BUGONIA***** - BFI London Film Festival 2025 - Day 4

BUGONIA is yet another absolutely brilliantly disturbing, darkly funny, occasionally moving, and frequently bonkers film from auteur Yorgos  Lanthimos. If Johan Cruyff coined the term “total football” then I am coining the phrase “total cinema” to describe the completely immersive, unique and genre-defying worlds that Lanthimos creates.  I left the LFF screening on a cinema-high, buzzing with amazement and admiration for yet another banger.  What a film!

Once again, he partners with his Oscar-winning muse Emma Stone, who plays a smart, resilient CEO of a biomedical firm.  It’s yet another masterclass performance from arguably the finest actress of her generation. And yet, she is more than matched, if not upstaged by Jesse Plemons, who has impressed me ever since playing a teen football start on Friday Night Lights, and has since matured into arguably the finest actor of that same cohort.  He plays a deeply tragic character called Teddy, whose childhood was marred by abuse and addiction, and whose adulthood was marred by medical injury.  As so many in these dark and divisive times, he spirals into an internet conspiracy that involves kidnapping the aforementioned CEO.

The film is basically a two-hander, and I could watch Stone and Plemons go at it all day. A potential criticism of the film is that those scenes almost play like a theatre production.  In support we have two performances from debutant Aidan Deblis and Stavros Halkias as Teddy’s malleable young cousin and old babysitter, now cop, respectively. The former is particularly heartbreaking.

The film moves through its gears and there were a lot of belly laughs and moments of horror.  I feel that you need a director who is in absolute control of a film’s construction and tone to pull this off successfully.  I also wonder whether the extremity and absurdity will alienate a mainstream audience.  I love that the final act can be interpreted in two very different and both equally valid ways.  I tend toward a more trauma-induced explanation but Mr007 took it literally. We both agreed that it owed something to Lars Von Trier’s MELANCHOLIA and that the themes of the film are a perfect encapsulation of all that’s wrong with our current moment: whether the banality and venality of corporate life, climate change or the rise of conspiracy nutters to high office.

There is nothing not to love about this film.

BUGONIA has a running time of 120 minutes. It played Venice, Telluride and London. It opens in the USA on October 31st and in the UK on November 7th.

BOOK CLUB

Bill Holderman's directorial debut and Erin Simms screenwriting debut comprises a rather gentle but pleasant rom-com aimed at the sixty-something market.   The conceit is that four long-time friends have a regular bookclub, and reading Fifty Shades of Grey re-awakens their interest in sex, dating and love.  Diane Keaton plays a people-pleasing grandma being bullied by her patronising kids into moving closer to them and away from her friends, not to mention a potential new love interest played by the still hot Andy Garcia.  Mary Steenburgen plays a married woman desperate to re-inject some sex into her otherwise happy marriage.  Candice Bergen takes the leap into online dating despite the knock to her self-esteem from her ex's twenty-something new fiancee. And Jane Fonda plays a successful businesswoman who finally allows herself to admit that she needs love in the form of Don Johnson.

It turns out that the issues plaguing sixty-something women are not that different from those affecting their younger counterparts - the inability to be vulnerable, balancing work and relationships, getting over an ex, getting over low self-esteem. As a result this movie was actually more relatable than I'd thought.  Moreover, from what I've seen from friends parents, their is an alarming tendency to co-opt one's parents lives and assume that they have nothing going on - and a need for the grandparents to reclaim their independence. 

The downside is that it also turns out that a sixty-something rom-com has also the same genre cliches as a twenty-something one - the meet cutes, the final act reconciliations.  But I feel that if you take this film for what it is, you'll enjoy the ride. 

BOOK CLUB has a running time of 104 minutes and is rated PG-13.

THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER - Day 10 - BFI London Film Festival 2017

Yorgos Lanthimos’ THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER is an exceptionally brilliant dark horror movie based on a Greek myth that I won’t name for fear of spoiling the story. The first hour of the film sees building dread and foreboding. A heart surgeon called Stephen (Colin Farrell) has struck up a sinister looking relationship with a 16 year old called Martin (Barry Keoghan). Is he seeking sexual favours, grooming him? The gift of an expensive watch and the lies speak to that. But then Stephen introduces Martin to his family - wife Anna (Nicole Kidman) and his kids Kim and Bob. So maybe Martin is just a loner who needs mentoring? About 45 minutes into this exquisitely paced film, Kim and Bob suffer paralysis and loss of appetite. A battery of medical tests suggests there’s nothing wrong with them. And an hour into the film we learn the reason for this mysterious mythical illness. The reactions it provokes are both darkly funny and tragic, as family members vie to make their case, and cold hard-headedness faces sentimentality.

