Category: Emma Stone

POOR THINGS

By Marc S. Sanders

A sexually explicit rendering of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is brought to life by Yorgos Lanthimos’ film, Poor Things.  The strongest element of the picture is certainly Emma Stone’s uncompromising performance as Bella Baxter.  It’ll at least get an Oscar nomination.  The film will likely collect an abundance of nominations as well for it’s fantastical imagination in art direction, garish costuming and makeup and directing.  Maybe there will be some accolades for Willem Dafoe and Mark Ruffalo as well.  The adapted screenplay of Alasdair Gray’s novel, written by Tony McNamara, is a contender too.  It’s already being hailed by many outlets as a top 10 picture for 2023.  Yet, I grew tired of the novelty, and bored with the excessive sexual exploits of Bella.

Bella was once a pregnant woman who deliberately plunged herself off a London bridge to escape her misery.  Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe), who Bella appropriately recognizes as simply God, discovers her lifeless body in time to conduct an experimental procedure.  Replace Bella’s brain with that of the unborn child she carries and raise her from there.  God is scarred and altogether bizarre, and recruits a medical student named Max (Ramy Youssef) to observe the reborn girl’s progression and behavior; a grown woman with that of an infant who is learning to speak, walk, eat, and behave for herself.  After a while it is decided by God that Max will become engaged to Bella.  However, another man enters the picture, Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), who convinces Bella to accompany him on a sojourn.  God permits the idea as an opportunity for Bella to learn what is out there and not restrict her.  It is at this point, that Lanthimos’ film transitions from a blue tinge monochrome photography to vibrant color as Bella and Duncan travel to destinations such as Lisbon, Alexandria, and Paris, where Bella abandons a destitute Duncan to join a Parisian brothel.  Bella sees opportunity.  She can earn money for allowing men to put their things inside her.

I could not help but think of films like Forrest Gump, The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button and even Pinocchio while watching Poor Things.  An unwise subject discovers an independence to witness how a world around her functions.  As she learns, she matures, and she realizes she does not need to be held down by any party.  Shelley’s monster also broke free of its master’s clutches, tried to acclimate itself, but was revolted against for its grotesqueness on the outside and simply for being misunderstood.  Bella does not encounter such a fate.  Instead, she discovers acceptance but only at what she’s worth monetarily speaking with a simple attraction limited to individual thought.

Poor Things is constructed in the narrative themes of Yorgos Lanthimos’ preferred way of filmmaking.  Just like The Favorite, it’s deliberately weird and proud of it.  Nothing appears conventional.  You could substitute the settings for Paris, London and even the cruise ship that Bella and Duncan travel on for set pieces in Wonka.  It’s all fantasy with an adoption of real-world locales.  I surmise Lanthimos excuses these outlooks as a perception of Bella.  The settings look like they were spawned from a pop-up children’s book.  It’s all so different but I found it to be tiring. If someone were to argue that it is inventive as opposed to another stale backdrop of London Bridge or the Eiffel Tower, I wouldn’t debate them. Yet, I was growing tired of the piece. 

Moreover, the second act of the film concentrates abundantly on Bella’s adventures within the brothel.  Bella discovers the comfort of self-pleasure.  Later, the sensation is enhanced by the possibilities of getting satisfied by the company of a man.  The audience chuckled.  So did I, but I also squirmed quite a bit.  Bella insists to God that she wants to “go adventure,” and God allows her his blessing.  Yet, I found these series of sexual encounters to be overly exploitive.  Nothing is held back on what Emma Stone performs for the camera as a concubine for one needy, stinky, and ugly gentleman caller after another.  She takes it the traditional way, the oral way, the way from behind and much more.  She is captured with S & M straps across her nude body and the Oscar winning actress goes all the way to sending the scenes home.  It’s as if Yorgos Lanthimos needs to deliver his point, but it’s not enough to try it once, twice, or even three times.  I get it already.  Bella is used for whatever fetishistic imagination the male mind can fathom and more importantly she thrives off of the stimulation. She happily recounts how a pineapple can be used in the bedroom.  It’s even better that she can get paid for this lifestyle.  It sounds amusing while I type this all out, but I was not entirely comfortable watching it either.  I’ve seen enough porn in my day to not be shocked, and I wasn’t shocked.  Yes, I was amused at times.  Look, I don’t have ice water running through my veins.  Eventually, though, I was just bored.

