Review: The Favourite (2018)

* * * *
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Starring: Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz, Emma Stone

Most movies are lucky if they feature one really great role for an actress. Yorgos Lantimos' latest, The Favourite, can boast of having three. It's a delight that is nearly unheard of. Setting its action at the court of Queen Anne (played with entertaining petulance by Olivia Colman), The Favorite is all about the dangerous game of social dominance and power, of how leverage can be useful only insofar as someone knows how to use it properly, of how one might not even realize that they were gambling until they see how badly they've overplayed their hand. It's a dark comedy about two ruthless women, one of whom tells the other, "We'll make a killer of you yet" and lives to regret it when she sees just how good the other is at the game. It's fantastic.

Review: The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)

* * 1/2
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Starring: Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman

"It's a metaphor." Flesh for flesh. He's not saying it's right, necessarily, but it's the only way he can see to balance the books and make them both whole. Yorgos Lanthimos' latest film is built around a long standoff between a teenage boy driven by righteous certainty and a middle-aged man who thinks he can put off the inevitable, with three other lives caught in the middle. The Killing of a Sacred Deer is neither as bonkers as 2009's Dogtooth nor as darkly delightful as last year's The Lobster. In truth it's a little bit of a slog, relentless in its brutality and building little narrative momentum as it puts its characters through the paces of psychological torture. I wouldn't say that I hated it, and I certainly wouldn't say that it isn't a skilled piece of work, but by the time it was finished I was definitely ready for it to be over. If you're going to see it I recommend seeing it cold and knowing as little about the plot as possible, so consider this a spoiler warning.