Venice 2025: “Bugonia”

A banal chamber-piece whose broad critiques of corporate greed, tech-based paranoia, ecological disaster, and humanity’s overall uselessness as a species feel tired and dated on arrival, Yorgos Lanthimos’ Bugonia sits in some gray middle zone of his filmography, merging the uncomfortable humor, off-kilter realities, and distressing violence of his early films (Dogtooth, The Lobster) with […]

Review: “Kinds of Kindness”

How far would you go to prove your love to another person? Acts of devotion— heightened to their most extreme, absurdist peaks— are in a way what just about all of Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos’ films are about, harkening back to his breakout third feature, 2009’s Dogtooth (in which parents protect their children from the […]

Review: “Cruella”

Something really strange happened to me while I was watching “Cruella,” the latest animation to live action Disney prequel/remake. Disappointed by Disney’s recent installments in their series of nostalgia cash grabs and not impressed with the trailers for this one, I was fully prepared for “Cruella” to not be a good time. But less than […]

Review: “The Favourite”

3.5 out of 5 stars. Everything about “The Favourite” defies expectations, which really shouldn’t come as much of a surprise for a film from Yorgos Lanthimos, the director behind such bizarre works as 2015’s “The Lobster” and 2017’s “The Killing of a Sacred Deer.” It looks like a pretty period piece set in the royal […]

Review: “Battle of the Sexes”

4 out of 5 stars. “Battle of the Sexes” opens with a scene that, despite taking place in the early 1970s, likely won’t be unfamiliar to many audiences. Fresh off of a winning streak that made her the world’s top woman tennis player, Billie Jean King (Emma Stone) discovers that the prize money for the […]

Oscar Predictions

We’re officially less than a week away from Hollywood’s biggest night. The 89th Academy Awards will be presented on Sunday, February 26. Damien Chazelle’s gorgeous musical “La La Land” received a record-tying 14 nominations, and is the favorite to win a majority of them, including Best Picture, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t still predictions […]