POOR THINGS - Movie Review

hey everybody today I am going to be reviewing four things this was directed by yorgos SOS I have kind of a personal rule where I try I try at least not to go into movies with a ton of expectation just because you know my innocence as a film Reviewer is uh a little bit tarnish compared to maybe your average person like you know I try to avoid trailers and such if I can though it does you know it is quite difficult a lot of the time but I admit with this one I I did build it up a lot just because you know it's it's your G Lano I just adore him as as a filmmaker as an artist and I I've talked about his films I think on here a couple of times but um yeah I just think he's one of the very best directors in the world I know that his style of dialogue and maybe his style of satire might be a little bit stilted for some people even for myself I wasn't fully on board the first time that I saw alanthus film just because I found um him to be a little bit too calculated I felt like he was slightly overworking a lot of the tragic comedy aspects of his films at times the metaphors at least um but for whatever reason when I saw the favorite it just really clicked for me which is interesting because that's the one film where he did not direct and write it he only directed it and it allows for a lot of the absurdism and a lot of those things that he's exploring to be more I think just settled overall and they feel more whole and that's just my personal opinion but now we have poor things which it's quite an experience and I you know it's hard to describe it it's it's whimsical it's plucky it's prickly like most Yos lanthimos films are it is ultimately a a Coming of Age story but it is so dense in its visuals and its World building because of that it can go in all these interesting directions it feels more free and more confident it can burst into color you know after it's been in black and white for a long time it can slip into yes surreal absurdism it Embraces the gray area and the more clean cut everything that is honest but through some sort of Gothic kaleidoscopic fairy tale type of experience felt yes like the essence of of Terry gillium or like Monty Python but filtered again through through the lenos style I'd call this a a Frankenstein film but you know through a Neo feminist framework though I don't think it's just Neo feminism that we're talking about here I think it carries fragments of all the different struggles of you know the tight ropes we walk as women and men throughout time it's like you can feel all that subliminal stuff just echoing through the imagery in this film I kept just seeing in my mind like flashes of like I don't know like nail markings in an asylum from like a woman who might have been labeled hysterical can't help but think of the yellow wallpaper the short story which is you know kind of exploring a woman trapped in her surroundings by a man and you just the mental Decay creating kind of a glitch in the imagery a glitch in the pattern and Emma Stone just carries all of these flashes just kind of flickering in her eyes and just through her her facial expressions she is yeah representing that feral Untamed girl that must be ravaged essentially the idea of what really is Woman and in the contradictions there because yes the woman is diminutive and submissive by nature and yet so powerful in her Temptation that she's often the one in control just in a a different way Lanos is known as a writer for how he can use a lot of the Civilized social manipulations of words to contrast the more honest behavior from humans to highlight you know the peculiarity of how we survive around one another it's very kubrican in that sense some accuse him of being maybe too kubrican um but I do think think that his style is more pointedly dry and I do think in poor things he's really separating himself and becoming more and more his own in a way that I find to be really breathtaking it uses all of its devices so well like you know this is set in the Victorian era and that's perfect because naturally that's going to highlight the discrepancies between you know that hedonistic sexual urge that we all have and of course the polished you know civilized society The Comedy of manners aspect of of Lanos films and of course just the the exaggerated idea of you know the main character having a woman's body but she has a child's brain so she can explore everything with the responsibilities of being a woman and yet she has the childlike brain that is going to grow through the experience exploring human behavior through ART in order to highlight maybe the humor of it we see that a lot but I just I've never quite seen it done in the way that we see it from yor G Lanos and I I felt like him using sexuality for this particular movie I mean that being kind of at the Forefront of things I really just thought was was genius because the thing about sex and you know it's like I think about this all the time who doesn't but it's just like the colorful Kinks people have most of these things no one will ever know most people will never utter it and yet all of this is so ridiculously commonplace it's like you don't know the person who was sitting across from you in the break room at work it's like they could be freaks this giant unspoken secret between adults and it's like yes it's the contradiction of sex being the most Primal visceral impulse or one of them that we experience as humans the need to be mature as an adult on the subject of Sex and the emotions that it can muster all of that it can turn people into absolute monsters idiots raving lunatics children so again this is a wonderful way to explore all the comedy the darkness the complexity of