Emma Stone – The Movie Gourmet

KINDS OF KINDNESS: disgustingly indulgent

July 5, 2024July 4, 2024 by movie gourmet

Photo caption: Jesse Plemons in KINDS OF KINDNESS. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.

Yorgos Lanthimos (Poor Things) probably enjoyed writing and directing his disgustingly self-indulgent Kinds of Kindness, but there’s no reason for an audience to waste three hours on it. There are three separate stories – equally bizarre fables in Kinds of Kindness. The same ensemble of actors play different roles in each of the three stories: Jesse Plemons, Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, Mamadou Athie, Hong Chau and Joe Alwyn.

I like absurdism in cinema (see this week’s Mother Couch), but to SOME end; Kinds of Kindness is just an unremitting sequence of outrageously transgressive behavior in weird circumstances. Lanthimos has been quoted that we was exploring relationships and memory, but all we get is a torrent of provocations. So much is being thrown at the screen, including cannibalism, that, at least, it’s not boring.

In the first story, Jesse Plemons plays a corporate lackey who owes everything to his nightmarishly micro-managing boss (Willem Dafoe), who decrees what he wears, what he eats and drinks, when he has sex with his wife. He’s finally baited into saying “no” to th boss for the first time in eleven years, as his life dissolves.
In the second, Plemons plays a cop devastated by the disappearance of his wife (Emma Stone, a marine biologist on a research mission. When she is miraculously rescued, he is convinced that it’s not really her, but some malevolent double. There are two extremely funny moments in this chapter – a stunningly ineffectual psychiatrist and a riotously inappropriate home movie. And, then, there’s cannibalism on the menu.
The final episode involves a cult with a weird fascination for water purity that has sent out scouts (Stone and Plemons) in search for a prophesied young woman who can raise the dead. Stone’s character is kicked out of the cult, and she goes to great lengths to get back in.

Jesse Plemons is exceptional in each of his three roles, and he’s by far the best element of Kinds of Kindness. There’s isn’t a bad performance in Kinds of Kindness, just the finest of screen actors trapped in a bad screenplay. Margaret Qualley continues to act unclothed in what seems to me to be a high proportion of her films.

Lanthimos co-wrote Kinds of Kindness with Efthimis Filippou, as he did with his most off-the-wall work – Dogtooth, which I loved, and The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer, both of which I hated. (Filippou also co-wrote Athina Rachel Tsangari’s hilarious skewering of male competitiveness, Chevalier (which I REALLY loved). )

Unfortunately, Kinds of Kindness is really just Lanthimos’ exercise in devising outrageous behavior for his characters, just because he can. We don’t need to watch.

POOR THINGS: brazen, dazzling, feminist and very funny

January 4, 2024 by movie gourmet

Photo caption: Emma Stone and Willem Dafoe in POOR THINGS. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.

Well, here’s a movie unlike any you have ever seen. Poor Things begins as a Frankenstein movie, and evolves into an outrageously raunchy, funny and thoughtful feminist triumph. The kindly mad scientist Dr. Baxter (Willem Dafoe behind geologic makeup) implants the brain of a fetus into the body of a young woman and creates Bella (Emma Stone). The adult-sized Bella acts like a baby, then a toddler, then a child and so forth as her brain develops.

The key is that Dr. Baxter, confining her to his house, shields the developing Bella from all societal constructs, like common views of morality, manners, religion and gender roles. Bella is driven by the most basic natural human impulses – for pleasure and safety – without ever having learned any inhibitions.

When Bella’s teenage brain rebels, the scientist allows her independence, accepting that she will make mistakes while she learns how to navigate an outside world populated with humans behaving with avarice, lust and ignorance. One such character, hilariously played by Mark Ruffalo, is only too happy to harness Bella’s urges for sexual pleasure to his own benefit. Unfortunately for him, Bella’s brain develops beyond his ability to exploit her.

Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo in POOR THINGS. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.