Godwin Baxter is an interesting character as played by an always reliable Willem Dafoe.  Early on, we see how in addition to his experiment with Bella, God has toyed with the ideas of blending different breeds of animals together.  Roaming his estate are the likes of a dog crossed with a chicken and a pig crossed with…you know what I can’t even remember after seeing the film only once.  There was also a duck crossed with something.  Kind of sophomoric material and I think Lanthimos would accept that observation as a compliment.  Oh yeah, there was a goat crossed with something too; was that the pig?  What I think lacks from Poor Things, however, is to probe if these kinds of experiments should even be conducted and I cannot recall a conversation that goes in that direction.  Max seems taken aback by what he witnesses but he never investigates further.  This is all most unusual (a serious understatement) and it’s hardly ever questioned. Even Jeff Goldblum tossed a contrary opinion at the idea of Jurassic Park.

I suppose I wanted more from Poor Things.  Beyond sexual pleasure and what can be gained from it, isn’t there anything else that naïve Bella has to learn about?  I guess in conjunction, she also learns how to earn a wage and a gumption to stand up for herself.  What about love and the fear of death?  What about what else occurs within the world around her?  What about loss, or betrayal?  As well, Godwin’s occupations never go further than what we see he is capable and daring enough to do.  How do others consider his experiments?  What residual effects stem from his accomplishments?

I’m glad I saw Poor Things.  I think I’d like to see it again actually because I may gain a greater understanding from the attempts the script strives for in accordance with Lanthimos’ vision.  I know this film is not for everyone, though.  It’s proudly peculiar, but its plodding in its glee to step very far over a line that most filmmakers wouldn’t dare go.  It has my salute for what it has set out to do.  Nonetheless, I’m not sure I’m a fan of the material it served, though.

LA LA LAND (2016)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Damien Chazelle
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, John Legend
My Rating: 9/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 91% Certified Fresh

PLOT: While navigating their careers in Los Angeles, a jazz pianist (Gosling) and an actress (Stone) fall in love while attempting to reconcile their aspirations for the future.


SPOILER ALERTS! MULTIPLE SPOILER ALERTS!


La La Land was greeted by the American public in one of two ways.  There was no middle of the road.  You either loved it or hated it.

Critics loved it.  It broke records at the Golden Globes that year and was the odds-on favorite to win Best Picture at the Oscars (Moonlight took the prize instead, and deservedly so).

When it came to the viewing public, people were immediately divided into opposing camps, with each trying to convince the other they were wrong.  “It’s homage!” cried one camp.  “It’s derivative and sad!” cried the other.

Me?  I’m part of the “loved-it” camp.  And after re-watching it tonight, for the first time since seeing it in theatres, I have no plans to change my mind.

I once wrote that there is no movie more in love with “old Hollywood” than The Artist.  Well, La La Land is more in love with classic movie musicals, specifically, than any other modern movie in recent memory.  It opens with an astonishing musical number, “Another Day of Sun”, set on a Los Angeles overpass.  In a breathtaking feat of choreography and cinematography, scores of dancers perform nifty moves in and around a traffic jam, incorporating a live band inside what looks like a UPS truck, in one single take…or at least what LOOKS like one single take.  Could be some CG in there.  Who cares?  It’s awesome, and it sets the tone right away: this will be like one of those old musicals where people break into song and dance without warning.  You can stay where you are or you can leave now, but this is what’s happening.

After that, we settle in to a tried and true story of boy (Sebastian [Ryan Gosling], a jazz pianist who wants to start his own jazz club) meets girl (Mia [Emma Stone], an aspiring actress looking for a break).  This part of the story was old when Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland did it in countless other films, so yeah, I get it.  I can see why some folks called it derivative.

