Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Bugonia (2025)

Teddy: We're just leveling the playing field.

It's not torture. Torture is what it's done to us.

I know that Yorgos Lanthimos' Bugonia got four Oscar nominations -- including one for Best Picture -- but I still feel as if this movie walked out of 2025 somewhat underappreciated. Nobody really thought it was actually going to win any of those awards, after all. I think it's just that Yorgos has proven so consistently excellent and interesting and provocative that he's become a victim of his own awesomeness. Even if I, a person who put Bugonia at #8 on my favorite films of last year, were to rank his films, Bugonia would end up somewhere mid-tier. But that's all just a matter of infintesimal degrees because I am a hossana-singer for every damn one of them. And Bugonia's goddamned great. In fact, you know what, I might re-watch Bugonia this very evening in order to celebrate the birth of the great Jesse Plemons, which coincidentally is also the reason for this post. See -- I told you Bugonia was under-appreciated, because the great Jesse Plemons didn't deservedly get nominated for Best Actor for it. Four noms shoulda been five dammit! In summation go watch Bugonia yourselves and try to tell me I'm not correct on all of this. And then go buy the vinyl of Jerskin Fendrix's score too. That banger was second only to Jonny Greenwood's One Battle After Another music, if you ask me! We might not be lucky in much these days but we're lucky to have Yorgos making movies!   

And the BUGONIA vinyl from @waxworkrecords.bsky.social too! I say “Jerskin” you say “Fendrix” - JERSKIN!

[image or embed]

— Jason Adams (@jamnpp.bsky.social) March 31, 2026 at 9:03 PM

Don't You Forget About Bugonia

Yes this review went up last week when the film opened in limited release but now that it's in wide release I thought I'd remind you that you can read my thoughts on Yorgos Lanthimos' latest film Bugonia at this link if you're so inclined. It's another banger from the Dogtooth man and I hope y'all feel the same. I mean you won't change my mind but it would be nice if we didn't have to be all awkward about it around the Thanksgiving turkey when the time comes. Anyway I hope somebody dresses up as Emma Stone in it for Halloween tonight! I was going to say that "I hope I see" somebody dressed up as her but who am I kidding -- I'm not going out. I am going straight home from work and watching a couple of horror movies and going to bed at a reasonable hour like the pile of dust that I am. In related news -- Jerskin Fendrix's score for Bugonia, also a banger, is now available for pre-order on vinyl thanks to Waxwork Records, you can buy that over here. I heftily recommend, it's killer stuff. I mean Jonny Greenwood should still win the Oscar for his One Battle After Another music -- which you can also pre-order right here if you're so inclined -- but Bugonia is my number two score of 2025 as of right this minute. What scores have you loved this year?

Save the Yorgos Planet!

There is a new movie from Yorgos Lanthimos out this weekend! Maybe you heard about it? Like one of the dozen times I posted about it? Or somewhere else, even. It's called Bugonia and it re-teams the Poor Things and Kinds of Kindness director with Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons in a remake of the 2003 South Korean sci-fi comedy Save the Green Planet! -- what did I think of it, you ask? Well I thought many things actually and you can read many of them over at Pajiba right now in my review. So click, go, read! You know the drill. 

Emma Stone is Our Business Lady Alien Overlord

As I said last June when it was first announced that Yorgos Lanthimos next movie Bugonia would be a remake of Joon-Hwan Jang's 2003 South Korean comedy Save the Green Planet! it's been a really long time since I've seen the original, so I remember very little save the basic concept -- two worker bees kidnap the queen (in the original film's case king) bee convinced that he/she is an alien set out to destroy humanity. So I can't tell you, now having watched the first full trailer for Bugonia how different it might seem from the original -- what I can tell you however is I fully laughed out loud about a dozen times watching it, and I couldn't be more psyched for this. I shared the gorgeous poster yesterday, see it here; oh and if you don't want to watch a full trailer but want to get a more general vibe you can watch the teaser right here. Or watch this and get psyched a la me:

Bugonia is out on Halloween, with a special limited release a week earlier -- or if you're a fancy-pants person in Venice for their film festival the movie is premiering today. Fuckers. Anyway I'm going to go re-watch Save the Green Planet this weekend, I think. I remember liking it quite a bit at the time.