Poor Things is based on the novel by Alasdair Gray, so he’s the guy who actually imagined this bizarre and singular story, but director/jokester Yorgos Lanthimos has imbued it with his often zany and transgressive sensibilities. I was a big fan of Lanthimos’ absurdist breakthrough film Dogtooth, but then I didn’t like his acclaimed The Favourite and downright hated The Lobster and The Killing of a Scared Deer. I was encouraged by Glenn Kenney’s New York Times dispatch from Venice about how much he despised previous Lanthimos films and yet still loved and admired Poor Things.

The one thing that I didn’t like in Poor Things was when Lanthimos aped Wes Anderson and Terry Gilliam with some overly fanciful sets. Totally unnecessary to the story and a distraction.

Emma Stone’s performance is the year’s most startling. For one thing, she is certainly courageous and a good sport about spending so much of the movie unclothed and simulating sex. But the extraordinary element of her performance is in calibrating the subtle growth in Bella’s development.

Willem Dafoe and Mark Ruffalo are both great, too, and Kathryn Hunter (The Tragedy of Macbeth) elevates yet another supporting role.

Poor Things won the Golden Lion for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival, and made my list of the Best Movies of 2023. A feminist message is cleverly embedded in this brazen, dazzling and very funny movie.

THE FAVOURITE: sex, intrigue and 3 great actresses in a misfire

December 16, 2018 by movie gourmet

Rachel Weisz and Olivia Colman in THE FAVOURITE

Great performances by three great actresses, sex and political intrigue were not enough; the critically praised The Favourite, didn’t work for me. The Favourite is director Yorgos Lanthimos’ version of the reign of Queen Anne, the British monarch from 1705 to 1714. Anne (Olivia Colman), beleaguered by her chronic health problems and perhaps the most heartbreaking childbearing history ever, was easily manipulated by her childhood friend Sarah, Lady Churchill (Rachel Weisz), the wife of England’s greatest general. At some point, Sarah’s unfortunate relation Abigail (Emma Stone) arrives to help at the palace, and begins her own ruthless climb to supplant Sarah.

Colman (especially), Weisz and Stone are quite brilliant here. Colman captures Anne’s neediness, weakness and occasional capriciousness.

Lanthimos is a very witty filmmaker, and he specializes in absurdity, of which there are many touches in The Favourite. Of course, hereditary monarchy, which bestows absolute power upon even the most ill-equipped by the accident of birth, is inherently absurd.

With the exception of Anne’s sex life after the death of her husband, which is imagined (and could be true for all I know – there’s just no evidence for it), the story faithfully follows the arc of history.

I surmise that the problem here is that Lanthimos is too in love with his own wit, and, lingering over his own funny bits, lets the interest drain out of them. I liked his Greek indie Dogtooth, but not his more recent work, particularly The Lobster. And not The Favourite.

LA LA LAND: romantic, vivid and irresistible

December 23, 2016December 23, 2016 by movie gourmet

There’s a profound love story at the heart of La La Land, and it’s told with extravagant musical, visual and acting artistry. In dazzling performances, Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling star as struggling artists (actress and jazz pianist) in contemporary Los Angeles who meet and fall in love. Neither the actress or the musician can buy a break in their careers, and the tension between sticking to their passions and compromising for popular success will determine the future of their relationship. They can’t resist each other, and we, the audience, can resist neither them or La la Land.

Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling are Movie Stars in the best sense of the phrase. Each has a special charisma before a camera; we are driven to watch them and to sympathize with them. There’s a scene when Stone’s character is dining with another man, hears background music that reminds her of Gosling’s and runs to join him at the Rialto Theatre; it’s as authentically romantic as any scene in any movie. When Gosling’s character lashes out and says something hurtful, the expression in Stone’s eyes is absolutely heartbreaking.

La la Land employs music and dance to tell its story in as immersive an experience as in the great 1964 French drama The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. The original music by Justin Hurwitz (Whiplash) is excellent. John Legend co-stars as the leader of an emerging band. The dancing in La La Land is the real thing – we see the full bodies dancing like we did with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly – no phony close-ups and quick cuts.

They are no Fred and Ginger, but Gosling and Stone dance well enough; Gosling started out as a Mouseketeer, after all. Gosling’s voice is not strong, but it’s pleasing (think Chet Baker). Stone finally gets to really belt one out near the finale.

