against Garcia for the election, despite Louise's objection to the prospect of not being left alone and bothered by reporters digging into her past.

This is also the time of George Floyd’s death, BLM and the rising Antifa movement. White young teens in Eddington start protesting in the streets and with everything being recorded on the phone and instantly posted on social media, Joe's every public conduct is scrutinized. After his failed attempt to smear Garcia with his wife's story, Louise leaves, and Joe chooses violence and coverup. And neighboring Pueblo Native American police are on his tail.

This is Aster's moment to capture the zeitgeist - the angst of the divisive nation which became more apparent during the pandemic. But Eddington, which starts out addressing many of these conflicting issues, quickly and decisively succumbs to the conspiratorial nature of our social media and misinformation discourse: Yes, privileged white teens are stupid and don't know what they are talking about. Yes pandemic deniers and anti vaxxers who died deserved their fate. But George Soros funded jet-set Antifa terrorists dressed like ninjas with heavy artillery and drone technology descending upon a small town to take out a small town sheriff? Aster even provides a video clip of 'terrorists' engaging in a fierce gun battle with the police in the streets without providing any context, over and over.

Eddington becomes an action thriller about 2/3rd way in. All of the minority characters are either dead or gravely injured. Michael, a young black deputy in Joe's station becomes a scapegoat for Joe but also the target of 'Antifa terrorists' with extremely fuzzy details. And still, are we supposed to be identifying with Joe?

Feedom, racism, white privilege, pedophilia, 2nd amendment all take part in the Aster's everything in the blender approach, hitting none of it. Muddled in its messaging, the film plays out like a sub-par South Park episode, a vanity project of a self-absorbed director who thinks he is smarter than everyone else. I think it's time that we stop bowing to the altar of the auteurs and the hip, boutique movie studios that propagate their unchecked greatness.

Acknowledging the Past, Then Moving On

Poor Things (2023) - Lanthimos Visually and thematically audacious, Yorgos Lanthimos's fantastical steam punk period piece, Poor Things, plays out like a female version of a Terry Gilliam film, but good. It also shares a lot in common with my other favorite this year, Bertrand Bonello's time traveling period sci-fi, The Beast, as both films set in Victorian era. But whereas Bonello's film is based on Henry James's novella, Beast of the Jungle of 1903 which is very much a product of its time- the preoccupation with fate, predetermination and compounded trauma that would repeat itself over generations, Poor Things, based on a 1990 Scottish satrical novel by Alasdair Gray, Poor Things: Episodes from the Early Life of Archibald McCandless M.D., Scottish Public Health Officer, is a parodic look at its Victorian age and refreshingly forward looking in its main character's self determination.

Bella Baxter (Emma Stone) is a revived pregnant suicide victim by mad genius doctor Godwin Baxter (Willem Defoe), who swaps her fetus's brain with the dead woman's. Therefore, Bella has an unencumbered infant's mind that slowly will need to learn the way of things in life. Godwin assigns his good natured pupil McCandles (Ramy Youssef) to look after Baxter and soon the young man is smitten by Bella's beauty and her total lack of social ettiquettes. Fearing her being taken advantage by the rotten world outside the confines of his castle, Godwin makes McCandles Bella's betrothed. As soon as she grows and learn sexual pleasures, she is prayed on by shyster playboy Duncun Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo) and leaves the country in a sensual whirlwind trip across Europe and North Africa. There Bella learns that physical pleasure is not all there is to be in the world, but pain, pain of others and injustices also exist.

The heightened sense of Victorian imagination, in the hands of Lanthimos, the turn of the century Europe - From Lisbon and Athens to Paris and Alexandria are colorful and whimsical in that bizaare early Czech animation (ie. Karel Zeman) way. Bella learns the world's injustices and unfairness first-hand and determines her destiny every step of the way herself while keeping her always sunny and curious disposition. It might be a naive notion to think that our super complicated 21st century society is just a construct that the past doesn't hold any influence over our lives, that human beings start as a blank page and free to self determine the future. But it's a nice thought.

Humorous Barry Lyndon

The Favourite (2018) - Lanthimos

Yorgos Lanthimos' first foray into a film not written by him (and his constant writing partner Efthymis Filippou), The Favourite retains all the witty cynicism and deadpan humor that the world has become accustomed to throughout his filmography. But it has rounded the masochistic edge and made it more palatable. And it's a good thing. It is in large part thanks to his three main actresses - Olivia Coleman, Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone who shine in their respective roles.

Olivia Coleman is Queen Anne, a blubbering womanchild whose health is failing and leaves all the queen's duties to Sarah Marlborough (Rachel Weisz), who is her strict disciplinarian and also her lover. It seems that thanks to her no bullshit approach and tough love that kept the wolves (opposition party headed by pompous Harley, played by hilarious Nicholas Hoult) at bay. Enter Abigail (Emma Stone), a distant cousin of Sarah, first hired as a kitchen maid, proves herself to be a cunning social climber using her looks and quick wit. It becomes a battle between Lady Sarah and Abigail to win the favor of the ailing and temperamental queen.

Think of The Favourite as humorous Barry Lyndon. The stately glacial façade of Kubrick's film was always a stone's throw away (pun intended) from parodying comedy anyway. Costumes,opulent interiors and harpsichord music tells you that you are watching a period piece, but its sardonic wit and amped up performances are quite the contrary. Lanthimos remains to be the only filmmaker who can get away with using wide angle lens shots because his comedy calls for it. Robbie Ryan's energetic candlelit interior shots are a thing of a beauty as well.

The favourite is a wickedly funny film that hits all the right marks. It touches upon all the hallmarks of Lanthimos other films - patriarchy/monarchy, desire and perversion and loneliness. Coleman, Weisz and Stone deserve all the accolades.

Popularity is a slutty little cousin of prestige

Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014) - Iñárritu

A movie as a spectacle, Birdman is a virtuosic experience - technically brilliant and much more sophisticated than action hero franchises it makes fun of. But at the same time, the whole premise is as light as a feather, its comments on Hollywood and its narcissistic actors are emotionally and intellectually hollow. As much as I love Michael Keaton, who commands most of the screen time, his Keatonness is buried deep in meta-ness of the film premise and so never gets to shine. It's as if he is going through the routine of a hamster in a cage, just like the film's universe - one block radius möbius strip trip from and to an unnamed Manhattan theater in the Theater District near Times Square.

Ed Norton gets to play the more interesting part as Mike, a Brando-esque nihilistic actor who comes in to the troupe the day before the theater opens for the preview. Yet he is not written as a one dimensional character, so as other characters. There is much humanity to be found in characters and everyone's terrific acting-wise, from Norton, Emma Stone, Naomi Watts, Amy Ryan, Andrea Riseborough, Lindsay Duncan to even Zach Galifianakis. But there is not enough time to explore them all. Birdman wants to be many things- it wants to be a Robert Altman film (Raymond Carver connection too obvious?), but only half-heartedly. It never succeeds as those it aims for. It's a fun film that never stops. But it's not a great film.