Kinds of Kindness is, of course, the new film from director Yorgos Lanthimos, who brought us last year’s Oscar winner and Pickford favorite, Poor Things, as well as other films like The Favourite (another Pickford favorite), The Lobster, and Dogtooth. If you’ve seen even one of Lanthimos’s films, you know that any new film of his will be an Experience with a capital E. His dark humor, uniquely absurdist vision, overtly exhibitionist style, and existential themes offer nothing quite like any other filmmaker, and he often pushes the boundaries of the cinematic experience in ways that will make some audience members deeply uncomfortable while others will revel in its audacity. I loved that audacity and the provocative themes of Kinds of Kindness (and I think I even personally prefer it over Poor Things), but just how much you love its “demented charms,” as critic Bill Goodykoontz put it, may depend on how charmed you are by all things demented. 

Kinds of Kindness operates as a sort of triptych, three short films united by loosely connected themes, with each film populated by the same actors playing different characters in each film: Jesse Plemons, Emma Stone, Hong Chau, Margaret Qualley, Willem Dafoe, and others. Each of the three films involves people in various kinds of intimate relationships: a man bound in a sort of psycho-sexual relationship with his boss, a husband and wife reunited after the wife was lost at sea, a woman involved in a sex cult. And together, the three films involve what friend of the Pickford Brandon Wilson astutely calls a “triple exploration of the Lanthimosian idea that what we call love is really just a surrender to being controlled.” Whether viewers find that idea of love cynical or merely realistic might depend on the individual viewer, but each story is also fully absorbing simply on its own narrative merits, and I found each mesmerizing, the twists and turns, the visual inventiveness. 

It’s also an utter delight to watch great actors doing great work here, a rare opportunity to see each in different roles in a short span of time. Jesse Plemons, in particular, showcases the brilliance of his range best, alternately inviting sympathy or terror, depending on the scene, and demonstrating himself to be one of the finest actors of our day.

Ultimately, what Lanthimos gives us here is “pure, visceral, original cinema” (Shubhra Gupta), and love it or hate it, viewers will walk out feeling something, which to me, is the most interesting kind of cinema

Thriller-horror fans, rejoice! Writer-director Ti West’s third installment in a trilogy of films, MaXXXine, has arrived, following West’s 2022 films, X, and Pearl, all three starring the terrific Mia Goth.  While MaXXXine is a direct sequel to X (Pearl is a prequel to X), it is not absolutely necessary to watch X prior to enjoying MaXXXine.  X, set in 1979, follows the story of a group of indie filmmakers who go to a remote region of rural Texas to shoot an adult film but find that their elderly hosts are a little more blood-thirsty than they bargained for. Only Maxine (Goth), the would-be adult film star, escapes with her life, heading at the end of the movie towards L.A. and the movie stardom she dreams of. 

West is a movie lover’s filmmaker, and X is so packed full of classic horror tropes and loving homages, from Texas Chainsaw Massacre to Psycho, that half the fun of the film is catching all the references. Much like Edgar Wright’s work in Shaun of the Dead though, X is as much an homage to the horror genre as it was a legitimate entry in it.  It references other horror films while also being a fantastic horror film on its own: it’s light on its feet with clever dialogue, a vibrant visual style,  a great soundtrack and pulsingly satisfying needle-drops, but it is also genuinely scary. 

In MaXXXine, West continues his same loving homage to the movies with the same energetic style and clever narrative, but this time, the genre is more of a thriller and the subject is the movie industry itself. MaXXXine picks up where X left off: it’s 1981, Maxine has made it to L.A., and while she’s making ends meet as an adult film star, she dreams of being a legitimate movie star and finds she must navigate the thorny industry paths, particularly as they challenge women in the industry. It wouldn’t be a Ti West film, however,  without some gory kills and some scenery chewing (Kevin Bacon is a particular delight in the latter regard), and Maxine finds it’s not just her career in jeopardy but, again, her life, as a serial killer begins targeting young women in L.A. 

I’m not sure MaXXXine (or X, for that matter) is a particularly deep film, but it is an incredibly fun film (if you don’t mind a little cartoony gore), and it’s catnip for anybody who loves movie-industry-insider stuff, Hollywood settings (the house from Psycho and the Hollywood sign absolutely make an appearance), and the peculiar charms of grimy-glam of the 1980’s. Mia Goth continues to shine in her role, too, as Maxine, proving that she, like Jesse Plemons and Emma Stone in Kinds of Kindness, is another of our most talented working actors.