Kinds of Kindness

We all know that Yorgos Lanthimos can make great movies, and he has proven this several times in the past. While his films are often uniquely creative and explore fascinating themes, they are also vastly different from the majority of other movies and therefore not for everyone. The best example might be Kinds of Kindness, which is so bizarre and radically different from most other films that it's almost unbearable.

There might be people who enjoy this type of movie, and I can certainly appreciate its unique perspective, which results in a one-of-a-kind piece with many intriguing elements. However, the overall experience was not entertaining for me at all. The production is undeniably stellar, featuring a stacked cast, all of whom deliver great performances.

The movie is structured as an anthology, split into three stories, with the main actors appearing in each story as different characters. While this approach has been done before, it remains a risky choice because it can easily confuse the audience or weaken the overall narrative. The themes explored are interesting and yet, paradoxically, not engaging at all. Each of the three unique, distinctive stories has an intriguing premise, but none of them truly deliver.

In the end, not one of the three stories was satisfying, and all concluded rather uneventfully. While there may be viewers who genuinely enjoy this movie, it is certainly not for everyone. If the first 30 minutes don't appeal to you, it's unlikely the rest will either. Additionally, there was no justification for this film to be stretched to almost three hours, as much of it could have been cut. Ultimately, the final result felt boring, pretentious, and frustrating. [5,1/10]

This feels like the summer movie for lanthimos' fans 😂

Good piece of art, not at the level of poor things IMHO, but still very interesting. Honestly I felt like with poor things some reviews were searching too much into a "positive ending" or a woman empowerment change... While poor things also had some very dark moments almost like a parody... Well, here we have the usual lanthimos... The one who tends to give us the worst of humanity 😂

I still need to reflect a bit, especially on the 2nd story, but yeah, definitely great dry humour movie. Oh and some scenes will make people talk ... :) This is a funny movie but it's also very harsh

Emma (or Emily 😄) and Jesse and Willem are brilliant as always.

Weird, awkward, oldschool Lanthimos is back! His latest movies were extremely commercial, and now he's back to his roots with this low budget anthology of a movie. Three extremely crazy episodes that feel like Black Mirror episodes, "Kinds of Kindness" is a movie that explores human relationships with a significant other, with a boss and employer, different power dynamics of each relationship and the power that sex has in our lives and in the formation of our relationships. It's an absurd movie, very weird, and you vibe along with it realising that nothing is gonna ever make total sense and that's fine. I liked it a lot but it surely is not meant for a wide audience.

Kinds of Kindness is divided into three stories with the same cast. A high level of absurdity and unpredictability mixed with some mystery make for a funny quirky thriller at first. Jesse Plemons excels at making this quirkiness work to the benefit of the movie.

Then the first chapter ends and turns into the second, shuffling things around, which already begins to demand some tolerance and patience from the viewer. Random things are inserted for shock value that amuse at first but then become to seem pretentious.

By the third chapter, the movie has overindulged in random ideas that are appear intended to impress without clear direction. At this point it's just absurdity for the sake of absurdity, which comes across as an underestimation of the critical viewer.

All in all, I enjoyed the first part, and think Plemons did great, but ultimately believe we could've picked a better movie, and intend to stay away from films by this particular director in the future.

It was 3 hours of nonsense that could've been cut down into a Netflix short, although it was more watchable when it didn't take itself so seriously and had more humour like in the first segment. Emma Stone sank the whole thing in the final 2 hours.

The movie works when it's approaching the surrealism of a Buñuel film, e.g. Exterminating Angel, but then in the final couple segments it devolved into long scenes of Emma Stone randomly talking to people about dogs on an island, or trying to raise the dead, with stiff line delivery.

The director punctuates the boredom with random acts of violence, orgies, nudity, and animal abuse.

It was at the 2 hour mark where I wondered if this is really what the Hollywood elite does on their off-time, and they made a home movie about their debauchery as a tax write-off for Fox Searchlight. We did get to see a very nice yacht and some houses that probably belonged to one of the producers.