POOR THINGS

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When I met Yorgos Lanthimos at the Fox Searchlight party for his film "The Favourite," I told him that I thought that film fell short of being as bawdy as it should have been, that he needed to lean into being much bawdier with his movies. Yorgos seems to have followed my advice.

Working from a novel by Scottish novelist Alasdair Gray, and with artistic input from the film's lead actress Emma Stone, Yorgos Lanthimos presents a captivating journey of self-discovery that necessarily involves sex, lots and lots of sex.

Oh how refreshing to see characters fucking, rather than shooting each other.

"Poor Things" coincides with Emerld Fennell's "Saltburn" in confronting Hollywood's gun-happy format with something considerably more grounded, namely the sex urge that drives people, and the social curiosity that comes along with it.

Rapturous in its outrageous designs, "Poor Things" is a wonder to behold and a balm for the soul.

Emma Stone is fearless. Willem Dafoe is exquisite, as he always is. Mark Ruffalo provides the comic timing.

Brilliant social satire arrives in spades with a movie that you may want to watch a few times, for obvious reasons.

The not-so-obvious reasons are good too.

Rated R. 141 mins.

SLATBURN

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Groupthink doesn't live here, critical thought does. This ad-free website is dedicated to Agnès Varda and to Luis Buñuel. Punk heart still beating.

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Writer/director Emerald Fennell helps usher in 2023 as the year that Cinema vaulted back to life, with a transgressive black comedy that splashes cum-soaked mud on corporate cinema with tireless glee.

The filmmaker behind another recent masterpiece ("Promising Young Woman") swings for the fences and connects.

Barry Keoghan is transfixing as Oliver Quick, a social climbing interloper with more background knowledge and cunning strategy than any of his upper class can begin to imagine. The future looks bright for Mr. Keoghan's acting career.

Ranuchy, bawdy, sexy, and unbound, Saltburn leaves a sticky mark on its viewers.

You may be uncomfortably entertained, but entertained and entranced you will be.

Sex trumps violence in the new Cinema of satisfaction that 2023 brings to fruition.

Comic book movies be damned. No one's getting laid there.

Can't wait to see what Emerald Fennell has in store for her audience next.

Class warfare is wet business.

Drop the panties and briefs.

Rated R. 131 mins.

NIGHT GAMES — SHOCKTOBER!

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Mai Zetterling began her film career acting in Ingmar Bergman's "Torment" (1944), before switching from acting to directing after moving from Sweden to London to pursue her craft.

With "Night Games" (1966), which she co-wrote with her then husband, British novelist David Hughes, Mai Zetterling matches Bergman's filmic sophistication on every level of filmic storytelling.

This is filmmaking at its finest.

This thoroughly original work of social satire delves into the heart of childhood traumas, while taking sharp aim at '60s era European sensibilities around free-love and the narcissistic values of the bourgeoisie. 

Jan (Keve Hjelm) brings his fiancée Mariana (Lena Brundin) to his childhood home, a wealthy mansion estate full of horrific memories and rich furnishings. Jan indoctrinates Mariana into his debauched upbringing. Flashback sequences detail the atrocious actions of Jan's mentally unstable mother Irene (Ingrid Thulin).

Freud's oedipal complex takes center stage in Jan's ambitious attempt at reconciling sins of the mother by annihilating all that her sexual abuse and wealth had created.

Jörgen Lindström, the young actor from Ingmar Bergman's "The Silence," and "Persona," is the film's empathetic center as Jan's boyhood version.

"Night Games" retains its ability to shock viewers after over 50 years due to Mai Zetterling's intuitive ability to dig equally into the male and female psyche, while keeping a pure artistic metaphoric vision. This is the gift of liberation that Mai Zetterling gives her audience.

At last Jan and Mariana are set free to grow their relationship in fresh soil.

Amen.

Side note: If I'm not mistaken, "Night Games" is John Waters's favorite film!

Not Rated. 105 mins.