The Sweet Sweet Bugonia Poster

I have in my movie poster collection like four posters from Kinds of Kindness and as many if not more from Poor Things, and it looks like that trend is going to continue with Yorgos Lanthimos' next movie Bugonia because this here first poster dropping today? Smashing, gorgeous, perfect, I must own it immediately. It's giving me big Peter Strickland vibes actually. There's something very In Fabric about it (see below) -- I guess it's the red and the mannequin-ish head. (Although I do think that's actually Emma Stone under there -- just a bald Emma Stone.) I do think of Lanthimos and Strickland as connected filmmakers, although I'm a weirdo who'd say Strickland is the more interesting and out-there one of the two. Who'd have ever thought that you could call Yorgos Lanthimos the mainstream one? And yet here we are. Anyway we're getting the first trailer for Bugonia tomorrow so stay tuned for that! See all my preious posters on the movie right here. 

Jerskin It

I'm at work so I haven't been able to watch this yet myself but I figure maybe some of you freaks will be as excited about this as I am -- Yorgos Lanthimos has directed a music video starring Emma Stone for a song called "Beth's Farm" off the upcoming album of Jerskin Fendrix, the dude who's composed music for Yorgos' last couple of movies. And that's the exact same music video I posted above! What a coincidence. Fendrix was a musician before he made the music for Poor Things, Kinds of Kindness, and Yorgos' upcoming movie Bugonia -- this song's off his second record, which is called Once Upon A Time. . . In Shropshire and out in October. You can pre-order it right here if you like what you hear above. All of this is well and good but will somebody tell me is "Jerskin Fendrix" is a real name or he made that thing up, because I definitely suspect the latter. I wanna be called Jerskin dammit.

Home, Home on the Rage

It's time for the second review drop of today, and once again it's me bucking up against the system, dropping truth bombs outside the mainstream, baby! Click on over to Pajiba to read my thoughts on Ari Aster's latest, the COVID-era Neo-western Eddington starring Pedro Pscal and Joaquin Phoenix, which got a cold pretty shoulder in Cannes but which I loved. I will admit it took me two viewings to find my way to that love -- it was a rough sit on my first go-round and I thought I might have hated it at first. But I couldn't stop thinking about it and that second view spun me right around. It's dry dark comedy at its absolute cruelest, with a shit-heap's worth to say about the madness of right now. Anyway we love a good challenge and hoo boy is Eddington one of those. Go see it this weekend!

Save the Green Yorgos

We are at the half-point of the year so we're already seeing people make lists of their best movies of 2025.5 -- I'm not doing that, at least not right this second. But I have been thinking about what's left for the second half of the year that I'm most looking forward to, and while there are several examples the number one might just be Bugonia from Yorgos Lanthimos. He hasn't done me wrong yet. So what a coincidence that they dropped the teaser trailer for Bugonia today! Watch:

The film reunites the director with Emma Stone because of course, as well as Jesse Plemons who was so terrific in Kinds of Kindness last year. When this movie was announced and I posted about it EXACTLY ONE YEAR AGO TODAY (how weird is that?) I mentioned it's a remake of a South Korean movie from 2003 called Save the Green Planet! which is about... well exactly the plot laid forth in that teaser. Looks like the only change is the businessman getting kidnapped is now a businesswoman. Feminism! Woke! Anyway this tease made me even more excited -- Bugonia's out on October 24th. I bet it's playing NYFF then! Whee!

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Beau is Afraid (2023)

Mona: You let things happen to you. 

Do you think that makes you innocent?

Happy 76 to Patti Lupone today! I rewatched 

this movie a few weeks ago and my god it holds up. 

Oh and since we're here I guess I should share this:

That's the teaser for Ari Aster's next movie Eddington, which reunites him with Beau star Joaquin Phoenix while adding to the mix Emma Stone, Pedro Pascal, Austin Butler, Clifton Collins Jr., and most importantly my beloved Deirdre O'Connell who's been in everything but recently tore it up as Colin Farrell's sick-headed momma in The Penguin. I'll just admit it right now -- I have not watched this teaser and I still have no fucking idea what Eddington is about, and I plan on keeping it that way for as long as possible. I don't need to know! Just put the fucking thing in front of me already. Unfortunately I'll probably learn more between now and its release date of July 18th. (Probably when it screens at Cannes and all of the fancypants who go to Cannes start jabbering on, sigh.)

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Poor Things (2023)

Swiney: We must work. We must make money. 

But more than that Bella, we must experience everything. 

Not just the good, but degradation, horror, sadness. 

This makes us whole, Bella, makes us people of substance. 

Not flighty, untouched children. Then we can know the world. 

And when we know the world, the world is ours. 

Bella: I want that. 

Swiney: Now go and fuck someone and bring me ten francs.

A grand 68th birthday to the singular Kathryn Hunter.