Gosling plays the piano – really plays it – magnificently. Liz Kinnon is credited as Gosling’s piano teacher/coach – and she must have done a helluva job.

All of this comes from writer-director Damien Chazelle, a 31-year-old guy from Rhode Island who most recently made Whiplash. Chazelle has served notice that he’s a remarkable talent.

Chazelle’s use of vivid colors is at the core of La La Land’s hyper-stylized look. Right in the opening scene, notice the colors of cars in the opening traffic jam and then the colors of clothes on the motorists that burst into a production number. Carried throughout the movie, Chazelle’s use of the color palette made me think of the films of Pedro Almodovar. The production design is by David Wasco, who has worked on six Quentin Tarantino films and movies ranging from Rampart to Fifty Shades of Grey. It’s one of the best-looking movies in years.

As befits its title, La La Land is a love letter to Los Angeles. We see locals doing the tourist thing, which I think is very cool, as the stars take in the Watts Towers and the Angels Flight Railway. In a joint homage to LA and to the movies, our lovers watch Rebel Without a Cause at the Rialto and then sneak in the Griffith Observatory after dark themselves.

La La Land’s epilogue is as wistful and emotionally powerful as the storied snowy one in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. This fantasy montage is the emotional climax of La La Land and perhaps its cinematic highlight.

It’s worth noting that golden age of movie musicals was when the Greatest Generation enjoyed them as a diversion from the Depression and world war. We’re well past the apex of movie musicals, but, every so often, a musical arrives at a moment when we are ready to embrace one (Grease, Fame, Flash Dance, Chicago). Now – after the election campaign of 2016 and as the new administration prepares to take over the government – is such a moment.

La La Land is a profound love story, exquisitely told with music, dance and superb acting. It’s a landmark in cinema and one of my Best Movies of 2016.

IRRATIONAL MAN: not bad, but empty

August 22, 2015 by movie gourmet

Woody Allen’s latest, Irrational Man, is about a burn-out who revives his joie de vivre by committing a very grave crime, in the process self-administering a shot of metaphorical adrenaline. That’s all there is in Irrational Man, an entirely plot-driven movie. Skip it.

To be sure, as one would expect with a Woody Allen movie, it is well-acted. Joaquin Phoenix plays the kind of iconoclastic academic whose womanizing and drinking was part of his dashing charm until he sagged into middle age. The ever-lively Parker Posey is a faculty member who is bored with her life and her marriage. Emma Stone plays the precocious but impressionable coed. Besides the cast, the best thing about Irrational Man is the music, especially a wonderfully raucous version of The In Crowd by the Ramsey Lewis Trio.

Here’s my discussion on Woody Allen and his filmmaking career. Despite Irrational Man, I’m a fan.

[SPOILER ALERT: I don’t understand how it’s possible to make a non-exciting movie scene centered around Russian Roulette, but we don’t even momentarily cringe at this one. Maybe it’s the combination of having to explain what Russian Roulette IS (to a character who had somehow made it to college without hearing of Russian Roulette), and then having the ONE CHARACTER who we all know is going to make it to the climax of the movie pull the trigger at the mid-point. Yawn.]

BIRDMAN: nothing like you’ve seen before

November 7, 2014 by movie gourmet

Startlingly original, Birdman, is NOTHING like you’ve seen before – in a good way. It’s the latest from filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu (Amores Perros, 21 Grams, Babel, Biutiful) and his biggest departure from the conventions of cinema.

The story is essentially a show biz satire centered on a Broadway staggering toward opening night. The show is a literary four-hander, adapted by, produced by and starring an actor (Michael Keaton) who made it big in a superhero movie franchise; he has bet his nest egg on this show, which he figures to relaunch his career as a serious actor. As one would expect, we have four colorfully neurotic actors and an anxious manager in a very stressful situation and stuff goes comically wrong.

Iñárritu reveals his story by having the camera follow the characters up, down and around the theater’s backstage, its dressing rooms, the stage itself, the roof and even outside on Times Square. Indeed, Iñárritu and Lubezki make New York’s theater district another character in the movie. This is NOT obnoxious Shaky Cam – just very immediate and urgent camera work that enhances the story.

