"Kinds Of Kindness" -- Movie Review

 

This week at Lincoln Center, I attended an advance screening of the new comedy-drama, “Kinds Of Kindness”, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos and starring Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe and Jesse Plemons. 

Synopsis

Three vignettes about the strange lives of different characters as they struggle to make sense of their life. 

Story

"The Death of R.M.F":  In order to display loyalty to his boss Raymond (Dafoe), Robert (Plemons) is ordered to crash his car into that of another man, RMF, who is also employed by Raymond.  Upon carrying out the order, Raymond takes Robert to task because RMF was not killed in this planned “accident”.  Raymond informs Robert that in order to keep his job, he must crash his car into RMF again – but this time, to do it at a higher speed so that RMF dies.  Robert is taken aback by this and after a considerable amount of soul-searching, he informs Raymond that he cannot do what has been asked of him.  Raymond then hires Rita (Stone) to do the job for him. 

"R.M.F. is Flying":  Daniel (Plemons) is a police officer who seems to be going off the deep end – and with good reason.  His wife Liz (Stone) went on a trip and never returned.  He refuses to believe that she is dead and continues to hold out hope that someday she will return to him.  One day, he is informed that she has been found – but upon returning to their home, it becomes immediately apparent to Daniel that although this woman bears a striking resemblance to Liz, she is not in fact his wife.  This only causes Daniel’s co-workers to question his sanity.  When Daniel asks this woman to do some extraordinary things in order to prove her love for him, will he finally be convinced that she really is who she claims?

"R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich":  Emily (Stone) is hired by a spiritual outfit to find someone who is capable of bringing the dead back to life; she is assisted by fellow employee Andrew (Plemons).  There is one condition that must be followed:  this person must be a twin and their sibling has to have passed away.  After trying a few possible candidates and interviewing others, Emily gets discouraged, so she visits her daughter and ex-husband.  When the organization decides to terminate their relationship with Emily, she sets out to prove them wrong; eventually, she meets a young woman (Qualley) who works as a veterinarian that happens to meet the conditions.  But will she be able to revive a corpse?

Review

Sometimes, when reviewing movies, it can be difficult to sufficiently explain exactly how egregious a given motion picture may be; such is now the case with Lanthimos’ latest, “Kinds Of Kindness”.  Although categorized as a comedy-drama, there’s precious little that’s even remotely funny about this film.  Its title could just as easily have been “Kinds Of Cruelty”, “Kinds Of Strangeness” or “Kinds Of Poor Judgment”.  Lanthimos has created something more akin to a triptych of horror stories that don’t have very satisfying conclusions, nor do any of them have protagonists whom you can support. 

Another significant problem with these stories is that they don’t make sense.  Sometimes, it’s a bit of a quandary as to why some characters are doing what they are doing.  Other times, you’re not sure if what you’re seeing on screen is merely a fever dream of one of the characters or if it’s really happening in the context of the story. One other particularly bothersome aspect of “Kinds Of Kindness” is that these scenes can be rather violent, gruesome and bloody, seemingly for no reason whatsoever other than to merely shock the audience.  There is one theme that attempts to tie all of the scenes together but it doesn’t really work. 

Lastly, this was such a disappointing experience in light of the fact that Lanthimos’ previous film, “Poor Things”, was so excellent that one couldn’t help but expect his follow-up to be of equally high quality; alas, this was not to be the case.  Instead, “Kinds Of Kindness” is just plain weird; it is a group of fables that don’t lead anywhere and don’t seem to be especially well thought out. Although Plemons won the best actor award at Cannes for this film, the real bright spot is the performances by Stone and Margaret Qualley; aside from that, there’s nothing noteworthy to recommend this thing because it would be a waste of three hours.  This is self-indulgent and something Lanthimos thought he could get away with it based on the critical success of his prior work.   

"Movie Pass, Movie Crash" -- Movie Review

 

Recently at Lincoln Center, I attended an advance screening of the new HBO documentary, “Movie Pass, Movie Crash”. 

Synopsis

When the Movie Pass business seems to become successful, can it stay afloat in the face of insufficient revenue and dishonest executive management?

Story

In a seemingly short eight year period, a revolutionary new company called Movie Pass came and went with considerable fanfare.  Upon its arrival, it seemed like a creative way to get people back into movie theaters and less reliant on streaming services:  for a monthly fee, you could see an almost unlimited amount of movies at nearly any theater.  This would be a great deal for consumers as it would not only bring down the cost of attending a movie but also get them to see a particular film they liked multiple times if they so desired.  Ostensibly, it should also have proved to be beneficial to the theaters themselves since people would tend to spend more money at the concession stands, where they make most of their revenue. 

What originally started as a well-intentioned idea evolved into a nightmare for not only customers but also the founders of the company.  First of all, the company was in danger of abruptly ending because of its own success:  they had so many subscribers at such a cheap price that they weren’t able to afford to sustain the business model – as a result, investors grew increasingly skeptical and reluctant to put up more money to keep the company going.  Also, there was some question as to whether the co-founder had enough business acumen to manage the company on their own, so it was encouraged to take on more senior level management who had this experience. 

When a couple of men were hired to run the company in place of its original creators, that’s when all hell broke loose.  These two were making the rounds of all the business shows on cable TV claiming that Movie Pass was their baby and further misrepresented themselves as far as their background was concerned (one claimed that he had run Netflix, which could not have been further from the truth, as further investigation turned out).  They wound up living their best life, spending company money throwing extravagant parties under the justification that they were promoting the Movie Pass brand and raising its visibility to interest subscribers and investors.  But when their scheme blew up the company, what would happen next?

 

Review

“Movie Pass, Movie Crash” is a great lesson in how not to run a business.  It is also a great lesson in how expanding a growing business can be taken over by a bunch of hucksters looking to perform what the mob tends to refer to as a “bust-out” on a neophyte’s business.  Either way, there is much to be learned from a surreal experience suffered by innocents who had a worthwhile idea, despite possible flaws in the business model.  Movie Pass seemed to good to be true for movie lovers – and in the end, it turned out that it was precisely that.  But in the end, after its destruction, can this Phoenix resurrect itself from the ashes? 

One obvious question that arises here is how much of the company’s downfall was racially based?  The two men who created Movie Pass were young African-American and the executives who took over the company – and eventually squeezed-out its founders – were older white men who (theoretically) had more executive experience at running a company.  As the public (white) faces of the company, potential investors and venture capitalists were more likely to see slightly-gray-haired white men as having more credibility when it came to running the company as compared to a couple of younger Black men.     

Following the screening, there was an interview with the filmmaker and the company founders.  Stacey said that at the time he got fired, Movie Pass was  featured as an up and coming company.  Director Muta'Ali Muhammad said that both Stacy and Hamet were the heart of the story; he started out by creating a short in order to sell the longer concept to HBO.  Stacy and Hamet originally created the company in order to make movie going easy.  The director wasn’t sure of the structure of his documentary but found his ending when Stacey decided to purchase the company once it went into bankruptcy; he went to court and made an offer for $150,000.  Upon regaining control of the company, he added geo-location of theaters; it now operates on a 23% profic margin thanks to a five year deal with MasterCard.