Yorgos Has a Bugonia in His Bonnet

I had heard about Yorgos Lanthimos' next movie a full month ago but when new news on it dropped yesterday I realized I never posted about it -- I guess I was in the thick of the Tribeca Film Fest and forgot to. Anyway, said news -- his next movie is titled Bugonia and it is apparently a remake of the super psychotic 2003 South Korean eco-comedy Save the Green Planet! made originally by director Joon-Hwan Jang and starring the adorable Shin Ha-kyun (of Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance fame). I haven't seen that movie since it came out but I remember it being incredibly over-the-top and bizarre...

... it tells the story of a couple who kidnap a big fancy businessman, convinced he's an alien set out to kill the human race. From the description of Yorgos' take it sounds like some stuff's been changed -- the "couple" are now "two conspiracy obsessed young men" (no word on them being a couple or not) and the CEO is now a woman. And since Emma Stone is one of the two cast members we know about, it's probably safe to assume that will be her. The other name is Emma's Kinds of Kindness co-star Jesse Plemons, who's great in that movie (my review) and fits right into Yorgos-land so I'd expect them to work together often in the future. Anyway we also have a release date for the film -- November 7th 2025. So awhile! That'll be a big break in between Yorgos movies, given how piled on top of one another Poor Things and Kindness seemed to be. Anyway any new Yorgos is good news, huzzah!

I'll Show You My Kindness If You Show Me Yours

In case you missed this on my socials over the weekend here is my review of Yorgos Lanthimos' latest Kinds of Kindness over at Pajiba -- or, if you listen to the people leaving comments there, not review. Just a collection of words I guess because I didn't say "Gawrsh I liked the score" or some shit. I know, I know -- I shouldn't even be reading comments on the other bigger sites I write for, much less letting them stick in my craw like this. But I worked especially hard on this review and I was extremely pleased with and excited by what I wrote, and then it kinda got met with a vacuum of silence and I've been feeling a bit frustrated about it all weekend. Newsflash: sometimes the internet can be frustrating! Who knew? Anyway I'll try to care less about what I write in the future and just plop out a bunch of poster-prepped exclamations. "Emma Stone is the actress of her generation!" There do I get a goddamned cookie now? (Thank goodness I have this very private website where I can rant like a whiny little bitch and nobody will notice, right?)

Jon Hamm Five Times

Jon Hamm is looking mighty fine for the cover shoot in The Hollywood Reporter this week -- I guess he's gunning for awards attention for his role on Fargo this season? I actually wrote an entire piece at Mashable back in January about how great he was on that, read that here. That dickhead he played really brought out his best work in ages. Indeed the entire theme of this article seems to borrow the center of my piece, which is Jon Hamm should really only play dickheads. It's really where he shines. That said he comes across as perfectly lovely in the chat -- he gives a shout-out to Julio Torres, for goodness' sake. (I also love that it's Emma Stone who told him to keep an eye on Torres -- Stone is proving world-class in sussing out talent early.) Anyway I'm sure you're just here for the photos, so let's do the photos, after the jump...

The Kings of Kindness

That there is the first official poster for Yorgos Lanthimos' Kinds of Kindness, designed by the great Vasilis Marmatakis who's done most of Yorgos' previous posters -- and like with all the other ones I'm gonna end up buying this beauty too! Anyway along with that they dropped a new teaser for the movie, you can watch it down below. I have not watched it myself -- I watched the first teaser about five thousand times and now I am done watching things until I am watching the movie on June 21st. In similar news no I haven't watched the trailer for Ti West's MaXXXine yet and I don't think I shall! I decided I will watch it after I watch the movie in full. I don't need trailers for these movies -- I just need these movies dammit! 

Kinds of Awesomeness

One assumes that one and all have already witnessed the teaser trailer for Yorgos Lanthimos' new movie Kinds of Kindess this morning, before one clicked over here to this website -- and yet we post it. We must. It's given us goosebumps, it has! It does exactly what a teaser should do -- tease us, give us no idea of a plot, just a bunch of ridiculously alluring and disturbing images, an idea of the outrageous cast (Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, Jesse Plemons, Margaret Qualley,  Hunter Schafer, Hong Chau, Mamoudou Athie, and Joe Alwyn) and some goddamned Annie Lennox. What else does one need? Granted I was sold on this movie before insemination so perhaps I don't speak for one and all. But I speak for the people who matter. Watch:

Kinds of Kindess will be out on June 21st.