But that criticism neatly dismisses the underlying subplot about the Old vs. the New.  Sebastian desperately wants to start a jazz club that plays the greats – Monk, Coltrane, Davis – because, as he says in a passionate speech to Mia, jazz is dying.  Nobody wants to hear it anymore.  It’s old.  (He decries a nearby club that combines jazz, samba, and tapas, or some such nonsense.)  “They worship everything and value nothing,” he laments.

But Keith, a fellow musician (played by John Legend) tries to get him to see sense.  (“How are you gonna be a revolutionary if you’re such a traditionalist?”)  History is written by the people who strike out in a new direction.  Sebastian himself uses this philosophy with Mia, who has gotten tired of auditioning for the same teachers and doctors and coroners over and over again.  He tells her to do something different if you’re tired of the same old/same old.  She takes his advice and starts writing a one-woman play about her life.

And here’s where it gets cool.  While the characters in the movie are urging each other to embrace new concepts, La La Land still has one foot firmly in the past, i.e., the grand musical traditions of Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse, etcetera.  Two later numbers stick out in my mind.  One is a twilight duet between Sebastian and Mia, shot on location in the Hollywood Hills when the sky is that perfect shade of somewhere-between-pink-and-purple.  They sing a little and then they do a beautiful dance together, but they’ve just met, so they’re careful to dance ALONE together…watch it and you’ll see what I mean.  Right out of Vincente Minnelli.  (Let’s be clear…Gosling and Stone are not exactly Fred and Ginger, but they do a damn sight better than I could do myself, so I give them props.)

Another number with classic-musical overtones is set during the first giddy months of their relationship.  With little or no singing (can’t remember which), we follow Sebastian and Mia as they tick off Los Angeles landmarks, finishing at the famous Griffith Observatory.  They enter the planetarium, and in a gloriously giddy moment of cinematic fantasy, they rise into the air and dance among the stars and galaxies before falling perfectly into their seats and sharing a kiss.  I no longer remember what I did the first time watching this movie, but this time around, I watched that whole sequence with a goofy grin on my face.  If you can’t enjoy watching people dancing in the stars, well…

At one point, Sebastian tells someone, “You say ‘romantic’ like it’s a dirty word.”  I like that.  This movie is, above all, romantic, in spite of how it ends.  It’s romantic in the sense that it revels in the unreasonable, illogical hope that everything will work out okay in the end.  Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still dream.  (There’s even a song about this exact thing, sung by Emma Stone in a sequence near the end that oozes romance and heartbreak.)

But all of this is nothing…nothing…compared to the emotional roller-coaster of the last thirty minutes of the movie.  It’s here that La La Land gets all serious in the middle of the fluff, because it explores the nature of success and what is necessary to achieve it.  Sebastian is touring with a band that pays well…but it’s not exactly a jazz ensemble.  Mia is just about ready to give up acting…until a casting agent gives her an opportunity to star in a movie shooting in Paris for four months.  These two characters, for whom the audience has been rooting for the previous 90 minutes, are on a downward spiral, and the only way to save their relationship would be for one or the other to completely give up on their dreams.  But neither of them would ask that of the other.  So they go their separate ways.

WHAT?  After all this they don’t wind up together?  Well…what would you have preferred?  An ending that awkwardly keeps them together, with him, say, playing jazz in a French club while she shoots a movie in Paris during the day?  Enjoying success together?  Having kids?  Sure, that kind of ending is POSSIBLE.  (In fact, in one of the many highlights of the movie, you even get a tease of what that might have been like.)  But, hey.  Isn’t that just the traditionalist way of looking at things?  Why not strike out in a different direction?  Do something no one’s doing.  End your movie where each character gets what they’ve always wanted their entire lives…even if that means they don’t get each other.

Boy, that last sentence sounds harsh.  But that’s what this movie’s about, and I think the film’s detractors simply couldn’t get past the grand tradition that demands the two leads wind up together.  They wanted Singin’ in the Rain, and instead they got the musical equivalent of The Remains of the Day.  (Maybe not quite that extreme, but I trust the point is made.)

ANYWAY.  Like I said, I just finished watching this a couple of hours ago, and I am no less convinced of its greatness.  Even though it’s a wrench watching their relationship head towards the rocks, the movie makes up for it at the end with half an hour of glorious, emotional catharsis that left me feeling wrung out, but in a good way.  It’s not quite a tragedy, but not quite a comedy.  Like life itself, it falls somewhere in between.

