Directed by James Mangold (LOGAN; Ford v Ferrari) — Screenplay by James Mangold and Jay Cocks.
Set in the early-to-mid 1960s, James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown follows a young musician named Bob Dylan (played by Timothée Chalamet) who, in a New Jersey hospital, meets his music idol, Woody Guthrie (played by Scoot McNairy), who is suffering from Huntington’s disease. Dylan impresses Woody and fellow musician Pete Seeger (played by Edward Norton) with a song dedicated to Guthrie, and, as a result, Seeger invites Dylan to stay in his home. As the two become fast friends, Seeger starts to introduce Dylan to the folk music scene, and soon, he becomes the target of the industry. Although Dylan makes a name for himself with folk music and protest songs, he gradually starts to struggle with being considered solely as a folk musician.
Emma Stone as ‘Bella Baxter’ on a cruise ship looking out to a dazzling view in Yorgos Lanthimos’ POOR THINGS — PHOTO: Searchlight Pictures.
Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos — Screenplay by Tony McNamara.
Greek auteur Yorgos Lanthims’ English-language films have all had a clear and obvious imprint of his on them. We have seen this in the absurdist genre-benders The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer — both remembered for the characters’ deadpan delivery and Lanthimos’ distinctive style, with the former being a comedy and the latter being something akin to a psychological thriller — but also in the much more accessible period chamber-piece and Oscar-triumph The Favourite. It would’ve been understandable for admirers of his to worry that by becoming more of a ‘name’ in Hollywood that might lead him to abandon his recurring themes or distinctive absurdist style to curry favor in Tinseltown. If you have been concerned about that then rest assured knowing that it is not the case. Rather, his latest feature-length effort Poor Things shows that the European auteur has steered back in the other direction by having his most ambitious English-language feature yet be just as potentially prickly, boundary-testing, strange, and borderline inaccessible for sheer brazenness as his first two English language features. Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things is ambitious, humorous, naughty, and off-kilter in the way art films are sometimes perceived to be by the average moviegoing audience, and, from my perspective, it also happens to be Lanthimos’ best work to date. Poor Things will shock certain audiences, but, make no mistake, Lanthimos’ absurdist and bold female coming-of-age film is one of the very best films of the year. Poor Things gives Greta Gerwig’s Barbie a run for its money when it comes to crowning 2023’s best film about the female experience and male attitudes to female bodily autonomy, agency, and liberation.
I'm Jeffrey Rex 