Kinds of Kindness
A triptych fable following a man without choice who tries to take control of his own life; a policeman who is alarmed that his wife who was missing-at-sea has returned and seems a different person; and a woman determined to find a specific someone with a special ability, who is destined to become a prodigious spiritual leader.
- Released:
- Runtime: 164 minutes
- Genre: Comedy, Drama
- Stars: Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, Hong Chau, Joe Alwyn, Elton LeBlanc, Mamoudou Athie, Victoria Harris, Hunter Schafer, Emma Stone, Merah Benoit, Krystal Alayne Chambers, Ja'Quan Monroe-Henderson, Susan Elle, Nathan Mulligan, Christian M. Letellier, Julianne Binard, Lance Michael Weller, Susan Elle, Tessa Bourgeois
- Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Comments
- filmtravel101 - 3 July 2024
A Kind of Absurd piece of mental illness -
I'm a big fan of Yorgos and Favorite and Poor Things had wonderful elements of pure genius with small elements of absurd quirky characters and stories that form a unique storyline. This story was NOT written by same writers of those 2 great films - beware!
These 3 short stories are a complete different direction into dark obscure absurd themes almost so scatalogical to the point that it makes one wonder if Yorgos and Filippo were off their meds and suffering some serious mental illness when they wrote this garbage or maybe always lurking in other films but now is fully displayed - and it will either turn some viewers completely off as almost all of us walked out of the theatre at different stages or it might be viewed as dead pan jest that resonated with super dark humor to the extreme for some. Basically if you liked Lobster/ Sacred Deer both written by Yargos/ Fillipo then you might enjoy this film.
If one removes the A list actors the 3 stories are difficult to digest as good entertainment and would be a silly skit resembling a terrible b movie on the level of terrible dark comedy with a music score that worked with poor things but now feels like awkward scratching finger nails on a chalk board with loads of empty voids of silence that does not hit its mark. Kudos for the actors keeping the dry humor evenly sparsed as pretense art but the naked orgy scene is the most popular and pathetic part that is out of nowhere except two adolescent writers.
Kudos to Yorgos for being authentic to his personal style but it is a major disappointment and if this is his true form of self expression then I'll gladly stop seeing his bizarre films unless he returns to finding other writers with a more refined story line versus this mentally ill garbage that is too dark and absurd for my taste.
0 stars. - EthanKoosed03 - 2 July 2024
Kinds of Amazing
Kinds of Kindness! Yorgos best film by far. I have seen everything he has made "Dogtooth", "The Favorite", "Killing of a Sacred Deer", "The Lobster", "Poor Things". Now this! I have been following this movie since it was in production. I was not let down. It exceeded my expectations and made 2 hours and 40 mins feel like 30 mins. This movie may be long but after the first 10 mins you get hooked. As each story goes on it gets more and more intense to the point you are sitting on the edge of your seat wanting to see how it will all end. Yorgos really has such a creative way of making films and is really able to suck in the audience. This is not the last time I will be seeing this movie. - cdjh-81125 - 1 July 2024
All Kinds of Frustrating
So Kinds of Kindness struck the worst balance for me as an anthology film. Because despite being 3 relatively short stories it's so poorly paced with execution that was infuriatingly inconsistent that it ended up feeling a lot longer than it actually was. Which is saying a lot for a movie over 2 and a half hours long. I was already tired by the end of the first act and there was still essentially 2 movies left of content to go at that point, not a good start for any movie let alone an anthology.
All though all 3 stories were undeniably interesting they each ended up being mixed bags to me. I couldn't get onboard with the tone of the first and as a result I just felt like Lanthimos was trying to be strange for the sake of strangeness. Jesse Plemons and Willem Dafoe were both great in this portion but I found their relationship to be very underdeveloped and the ways in which their back story is explored I just found to be pretty lazy.
