Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Starring: Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, Hong Chau, Joe Alwyn, Mamoudou Athie, and Hunter Schafer
Movie Length: 2 hours 44 minutes
Kinds of Kindness is Yorgos Lanthimos newest movie, he was the guy that brought us Poor Things, The Favorite, and The Lobster just to name a few. And if you have seen those movies you know what you’re getting yourself into. His movies are like lamb you either like it or you don’t.
And as someone that has seen his prior movies I was still surprised with this one. Based on the advertising I thought this was going to be a very light and funny movie, but this is far from it. It’s actually a collection of three mini-movies that together almost total three hours long.
In the first one you see the main character trying to do a great job and trying to impress his boss and do anything for him. While the second and third movies are more of a thriller with funny moments in them.
Now while the acting is great, the film making is not as creative as Poor Things. I feel like Yorgos didn’t take as many chances with this movie from a film making perspective. The movie still looked great and it was filmed well, I’m just saying there weren’t any unusual angles or fish eye lens.
There were parts of this movie that was quite twisted. And I was uncomfortable of what it was showing, I didn’t like how cruel the main character was to animals specifically a stray dog. And I felt like that was unnecessary to be shown. I feel like you can get the point across without being nasty or cruel.
The movie was very tiresome and repetitive. Where the sex scenes in Poor Things actually had a story and made sense, with this movie it felt like it didn’t serve a purpose to the plot, and felt out of place. Also what made this movie feel really long for me is there actually three credit rolls in this movie, which made it feel longer. Each movie had a beginning, middle, and as soon as it reached its crescendo, it started all over again. I did like how there was a lot of piano music in the movie. If you’re a fan of piano music you will also enjoy that aspect of the movie.
Based on the trailers, I thought this movie was going to be very upbeat and funny, instead what I got was a thriller with funny moments. It felt like I was watching three episodes of Black Mirror. Having said that I didn’t once leave to use the restroom. Which I think speaks volume, wanting to use the restroom but not leaving because you want to know what happens next and don’t want to miss a thing.
In conclusion, if you’re a fan of Yorgos Lanthimos’ style of comedy, then I think you will like this movie. But if you have never seen any of his movies, I feel you won’t be satisfied and truly confused and even disgusted. If you want to experience something different and unique this summer at a movie theater, I would say check it out. If you don’t like weird movies that don’t have much of a payoff after watching it for 3 hours, then I would say skip it.
Leo’s Rating: I give it a C+ for Cult Climax.
Kinds of Kindness is now in theaters.
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“the mime character”
There’s no mime. Did you mean to write “the main character”? Even that would be odd, since the film being an anthology means there is no such character that can be designated “the main” one.
I agree that this wouldn’t be a great introduction to people who haven’t already seen Lanthimos (I rank it just above Dogtooth, which would have deterred me from seeing more if I hadn’t seen Killing of a Sacred Deer & The Lobster first). I can’t agree with it being a “thriller”. Even if you don’t find it funny, it is absolutely even less thrilling. It’s nearly 3 hours long, and for much of that time is opaque enough that the audience doesn’t fully understand what’s going on. That’s the opposite of Hitchcock’s dictum that a thriller should show a bomb under the table well before it goes off.