our protagonist and just the complexity of human beings and the film makes you feel all kinds of different things I think it's it's beautiful it's wondrous but it's also very squalid it's very uh perverse always intriguing but it never loses its sense of what it is it doesn't get overwhelmed by its own ideas or new metaphors that it's introducing at least I would say for the first two acts um they continue to grow and fuse into new things and it's always exciting and there are a few times in the movie where you're just really not sure like what kind of space am I hanging in I really don't know what's going on here we have scenes that turned into these strange screw ball kind of Comedy dance sequences to philosophical chats with Jared carmichel I'm not kidding he has a cameo in this film I never expected that from alanos for sure but uh yeah that's the kind of Cameo that could absolutely be so jarring in the wrong ways and it could totally fall flat and yet it was jarring but in a way that completely works because I think this film is just more evolved than a lot of the ones that I see it has an understanding of its World it has an understanding of the humor and the camp factor and I have to give Emma Strone so much credit because she carries so much of the weight of this film on her shoulders and I think this is absolutely without question her best performance she's ever given I think it's truly an artist dream to be a part of a movie like this if you just really love to be creative and explore that inner actor that you always wanted to be because here it's like yeah you're having permission you get permission to rid yourself of all those inhibitions and you you can look as crazy as you want you can look as ugly or strange as you want and that's the point and stone has had a really interesting career in the sense that yeah she started off more in like comedies and then she slowly started to establish herself as a really charismatic movie star of course she wins her Oscar for La La Land great reform but you know it is a movie star type part it is safe and now she can go a little bit crazy because she she's done everything and I'm really loving that she's doing that I'm loving that she's willing to challenge herself where so many people would just kind of phone it in from this point and here she's reminding me of some of the great European actresses that I always like to talk about because she is that committed in the performance and this reminded me of like a Isabella aani from um possession one of my favorite films and one of my favorite performances by a female you want to talk about Fearless that is the one she's tumultuous in the most terrifying ways and she takes you to a level of fear that very few people can and I don't think that Emma Stone has quite gone to that level but she's absolutely channeling it and she's she's fairly close her face is perfect I think for this type of role because yes she's you know she's got such big wide eyes and they seem so innocent just you know at first glance and uh yeah I mean again you know it makes perfect sense for why she'd play somebody that's very childlike and I think the range that she's built throughout her career has given her the ability to bring these kinds of Shades to a role like this it's the kind of thing that I feel like you you work your whole career to get to a point like this Bella the main character in this is essentially you know like a symbol for a a feminist and yes the the idea of feminism these days or the word feminism I should say is is definitely a dirty word understandably and if you've watched my reviews you know that I have you know I'm quite opinionated on that subject I think a lot of the Neo feminist films these days tend to try to explore feminism but they only do so where it's skin deep and yet again I can't help that I'm having a little bit of a mixed reaction because on one hand it's like yes this movie is giving me all the things that I wish that other feminist films would and I found this film way more relatable way more interested in in the woman's experience a woman you know searching for her autonomy and identity is always going to be relatable in some fashion I think but it's just about how you do it and you know for a while this film was just so refreshing in that sense but then at the same time once our character starts to navigate more the Muddy Waters of sexuality I feel like there's less to be gain for her just from a narrative perspective and thus I feel like a lot of the points don't hit home as much in the third act and as she starts to lose herself I feel like we don't really feel that sense of darkness and the repercussions of it for her and I guess if I wanted this to be truly relatable in the ways that you know fully hit home for me that would exist in the film a woman when she reaches a certain age starts to realize that she has a a sexual power over men and that is something that they use as a means of control naturally and um you know here I just felt like her sense of Liberation when she's kind of plateaued to a certain level it's like where do you go from here then it's just kind of a sense of aimlessness and I do think the film is emphasizing that which I think is really important that is an aspect of feminism that a lot of these movies do miss but no in truth it's way more complicated than that and sexuality often reinforces the will of man re reinforces the dominance of man uh as much as women want to pretend that's not true and so you know the cycle can be quite vicious I don't see that as a Neo feminist struggle I think that women throughout time have struggled with the a lot of these ideas to varying degrees and from the feminist angle the