The effect of all this is to create the illusion that the movie was shot in one long, intricately choreographed shot. Which it wasn’t – but we’re too engaged in the story to look for the cuts.

It’s the most brilliant exercise in cinema since Gravity – the film directed by Iñárritu’s pal Alfonso Cuarón and shot by the same cinematographer, Emmanuel Lubezki. Besides the visually stunning Gravity, Lubezki photographed the astonishing four-minute-plus “car attack” tracking shot in Children of Men AND the last three Terence Malick films, so maybe it’s time that we start looking out for the next Lubezki film.

All of the very best movie comedies are character driven, and Birdman‘s are well-written and uniformly superbly acted. I’m sure that Keaton will grab an Oscar nomination for his actor/producer, a guy who is barely clinging on to his present and future by his fingernails. Edward Norton is brilliant as an actor of spectacular talent, selfishness and unreliability. Naomi Watts and Andrea Riseborough (so compelling in last year’s underrated thriller Shadow Dancer) are excellent as especially needy actresses. But I found Emma Stone’s performance as Keaton’s sulking daughter to be extraordinary; her character has an angry outburst that is jaw dropping.

One more thing – there are episodes of magical realism throughout Birdman; (it opens with Keaton’s actor levitating in his dressing room). That did NOT work for me. I get that Iñárritu is making a point about Keaton’s actor losing control and trying to regain control, etc., but the characters, the acting, the camera work and the comic situations were enough for me, and I found his violating the laws of physics to be distracting.

Still, Birdman is a Must See for anyone looking for an IMPORTANT movie and for anyone looking for a FUNNY one.

MAGIC IN THE MOONLIGHT: yes, there CAN be too much witty repartee

August 3, 2014 by movie gourmet

Emma Stone and Colin Firth in MAGIC IN THE MOONLIGHT

Woody Allen’s annual movie is the disappointing romantic comedy of manners Magic in the Moonlight. Set in the late 1920s, a master magician (Colin Firth) goes to the South of France to unmask a phony psychic (Emma Stone). Things do not go as he had been expecting.

There’s plenty of witty banter, especially between Stone and Firth. Both do well in their parts, and they both look fabulous in the period dress. There’s also a really wonderful (as in Oscar-worthy) performance by Eileen Atkins as the magician’s life-seasoned aunt. The superb actress Jacki Weaver isn’t given anything to do except to beam some batty and vacant smiles. The rest of the cast is not as deep as in other Woody Allen movies.

But the movie never reels you in emotionally, and it’s only about as entertaining as one of those British sitcoms playing on your local PBS station. Albeit VERY briefly, I dozed off. Two scenes in particular are extended several moments too long, apparently just to accommodate more repartee. And the empiricism vs spiritualism debate seems shallow, contrived and stale when compared to that in the recent sci-fi romance I Origins.

It’s not unwatchable Woody like The Curse of the Jade Scorpion. But it’s not really good Woody, either. So, if you MUST have a dose of Woody this summer, watch one of Woody’s masterpieces: Annie Hall, Manhattan, Hannah and Her Sisters, Crimes and Misdemeanors and Midnight in Paris. Or better yet, go see Boyhood or A Most Wanted Man or – beginning on Friday – Calvary or Alive Inside.

DVD of the Week: Crazy Stupid Love

November 1, 2011 by movie gourmet

Crazy Stupid Love is an altogether very satisfying romantic comedy starring Steve Carell as the middle-aged sad sack who has been dumped by his longtime wife (Julianne Moore) and comes under the tutelage of uber lounge lizard Ryan Gosling, who in turn is falling for Emma Stone. Lots of laughs ensue, leading up to a madcap climax in Moore’s back yard, before the film slows down for the last 20 minutes. But, it’s plenty funny (and not many romcoms are these days).

Gosling, who earned indie favorite status playing tortured/damaged characters, is great here as the guy who can melt any gal in a bar with stunning ease and speed. Emma Stone is always good in comedies. Lisa Lapira shines as Stone’s wingman, and Analeigh Tipton is excellent as Carrel’s babysitter.

Crazy Stupid Love: Gosling, Stone shine in romcom

August 16, 2011July 31, 2011 by movie gourmet