Bugonia

This movie is a really good mix of genres in typical lanthimos styles, there's especially a lot of his sicked black humour as well as unexpected drama, horror and sci fi. Performances are all great but it's the finale that for me really elevates the movie. Funny, coherent, surprising, visually amazing.

The soundtrack was great too, looking forward to its general release to see the audience reaction.

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.

I am a big fan of Yorgos Lanthimos as a director from his previous films like "Poor Things" and "Kinds of Kindness", both of which I think are among the best movies of recent years. I also liked "The Lobster".

Now he is back with his former collaborators, actors Jesse Plemons and Emma Stone in the new film "Bugonia", which I think is another contender for best film of the year.

The story is about two men who kidnap a CEO because they think she is an alien trying to destroy the earth. Emma Stone plays the CEO and Jesse Plemons plays one of the kidnappers.

They both give excellent performances worthy of an Academy Award nomination. And the film is superbly shot by the cinematographer Robbie Ryan. I think this is the most beautifully photographed movie I have seen all year. And the production design and the music score are both very good. I recommend this movie to anyone who has enjoyed the previous work of Yorgos Lanthimos. A bizarre but enjoyable film.

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.