Neo feminist angle if we want to talk about that the need for the woman to have her cake and eat it too so to speak you know it often creates caveats in the feminist argument from from my point of view and so yeah that starts to happen here it's like Bella starts to become that person she starts to feel you know bitter and angry at people and she starts to want to explore more means of control more that the dominant gene that she has more the masculine aspects of herself you learn about why she is the way that she is her origin story in a sense um uh in the movie and yeah that plays a huge part in What She represents she is a broken woman trying to be pieced together from the start it's like she's born into kind of a circumstance that is going to be difficult for her it's like she's born you know in a broken home in a sense she only has a father so her situation always being at the hands of men all of that that is heavily going to shape how she is obviously but she's also steering that ship and she's going to really start to navigate things in interesting ways and I found all of that really cool the way it was percolating but again I do wish that the uh the third act could have explored her struggles a little bit more especially the darkness that comes from the aftermath of all of these choices that she's made up to this point and also maybe this is just me this is something that I crave in these types of movies but I think it would be really nice for like a feminist film to have like a romantic male lead who's like really complex where she like meets her match to show that men can be more than just barriers for women in in various ways that they can actually serve them in interesting ways they're more than archetypes here like to me I think it would be really interesting is like what if Bella met somebody that actually challenges her that she actually likes what if somebody got to her heart now that would be interesting that's where we get to see who she really is I feel like you would get a better sense of what she's learned through something like that though again maybe I should watch the film again maybe I've missed some things but I will say I think that the William defo character in the movie I thought he was just wonderful it's like a really pleasant surprise he provides the light and shade that we need here he's like the one male character one of the few male characters I should say who who has an honesty about him yes in the beginning you see him one way but then he like that gets subverted it's like he's called God because he is you know the person who created the Frankenstein monster he is the one who controls Bella and so naturally you have all of those stereotypical images in your head of like the mad scientist villain and like you know he's a sadist all these things but ultimately he's a gentle soul and he's quite understanding of Bella he's the only person who gives her a chance to reach her true potential even if it means losing her because he actually cares about her and you know his paternal instincts he says in the movie outweigh his sexual interests and there's a real Beauty about that I love that he's learning to do things not selfishly yes he he's doing a lot of things for selfish purposes in the movie but slowly he starts to learn from them he came from the worst circumstances himself and yet it's played for comedy in the most brilliant way but yeah he's able to see the world in a different way because he found an unlikely love and that I thought was yes really really beautiful and I thought well that was one of the more powerful relationships in the entire film by far and William defil he's just magnificent it's like we know that he's funny and yet I saw another shade to his comedy ability here it's just the ACC that he's using just adds another layer of humor the inflections The Gentle Way with which he is presenting such brutal information to us very innocuous information he is just one of our most Fearless performers and I think yeah this movie really requires its actors to be Fearless maybe it is too Freudian to get into but yes paternal and romantic feelings can sometimes overlap in interesting circumstances and yes I think a feminist experience where the woman must face potential rewards a man could offer her I think would make for a more emotionally Rich experience as a story I have to tell you I loved I loved this movie I absolutely love it and I cannot wait to watch it again and if you are a Yos Lanos fan you have to see this film because it is just another wonderful addition to his Canon and something I think you will also like it's obviously something that is very him and yet I think you will be surprised by it which is fantastic this is him at his most playful I think and he's more loose when it comes to trying to explore different things and this is just a dazzling movie and it takes you in all kinds of interesting directions and I just I love him for it and I think this is absolutely one of the best films of the year so see it see it and that is my review thank you guys so much for watching I'm going to plug my website as always it is deep focus lin.com I'm an artist I do commission portraits and I sell prints of my work if that is something that you're interested in you can always go to the website below and if you have a question about a commission or a print you can always email me my email is in the description box below as well Al I'd like to give a shout out to 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Channel: deepfocuslens

Views: 40,266

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Id: sWPj8r0Ugbs

Length: 15min 16sec (916 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 15 2023