The second story wasn't without its issues but it was definitely my favourite. It has by far the best set up and off all these stories it was the one that felt the most like it should've been a full feature to me. The first half I found to be very intriguing with a very good mystery and the ways in which the tension develops between Plemons and Emma Stone's characters I thought Lanthimos portrayed very well. Unfortunately though I found this section to end on a bit of an anti-climax. I thought it went in an utterly ridiculous direction that didn't feel earned at all and all the intriguing questions that the script was setting up ended up being too brushed over and as a result it just ended on a bum note for me.
The third act did little to nothing for me and it was by far the weakest of the three, and I wasn't crazy on the first two to begin with. We find out these characters motivations far too late for me to care, or at the very least understand why they take the actions that they do. It just dials the insanity in ways that never felt satisfying and it felt like Lanthimos was using shock value to mask lazing writing. It ends on a very abrupt note, and by extension so does the whole movie, and it just left me as frustrated as I already had been for the entire runtime.
Taken by themselves all 3 of these short films have their own issues but the weaknesses they share are the pacing and the lack of a connective tissue. Despite only being about 40 minutes each every plot drags unbelievably. There's a barely a scene in this movie that doesn't feel too long and it never felt patient or like it was building to something it just felt overly indulgent. There's nothing that really connects the stories on a narrative level but even thematically I thought it was pretty bare bones. I think the film suffers from a major lack of substance and as such I didn't really find myself wanting to dig deeper to find any kind of deeper connection between these stories.
As 3 individual short films they all have their issues but crushing them together like Kinds of Kindness does just increases my issues with them 3-fold. This film is gorgeously shot and extremely well acted but at the end of the day it just a bit of a slog to get through. Yorgos Lanthimos doesn't always connect with me but usually I leave his films with something to chew on. But leaving this all I felt was frustrated at spending maybe one of the only cinemas trip I'll have this summer on a film that didn't really feel like it amounted to much in the end and just bored me more than anything. - NickKarabis - 31 May 2024
It's a refreshing new chapter to Yorgos' filmography!
"Kinds of Kindness" is Yorgos' latest cinematic achievement. A self aware, self conscious film that doesn't try to prove anything more than what is already well established. Yorgos is a freaking good filmmaker!
Traversing back to his early years in the industry, Lanthimos takes a gamble and gets a full house! Resembling more to his first movies, with "Kinds of Kindness" he embraces the directorial qualities that defined his work.
The idea to create an anthology movie was brilliant and effective. Three stories with a thinly visible thematic connection, offer an almost 3hr long journey through Lanthimos' wide and wild imagination.
The comic reliefs are quite present, cautiously placed throughout the stories. The humor is dry, raw, almost unintentional. It makes you laugh -sometimes a lot-, coming in a full contradiction to the cruelty and the strong element of macabre crowning the pleasing visuals.
The gore is generously poured all over the place, sometimes for serving a cause... or just for fun. The string that ties all three stories though, is the robust essence of decay that modern human relationships strongly consist of. The idea of manipulation, blind dedication, enslavement of someone's free will, greedy desires, hypocrisy and lack of empathy are so blatantly obvious, that it's really hard to not notice. It's this slowly rotting world that keeps these phenomenally separate stories together, and I'm here for it!
The first part, tells the story of an employee so ridiculously castrated by his hyper-manipulative boss, to the point where the lines between obedience and free will, seem to be devoured by a psychotic love triangle.
The second tells the tale of a police officer, who rejoins his wife, who almost lost her life in a tragic accident. She's welcomed home and everything seems to go back to normal, but something seems off...
And lastly, the third and final part of the anthology is about an absurd, muscle car driving, sex cult and their desire to find the "higher human" who can grant life through his touch.
All these short, sexually charged stories, beautifully shot and directed, offer a great time at the movies; an experience like no other.
P. S. Jesse Plemons is the absolute highlight of the movie! Hats off to this exceptional actor!
IT'S WORTH OF YOUR TIME!