Lanthimos’ shooting style is so deliberately paced and framed that it reminded me of Kubrick. There’s a couple of scenes where Stephen walks through hospital corridors that become so tense because of precisely where the camera is placed and the accompanying music. Although we shift locations many times, there’s a kind of claustrophobia in this film as grind toward the inevitable conclusion. Cinematographer Thimios Bakatakis’ complete, compulsive control of the frame matches Stephen’s refusal to be ruffled until the last, and the deliberate, daringly deadpan language from co-scriptwriter Efthimis Lanthimos. I also loved the score that borrowed from orchestral music and opera, heightened with dramatic sound effects to emphasise the portentousness of the action.

I cannot recommend this film highly enough for its sustained tension, otherworldly tone and superb construction. I can’t say that I cared about any of the characters but that’s not really the point. I was captivated by the story and the sheer technical brilliance with which it was put on screen. 

THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER has a running time of 109 minutes and is rated R. The film played Cannes 2017 where it won Best Screenplay tied with You Were Never Really Here. It also played New Zealand, Melbourne, Toronto and London.  It goes on release in the USA on Oct 27th, in France, Greece and Bulgaria on Nov 3rd, in the UK on Nov 17th, in the Netherlands on Nov 29th, in Hong Kong on Nov 30th and in Hungary on Dec 28th. 

STORMBREAKER - camper than a row of soldiers

Let me say right at the start that this new James Bond for teens is enormous fun. It rips along at a fast pace with low-budget action sequences and iconic images of Blighty and you'd struggle to have an actively bad time. The big question is how seriously are we meant to take it? As someone who has never read the kids books by Anthony Horowitz, upon which this movie is based, my only clue was the trailer. This made the film out to be a straight-faced spy thiller for teens. The hero, Alex Rider is a fourteen year-old kid, whose uncle was a British spy. Upon the death of his uncle, Alex is recruited by MI6, fitted out with the requisite gadgets and sent off to stop an Evil Megalomaniac from killing lots of people. So far, so straight.

The weird thing is that while half the cast (notably Alex Pettyfer as Alex Rider) and, from what I can tell, the script-writer, seem to be playing it straight, all the British character actors are camper than a row of soldiers. They play the movie as some sort of sub-Austin Powers James Bond spoof but without the overt humour. Bill Nighy is brilliant (again) as the M figure - playing it like a constipated civil servant with more tics than an impala. Sophie Okenodo is more straight-laced than Vanessa Kensington. Micky Rourke looks insane with all that make-up as the baddie, and he even has a shrieking Nazi Rosa Klebb style side-kick played by Missi Pyle.

Like I said, this is no bad thing. It just adds to the whole Doctor Who made-on-a-shoestring-budget vibe that we Brits know and love. Sort of like Benny Hill does Bond but for kids. It's about as classy as watching 'Allo 'Allo. I just wonder what the Yanks will make of it.

STORMBREAKER is on general release in the UK. It opens in Hong Kong and Israel on August 10th 2006, the US on August 18th, Iceland on September 14th, Australia on September 21st and Italy on September 22nd. It hits the Netherlands on October 12th, Finland and Sweden on October 13th, Belgium and France on October 25th.

BEAUTY SHOP - warm-hearted, mildy amusing rom-com

BEAUTY SHOP features a bunch of actors of considerable talent, charisma and charm, not least Queen Latifah, Alicia Silverstone, Kevin Bacon, Andie MacDowell, Mena Suvari and Djimon Hounsou. That this warm-hearted romantic comedy manages to entertain at all is entirely down to their performances. Because everything else about this film is cliched and/or ham-fisted. I put this down to the fact that the production team, as talented as they might be, have little experience of cinema behind them. The director has a background in music video, the writers have done some TV and, ominously, the suck-fest that was Mariah Carey's GLITTER. As a result we get a truly derivative and predictable movie with some blunt attempts at handling racial politics thrown in. The story is that Queen Latifah is a marvellous hair dresser who works for a pretentious (literally) salon-owner played by Kevin Bacon. One day, she decides to leave and open a Beauty Shop in her local neighbourhood. She takes with her a white hairstylist played by Alicia Silverstone. It's the kind of film wherein when it transpires that a hunky but sensitive handyman turns out to live above the Beauty Shop, we KNOW that he and Latifah will get together. Similarly, when the other black stylists give Alicia Silverstone's character a hard time at first, thanks to the magic of cinema, all will be harmony and love by the end. Perhaps I am being too hard on this movie. If it leaves you with a warm fuzzy feeling then isn't the genre-contract fulfilled? But I don't know. There is something deeply frustrating in seeing Queen Latifah et al pump out this unimaginative cinematic fare.

BEAUTY SHOP opened in the US in March and opens in the UK today. It hits France on September 28th 2005.