THE FAVOURITE (2018)

By Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Cast: Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz, Emma Stone, Nicholas Hoult
My Rating: 10/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 94% Certified Fresh

PLOT: In early 18th century England, a frail Queen Anne (Colman) enjoys the attentions of her close friend, Lady Sarah (Weisz), but when Sarah’s cousin (Stone) arrives at court, a subtle power struggle ensues.


This movie is a TRIP.  Imagine that someone crossed the sex-driven antics in Dangerous Liaisons with the cat-fighting in All About Eve, directed by someone who idolizes Stanley Kubrick and David Fincher.  It’s that good.

Where to begin?

I loved the story.  It’s a basic power struggle/love triangle, but told with immense wit and originality.  Queen Anne indulges in sexual dalliances with her closest confidante, Lady Sarah.  Then Abigail appears, a distant cousin to Lady Sarah; she’s hired as a scullery maid and slowly works her way into Lady Sarah’s confidence as her handmaiden.  When the Queen starts to show a preference for Abigail over Lady Sarah, oh, the fur doth fly.

Rarely has it been so much fun to see such bad people behaving so badly.  At first, I was rooting for Abigail, who is only doing what seems necessary to survive, but then it becomes obvious that there ARE no good guys in this movie.  Abigail proves herself just as capable of social atrocities as Lady Sarah or Queen Anne herself.  Normally, I HATE movies with no clear heroes, but the screenplay and camerawork kept me constantly engaged and entertained.  I think I had a smile on my face continuously after the 30-minute mark.

And let’s talk about that camerawork.  I’ve never seen one of this director Yorgos Lanthimos’s films before, but if they share the same visual inventiveness as THIS movie, I am going to seek them out.  The list of directors working today with visual styles unique to them is relatively short, so to find this fresh take on moving pictures was a delightful surprise.  There are a couple of places where extremely-wide-angle “fish-eye” lenses are used, distorting the picture on the edges so it looks like you’re looking at the scene through the bottom of a Coke bottle.  I found that particular device odd, calling attention to itself, but it worked.  It sort of created this idea that we’re looking at a staged performance rather than attempting to mimic or capture strict reality, which makes some of the behavior of the main characters more palatable than they might be in another film.

There are one or two moments that are so over the top, they might have derailed another film.  At one point, two characters dance during a formal party, as the Queen looks on.  It starts out daintily enough, like you’ve seen in countless other 18th-century films, the mincing steps back and forth, a little bow here, a curtsy there.  Then, as the music continues…something happens.  The man lifts the woman and swings her around on his hips like a swing dance.  They start to move their hands like in the “Vogue” video.  At one point, I’d swear the man started a rudimentary breakdancing move.  What’s going on here?  Why is this jarringly anachronistic dance intruding on the proceedings?

My first reaction while watching the movie was to just laugh in disbelief, while asking, “What IS this?”  Looking back on it now, I’d guess the purpose was to put ourselves into the mind of the Queen, whose perception of the dance starts to degrade the angrier she gets.  Regardless of its true purpose, it’s thoroughly weird but hilarious.

(Also, the screenplay contains some of the greatest zingers I’ve heard in a very long time, although I doubt some of them are historically accurate.  Not that I’m a historian, of course, but I remain unconvinced that British royals in the 1700s ever used the term “vajoojoo.”)

I’ll be honest, I was not previously aware of the actress Olivia Colman, who portrays the fragile, temperamental Queen Anne, before this movie, but I’ll be looking out for her from now on.  She more than holds her own with two Oscar winners (Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz).  Colman’s Queen Anne is a spoiled brat whose petulance is tolerated because, you know, she’s the Queen.  I loved a moment when she walks past an unsuspecting footman and yells at him, “Look at me!  Look at me!!!”  He turns and looks, and she immediately yells: “HOW DARE YOU LOOK AT ME!!!”  Right there, early on, her character is indelibly defined.