Kinds of Yorgos-ness

This is yesterday's news, literally, but I'm gonna be real annoyed with myself in a few weeks time when I go searching to see where the post is where I shared the announcement of Yorgos Lanthimos' new movie and remember that oh right you took that day off to play hooky and go see Dune Part Two in IMAX. Anyway we've known about Yorgos' next movie for awhile now (here is my last post about it) -- it used to be called And but perhaps they realized that a movie called And would be lost unto the search engines forever (which I figured was part of the joke) so they have now officialled retitled the film Kinds of Kindess. And they have also given it a release date -- June 21st. (98 days to go!) And they have also announced a big chunk of the cast -- of course Emma Stone because I don't know if Yorgos and Emma are ever going to make another movie without each other at this point. 

I do believe they already have two more lined up after this one! But then there's Willem Dafoe (again), Joe Alwyn (again),  Margaret Qualley (again), plus the supremely talented Yorgos-newbies Jesse Plemons, Hunter Schafer, Mamoudou Athie, and Hong Chaun and god we love Hong Chau. Almost as much as we love a director who has a repertory of players. I do wish he'd work with Rachel Weisz or Colin Farrell or Ben Whishaw or Olicia Colman again. Or Mark Ruffalo. And also I have a list of about ten thousand actors he hasn't worked with I'd like to see him work with. Point being Yorgos don't you dare ever take a break!

It's Asters & Screams All Over

I have spent the past couple of hours fully immersed in pounding out a review (more on that later this week) so I missed until now some pretty big rounds of casting news that hit a little earlier today. Like A24 officially announced Ari Aster's next movie and its cast! It's called Eddington, it's a "contemporary western," and it will star "Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone, Luke Grimes, Austin Butler, Deirdre O'Connell, Micheal Ward and Clifton Collins Jr." among presumably other people with lower name recognition. That's one hell of a cast though, especially with Stone fresh of her Oscar win and Pascal fresh off his bottoming-western with Pedro Almodóvar. All they say is "Coming Soon" but I can't imagine "Soon" equals any sooner than 2025 at the soonest. Not sure if the image of the clapboard they also shared means it's starting to shoot right now or if it's been shooting:

Either way, whee new Ari! Three features down and the man can do no wrong from where I stand. But wait that news ain't all the news that broke whilst I was actually off "doing work" (yawn I know). It looks as if the shitbags who operate the Scream franchise these days have fixed one of their two recent major blunders -- our Sidney Prescott herself Neve Campbell is officially back for Scream 7 after bowing out of the last one when the bastards refused to pay her properly. She posted on Instagram a very sweet note about how much she loves playing the character yadda yadda the girl got paid and good for her. 

But it's not just that -- original Scream writer Kevin Williamson is taking over directing duties of the film! Which I guess makes it official that the directors of the last two movies, aka Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (aka Radio Silence as they liked to be called), are gone -- there was of course a huge dust-up (bringing us back to the other recent shitty blunder I alluded to above) when the studio canned nü-Scream star Melissa Barrera for making pro-Palestine comments on social media, leading to her co-star Jenna Ortega saying peace-out in solidarity. Anyway since I don't know all of the specifics of who's running things on the movie at this point but I'm keeping myself even-toned on all of this because it's bullshit that they fired Barrera and I'm somewhat hesitant to woop-woop up this Neve news if it means I'm supporting those free-speech-murdering fascists. Even though... I love my girl Sidney forever and ever. So we'll see. I will just decide how I feel later dammit!

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Neve Campbell (@nevecampbell)

Eat Me, Disney

A terrible awful no-good rumor popped up on Twitter last night and the worst part about it is that it seems to be coming from a person who would know, and therefore it's not a rumor but a fact that we just haven't gotten further confirmation upon -- a dude who works on the making of physical media says that not only will Disney only be putting Yorgos Lanthimos' Oscar-nominated Poor Things out on blu-ray only (talk about a movie that demands 4K attention!) but Andrew Haigh's not-Oscar-nominated masterpiece (my number one movie of 2023) All of Us Strangers isn't getting any kind of physical media release at all. Is that the real difference between getting a nomination and not getting one? Do we have tangible proof now? And don't come at me with that box office jibber-jabber -- I don't speak box office. I do speak physical-media though and if AOUS isn't getting a blu-ray because it didn't get Oscar nominations you're about to see somebody start caring about Oscar nominations. And for that a hearty fuck you to Disney. Fingers crossed that Haigh's movie gets a release outside of the U.S. since I have a region-free player -- I should add that technically all of this is personally moot since I got an awards screener of the film mailed to me a few months ago so technically I own the movie already, but those crappy watermakred DVDs don't really count. What a shitshow. 

