Supoor Things

Poor Things sees a mad scientist puts the brain of a baby into the body of a fully grown women, creating the insatiably curious Bella Baxter who we follow as she learns about the world through interactions with various memorable characters and lots of "furious jumping."

Don't let the simple plot fool you into thinking there isn't much going on, everything is going on. It shares something in common with many of director Yorgos Lanthimos other works, an overbearing father figure (Dogtooth), examination of relationships (The Lobster), period setting (The Favourite) but he and screenwriter Tony McNamara have fashioned something completely unique from Alistair Gray's 1992 novel.

The look of the film is extraordinary, somewhere between Steampunk and a renaissance painting. Each part of the film has it's own distinct look and from bizarre animal hybrids to watercolour skylines there is always something new drawing the eye. Cinematographer Robbie Ryan's visuals create a fantastical yet tangible world and tell the story of Bella's social and intellectual development as clearly as the story. A bombastic, jarringly off kilter score compliments the aesthetics perfectly.

The stellar design is matched by an incredible cast at the top of their game. Willem Dafoe is both Dr Frankenstein and Frankenstein's monster as Godwin Baxter, the creator of Bella and himself a patchwork of pieces as a result of experiments by his own father. Even with his striking looks and unusual dining habits (he burps up a huge bubble at the end of every meal as a result of a machine that helps him eat) he is one of the more subtle characters in the film. At the other end of the scale is Mark Ruffalo's rakish cad Duncan Wedderburn. It's an extraordinary performance as Ruffalo shoots for the moon and ends up nearer Jupiter as the womanising fop. Whether informing Bella she has just been "thrice fucked by the very best" or visibly losing his mind as he realises the object of his desire's free spirit dwarfs his own he entertains every minute he is on screen.

Best performance of all though is lead actress Emma Stone. From barely able to walk, single minded infant through to hardened, academic curiosity she sells every stage of Bella's development with insight and nuance. It's a role that could easily have devolved into pantomime but Stone makes it one of the best turns of the past year.

Any negatives? The final part of the plot feels a little shoe horned in. Dealing with your past is indeed part of life but the section isn't given enough time to feel fully fleshed out and, given it ends up having no real bearing on where we end up, doesn't stand up to the other parts of Bella's adventures. Even here though, there's enough invention, insight and entertainment to stand head and shoulders above most other films.

Overall, Poor Things is fish-eyed explosion of imagination and observation, powered by incredible acting. It cements Yorgos Lanthimos place as Hollywood's premier absurdist and serves as proof Emma Stone is one of the best actors working today.

9 goat brains in the bodies of sadistic former husbands out of 10.

Comments

Star Scuffle

Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu is perhaps the purest distillation of a problem the franchise has had ever since the end of the original trilogy. The inability to expand the scope of its story. Commercially, it became a world devouring behemoth, but in terms of narrative it has never moved past (on the big screen anyway) those first films. George Lucas delivered a prequel trilogy that showed us how we got to his 1977 original. Disney's new trio of movies ended up amounting to little more than bringing the gang back and adding some new faces to the hamster wheel. They also gave us a couple of spin-off films dedicated to filling in unimportant details of the classic adventures. Eventually, a sprawling galaxy far, far away starts to look pretty small. Now their return to cinemas after a (much needed) seven year break is a lengthened episode of a TV show that exists because one of the characters in the original films looked pretty cool. With a laboured structure (there are three...

Rooms Got Back

Backrooms was never likely to struggle financially. The last couple of years have taught us that if you can turn Gen Z out, box office success tends to follow. Given the viral subject matter (more on that later) a younger audience were always likely to show up in more than enough numbers to turn a profit on a moderately budgeted horror film. The question facing studio A24 and 20 year old (yes that's right, 20 year old) director Kane Parsons was what to do with the free hit. Do you double down on the premise in order to satiate the TikTok crowd? Or do you layer on the themes and character in order to create an "elevated" horror more in keeping with the A24 brand? It seems they were never quite able to commit to one approach or the other and the final product falls unsatisfyingly in between. For those unaware of the Backrooms phenomenon, it began life as a creepypasta, modern folklore where people share an unsettling picture online and create stories around it. The idea wi...

Van Afterlife

Passenger director Andrè Øverdal has some impressive credits under his belt, including his Norwegian language breakout hit Trollhunter and chilling haunted corpse movie The Autopsy of Jane Doe. That explains why this mediocre horror has a couple of well crafted set-piece scares, but he is saddled with a bland script that is content to tick familiar genre boxes. Things start promisingly with the titular "Passenger" (a highway stalking demonic entity) dispatching a pair of nighttime travellers. We are then introduced to young couple Maddie (Lou Llobell) and Tyler (Jacob Scipio) who are about to abandon the city for a life on the road in their swanky van. Tyler is all in (to an obnoxious degree) but Maddie is hiding some reservations and things get spooky when they are marked by the walking metaphor for the dangers of travel. The first issue the movie runs into is the confusing nature of the entity itself. Why does it mess around with our leads for days when it kills everyone ...

Talking 'Bout My Girl

In addition to already being the name of a dozen or so movies, Obsession is a horrendously dull film title. It conjures up images of dated romantic thrillers or bargain basement serial killer flicks. This is a long-winded way of saying this darkly humorous relationship nightmare deserves a better name, as it's anything but stale. Barron "Bear" Bailey (Michael Johnston), Nikki (Inde Navarrette), Ian (Cooper Tomlinson) and Sarah (Megan Lawless) are longtime friends and work colleagues. Bear has long harboured feelings for Nikki and is determined to confess his love, despite warnings from Ian to bide his time and the fact Sarah might be the one who is actually interested in a romantic relationship. After chickening out of an ideal opportunity to tell Nikki how he feels he uses a cheap novelty collectible called a "One Wish Willow" to wish his crush was hopelessly in love with him. Turns out the tacky toy is legit and ties him into a "The Substance" styl...