The depths to which all three women sink to exact their own particular brands of revenge upon each other will astonish you.  While the ending is not the one I quite hoped for, it’s extremely satisfying in a “be careful what you wish for” kind of way.  This movie was a delicious romp, and is definitely worth your time.

THE FAVORITE

By Marc S. Sanders

Director Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Favorite. Wow! This is a weird one.

This film focuses on a competition of one-upmanship between two ladies, one a servant named Abigail (Emma Stone); the other a close friend, Lady Sarah (Rachel Weisz) of Queen Anne during 18th Century England. As Queen Anne is frail physically, and often mentally (she insists on keeping 30 rabbits running loose in her bed chamber), Abigail capitalizes on opportunity to win the admiration of the Queen over Lady Sarah, a cruel woman in her own right. The humor is more shocking than overt or witty.

It becomes laughable to witness the shenanigans of the highest of aristocrats from mud baths to duck shooting to naked fruit tossing at one another. Sometimes, you ask why? Then again, it is probably because a lower class, say the majority of the free world, would like to stick it to the upper class and show them as the fools that they are or that we wish them to be. A royal vase is always nearby if a lady feels the need to vomit; not a bucket, a vase.

Olivia Colman is very good as the Queen, seemingly incapable of making decisions and being subtly overruled by the influence that her friend Lady Sarah carries. If the Queen really wants to reduce the taxes imposed to prolong a war with France, Lady Sarah will make certain that just the opposite is done. The Queen will unsurely oblige and back up the message that Sarah makes to the Cabinet. Sarah has no reluctance in abusing and humiliating the servants, the men in the Cabinet or anyone else, including the Queen. She will happily admonish the Queen by criticizing her makeup just as she is to meet with a Russian diplomat, thereby allowing herself to run the meeting while the Queen retreats to her chambers.

Abigail has come from wealth but due to hard times, has become recruited to be a servant destined to take care of menial tasks or be humiliated by being forced to watch an English officer pleasure himself, falling into “mud that stinks,” or taking cruel showers with a rough sponge. An opportunity arises however, when she discovers a natural way to bring relief to the Queen’s frail legs. Soon, Abigail is becoming intimate with the Queen much to the dismay of Sarah and now the cruel games of back and forth begin.

No one is really likable here. It’s a competition in royal politics, and politicians of any nature in any setting are never entirely liked. To hold stature, requires ego. Ego, however, is not a strong enough word for how these three ladies treat each other. The frail Queen is just as guilty. If she feels slighted, she will disregard those that have won her over in prior moments, particularly to her first friend Sarah and later to Abigail. When Sarah goes missing, the Queen declares she better be dead when she eventually begins to worry. If she’s not dead, the Queen will surely slit her throat. Abigail wins the Queen’s affections but will ultimately be used cruelly as well.

Eventually, all of this back and forth has to end of course, and Lanthimos along with screenwriters Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara bring in a sneaky last “stick it to ya” moment.

I’d never seen a film by Yorgos Lanthimos before. I’d heard good things about his other film The Lobster, though. Here, he’s got a camera angle I rarely see in films. There are times when a wide shot of a room, like the Queen’s chambers or outskirts of the palace are shot through the bottom of a glass, where the edges of the caption are curved outward, almost like looking at the film through a view finder or a telescope. Not sure why he opted for this technique. Perhaps it was to up the ante on the strange environment of it all; to offer a discomforting feeling towards watching this community of Establishment behave behind closed doors.

Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone are also very good. A film like this could have played like a bad day time soap opera cat fight. Yet, when you have Academy Award winning actresses like Weisz (The Constant Gardner) and Stone (La La Land), you are watching a period piece that will stand out albeit very strangely.

Yes. Once again, The Favorite is a very strange film. A good film and a weird film that takes some patience and getting used to. Four people walked out of the theatre I was in, but there was still plenty of laughter from the crowd. The best of the year, like most critics claim? Maybe not. Then again, most of the critics’ common choices for best of the year is indicative that 2018 really was not a great year as a whole for movies. I’d argue prior years have offered a better collection of films to treasure, admire, award and salute. In another year, The Favorite would be trumped by many other candidates.