Bugonia

Lanthimos strikes again! And it's another masterpiece. Black Comedy, Satire, Social critic on internet conspiracy theories, weird, absurd, witty, bloody and last but not least a nihilistic comment on mankind working on its own extinction.

And what an intelligent screenplay it is! And all in all an exciting and entertaining movie with surprising twists. How many times can you leave the theatre feeling refreshed and inspired, because you know you have just watched something you have never seen on a screen before? Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons deliver great performances, on top of their skills. It's such a pleasure to watch actors with their depth and intensity.

I loved the whole experience, it's a brilliant movie, strongly recommended.

Plemons sinks into this role like wet cement.

If Heath Ledger's Joker was chaos on fire, Plemons is the silence that burns before the explosion. The yin to that yang. No makeup, no theatrics, just a man quietly losing his grip one inch at a time. You can't look away.

His scenes of him 'brainwashing' his cousin exudes a natural darkness I cannot recall ever seeing on screen before.

Don't get me wrong, Emma Stone is terrific here, carrying that same cool, unreadable spark that Tilda Swinton built a career on, only with a younger, brighter edge. Stone has already collected two Oscars, though, and what really catches you off guard is Jesse Plemons, who turns in a performance so sharp and so unsettling that you keep thinking you've never quite seen him push himself like this.

"Bugonia" eases in with what looks like a simple setup, just two men talking, one dominating the dialogue while the other tries to keep pace, and before you realize it the whole thing has shifted into a story that moves fast yet stays grounded enough to feel like something that could unfold a few blocks from where you live. I was hooked from the first scene and stayed that way nearly all the way through, though the ending lingers longer than it needs to, just enough to place it a step below "Poor Things." Even so, it is unmistakably a Yorgos Lanthimos production, and it carries that same strange, irresistible flavor that makes his work so easy to sink into.

London Film Festival review

For a moment BUGONIA is like watching "Misery" or "Funny Games" through the lens of 1950s Hollywood dystopian paranoia films. Yorgos follows the sadistic path he started in The Killing of a Sacred Deer and Kinds Of Kindness playing with Kubrick-like visuals and sounds to deliver a fairly straightforward cynical fable until it's not.

Emma and Jesse explore a violent theatricality and beautiful expressionism to great success. Both are harrowing and spectacular (this is Plemons best part ever) but are also limited by the linearity of it all. The last act reconnects Lanthimos with his subversive, unpredictable and absurd poetry but I guess Media, Politics and Truths are this year's true topics. Not surprising this film shares common grounds with Eddington.

I wanted to love it but I just really really liked it.

Bugonia is a classic Yorgos Lanthimos movie as it examines the darkest parts of human nature in a characteristically darkly comedic fashion but it also offers something different when it operates as a tense thriller. It's a neatly structured film that only gets better once things properly escalate in a genuinely shocking way and it reaches a satisfying conclusion. This is another recent release which really feels of the moment.

Jesse Plemons is amazing by being fully committed to the naivety of his character which makes him equally threatening and gullible. Emma Stone is effortlessly confident and funny as she slowly begins to control the situation, continuing her winning collaboration with Yorgos in a way that shows her full potential once again. It's the constantly shifting power play between these two that keeps it so investing and unpredictable.

Director Yorgos Lanthimos delivers one of his strongest films to date where the trademark surrealism feels more appropriate thanks to the premise whilst working with some of his most consistent collaborators behind the camera. Robbie Ryan's cinematography knows how to make each scene look beautiful and surreal at the same time, complimented by Jerskin Fendrix's suitably paranoid score ensuring everything feels ominous when needed.