Listening to the Sounds in Silence

The tagline for breakout indie horror hit Undertone is, "The Scariest Movie You'll Ever Hear". This declaration sets out the film's stall as a uniquely audio based horror, and that is exactly what it delivers. The result is something that will chill some people to the bone and leave others falling asleep in their seats. Originally made for a meagre $500,000, the film takes place entirely in one location (director Ian Tuason's childhood home) and centres on podcaster Ivy, played with impressive range by Nina Kiri. Ivy is caring for her dying mother (the only other person who appears onscreen) so has to wait until the early hours of the morning to record her paranormal podcast with friend Justin (the voice of Adam DiMarco). She plays the role of sceptic to Justin's believer but her rationality is tested when her cohost begins playing some eerie audio files he received from an anonymous listener. Although Undertone isn't a found footage film, it very much t...

Tune In, Cop Out

Tuner lead character Nikki (Leo Woodall) hasn't had much luck. His parents aren't around and H yperacusis (an extreme sensitivity to noise) put an end to his piano playing days. Now he puts his enhanced sense to use as a piano tuner, working for mentor and father figure Harry (Dustin Hoffman). When Harry falls ill and into debt, Nikki takes on a sideline in safe cracking for shady security boss Uri (Lori Raz). All is well at first, but as time goes on it becomes increasingly hard for Nikki to juggle his day job, lucrative but dangerous side hustle and a blossoming romance with musical student Ruthie (Havana Rose Liu). The set up may make you think you are in for a slick crime caper, but that's not really what this film is. Director Daniel Roher made his name in documentaries and Tuner has a very naturalistic feel. The city is vibrant and busy while close up shots show the intricacy of the pianos and locks Nikki has mastery over. We are following characters (mainly Nikki)...

The Bourne IT

The set up for The Amateur is a well worn one, a man loses his wife in a terrorist attack and goes on a mission of revenge. The twist is, that while Rami Malek does play a man with a particular set of skills, they aren't the ones you would expect. Charlie Heller is a socially awkward CIA cryptographer with precisely zero fighting ability and no experience using firearms. He is though, a technological genious who invented half the agencies cyber security and can track and predict patterns like a computer. When his blatantly shady boss, played with smug glee by Holt Mccallany, refuses to act on Charlie's info about the killers he blackmails him for some training and the green light to pursue the perpetrators himself. The two main questions are, can the mild mannered tech guy thrive in the field and is this twist on the formulae enough to carry a fairly by the numbers espionage thriller? The answer to both is, pretty much, yes. Malek is tailor made for roles like this and it'...

Uncomfortably (Ve)Numb

Despite his somehow enduring popularity, Venom is a conceptually rubbish character. He is born of a period in comics when publishers wanted to make their child friendly characters edgy and Spiderman media, be it comics, films, games or whatever else, tends to get worse whenever he shows up. "Kind of like the good guy but bad" is one of the most boring villain types to begin with and no writer has ever come up with anything interesting enough to make him deserve his top billing amongst the wall crawlers stacked rogues gallery. The previous two films managed to (somewhat) sidestep the blandness of the IP by hiring a great actor in Tom Hardy and letting him do Jim Carrey style physical comedy mixed with a heart felt love story between a man and his super powered alien parasite. Given it is the last in last in the trilogy, Venom : The Last Dance really wants to have epic stakes and emotional resonance, leaving little room for the things that made the first two movies watchable. ...

The Grey Advert

This Russo's action flick has all the ingredients of a top tier spy thriller but will leave you feeling like you've just watched an extended trailer for other films they want to make in the world of the "Grey Man". Ryan Gosling plays Sierra 6 (yes the Sierras are basically 00 agents with the twist they all used to be criminals) and is ideal casting as the sort of ass kicking man of few words this type of film is built around. All the archetypes you would expect are also present and played well by a stellar cast. Chris Evans is unhinged antagonist, Billy Bob Thornton is retired mentor, Rege-Jean Page is crooked politicain and Ana De Armas is the good agent caught in the middle. The plot is just as cookie cutter, involving Gossling being hunted by the people he used to work, computer files nobody was meant to see and hostages needing rescued. Of course, all these things are tropes for a reason and done well (like they are here) equal an enjoyable movie. And the Gre...

Lungbuster

With Iron Lung, YouTuber Markiplier, real name Mark Fischbach, becomes the latest content creator to dip his toe into the world of feature film production. His effort is not as accomplished as the work of the Philippou Brothers (creators of Talk to Me and Bring Her Back) but it's a lot more striking and original than last year's Shelby Oaks (directed by YouTube film critic Chris Stuckmann). The film is based on a relatively niche video game of the same name, which was made by solo developer David Szymanski (who helped with the film's screenplay) and is set inside a submarine exploring an ocean of blood. We follow exactly the same premise here as our protagonist, a convict named Simon, spends the entire runtime welded into a decrepit submersible on a distant moon trying to earn his freedom. What his superiors are specifically looking for is unclear but he is told the blood ocean holds resources vital to the survival of mankind, who has been pushed to the brink of extinctio...

Dan Says its Alright

Search This Blog