Kinds of Kindness

MOVIE #1,929 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 08.23.24 Yes, finally... NOT A KIDS FILM. I just wrote four of those reviews in a row, people. For the first time in ages, I got to see a movie BY MYSELF in the cinema! Here is evidence that I was in fact the only person in attendance on July the 11th, 2024 in the Cherry Hill AMC 25 (although I’m not sure why I would lie about this?), followed by the impromptu post-screening podcast I recorded on my phone as I drove home from the theater...

Obviously, the Oscar-winning, surprise hit Poor Things — a film released just eight months before this — will forever be the more famous Lanthimos joint from this era. But real Yorgos-Heads know that this is the superior effort.

This feels spiritually close to Kinetta/Alps and other pre-The Favourite work (as noted by every critic everywhere) but I'm struggling to even recall the details of Kinetta/Alps' plot, which is both why I do this website and probably a good reason why I should stop (although perhaps this is normal and it's alright to search out old posts to jog my memory — maybe that’s the point?). I'm thinking about film in this manner because that's what a Lanthinos movie — at least when he’s in this detached, uncanny valley mode — summons you to do. When he's working in this style, they seem to be pictures about the process/meaning of cinema without ever explicitly/narratively being about that. I’m not doing a good job (what else is new?!) of explaining this, but I would offer Synecdoche, New York has probably the ultimate example of a movie in this wheelhouse. Anyway, I loved this film. The perfect collection of actors for this type of material all bringing their A-game.

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⫷ MOVIE #1,928 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,930 ⫸

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Kinds of Kindness is a 2024 absurdist black comedy anthology film directed by Yorgos Lanthimos from a screenplay he co-wrote with Efthimis Filippou. It stars Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, Hong Chau, Joe Alwyn, Mamoudou Athie, and Hunter Schafer. It was released on May 17, 2024.