POOR THINGS (in theatres)

Greek director Yargos Lanthimos’s fecund imagination runs imaginative circles around his viewers, some frightening and deplorable; “The Lobster” (2015) detested by this reviewer but still resonates as an unforgettable tableau of the surreal, daunting power of “blinding” love; “The Killing of the Sacred Deer” (2017) masterfully mimics the “Myth of Iphigenia”, wronged goddess Artemis, revengefully demands King Agamemnon sacrifice his beloved daughter Iphigenia, for the slaying of her sacred stag; “Poor Things” Lanthimos goes beyond the cunning, absurd, but distinctively compelling in his interpretation of “Poor Things” by novelist Alasdair Gray (1934-2019); “Bella Baxter” (remarkably marvelous, Emma Stone) is a woman housing a child’s brain; in Frankenstein style, scarred “Dr. “God”win Baxter (another redolent, nuanced performance by Willem Dafoe) has done the unimaginable, a brain/switch, and Bella, when we are first introduced exhibits ODD (Oppositional Defiant Disorder), shrieking, obstreperous, destructive behavior which fades as she matures with the unforeseen aid of caddish lawyer “Duncan Wedderburn” (Mark Ruffalo is at his obsequious, captivating pinnacle); with unabashed joy Bella revels in the delights of CSB (compulsive sexual behavior); Victorian era has never been bashed with such humor, iconoclasm, irreverence; doused with sublime costuming and a landscape reveling in the chiaroscuro of 19^th century French painters. “Poor Things” is a visual smorgasbord of wonder, fascination, discovery; it enriches, electrifies, elucidates, and outrageously entertains.

FOUR STARS!!!!

Peneflix