... this title will sit alongside other Searchlight and 20th Century titles like 'A Haunting in Venice' and 'The Bookeyman' with no 4K release - Blu Ray only. The recently acclaimed Searchlight, #AllOfUsStrangers will not be getting a physical release at all.😭

— Adam J. Yeend (@AJYeend) February 13, 2024

The Sounds of Miss Bella Baxter

I tried to hold off on collecting vinyl for as long as I possibly could because I know myself and I knew the habit would become as obsessive as my VHS to DVD to blu-ray to 4K journey has been. Alas I finally broke down a couple of years ago, and I've got just under 400 records now -- not the world's largest collection by any means but when actual living space is at such a premium, given that I live in a New York City apartment with another human being, well, all of this collecting is straining toward a breaking point. Thankfully that day is not today though, because Waxwork Records -- the best in the biz for those of us whose vinyl collecting tends toward the movie soundtrack genre -- has today put the soundtrack for Yorgos Lanthimos' new movie Poor Things onto pre-order on vinyl. Grab your copy here if you're so inclined -- I haven't really posted about vinyl releases much here (hence that preamble) so I don't even know if any of this interests any of you! But that's not a thing that's stopped me from rambling before and I'm not going to let it stop me today. 

Poor Things is coincidentally (I doubt it was a coincidence) hitting theaters today! It is very very good, one of Yorgos' best movies (which is saying a lot since I don't think the fellow has made a bad movie to date) -- here is my review from NYFF. Emma Stone gives probably my favorite female performance of the year? I haven't actually mapped that question out yet but I think that's true. Anyway the score from composer Jerskin Fendrix that's on the above-mentioned record is definitely one of my favorite scores of the year. And I'm not just saying that now -- I tweeted it weeks ago! I have receipts.

Also cannot believe the score for POOR THINGS is the first movie score that musician Jerskin Fendrix has ever made? It's bonkers good #poorthings

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) November 6, 2023

Haulin' Ass to the Holiday

Shortened day today as we head into the holiday -- MNPP will be closed up for new sexy business until Monday the 27th. It's kind of a slow week for new releases, weirdly -- usually Thanksgiving gets a heap for people to run from their relatives with? But all we've got is Ridley Scott's Napoleon (which I wrote a little about here) and Disney's animated Wish (which I haven't seen) and Dream Scenario with Nic Cage which I have seen and have not written about -- it's fine? It should have been far better, I had high hopes for it because its main idea is a great one. It just decides to lose itself in ideas I didn't find very interesting instead of the ones you do, given its concept. It's not terrible or anything though, and I say that as someone deeply skeptical of Cage. Perhaps youi'll dig it more. All of that said there are a couple of movies from last weekend that are still out that I do highly and deeply recommend -- my pervert lover Saltburn is expanding into a bunch more theaters so more of you will finally be able to see what the fuss about, which makes me happy given it's one of my favorites of the year. Here's my review if you missed it. Same with Todd Haynes' May December -- here's my review of that wonderful weird movie. 

Guess I'm not going to have time to fully review THANKSGIVING which is a shame so here's a brief one: GO FRIGGIN SEE IT, it's so much fun, an old-school slasher blast of hilarious and relentless nastiness that should play like gangbusters with an audience #ThanksgivingMovie pic.twitter.com/BX2EgWXtWB

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) November 17, 2023

And Eli Roth's Thanksgiving is still in theaters! As stated in the tweet seen above I never properly reviewed that but there are my thoughts -- I'm actually dying to see it a second time and so I might go over the holiday myself. And given what a goddamned hermit I've become that's really saying something. Oh and the new Hunger Games is still out and it's better than it has any right being -- here's my review of that. Other than that I have heaps upon heaps of awards screeners that've been piled up in my inbox so I'm hoping to catch up on things I haven't yet seen this year.. either that or I'll just watch Saltburn, All of Us Strangers, and Poor Things on a loop for five straight days, because all three of those arrived in my inbox yesterday and they're really all I want to watch anyway. But if y'all see something interesting, tell me about it in the comments as always!

Oh and now for one more thing of total self-interest (what's new) -- if you do any Black Friday shopping at Amazon why not do it through this link here, which tosses a few pennies our way? Consider it a tip for me keeping you in Paul Mescal Ass all year long! Or you can buy some of the rad shit I have for sale on eBay right now -- and I add things weekly to my store because I lack self-control and buy lots of things and then decide I don't want or need them and list them on eBay. It'll probably expand exponentially over the next few weeks too as awards merch comes in from the studios that I have no desire to own (I just got a box full of stuff from the movie Air and uhh yeah that's very clearly not my jam). So do continue to keep checking there. Or if you care to (i.e. if you love me) just donate to MNPP via PayPal, which you can do at that link or via the one in the right-hand column. It's the holidays! Love me some dammit!

Seriously though have a great holiday, everyone.

We'll see you next week!