Rent Poor Things (2023)

Just awful - bloated, pretentious, pointless nonsense - Poor Things review by PV

I almost turned this off after half an hour - and wish I had.

WHY on earth did it win awards? One can almost smell the massive budget on this massive bloated mess of a movie, which seems a real vanity project, set in some imagined past present steampunk age.

I hated it. Really.

And as for the Oscar winning Emma Stone - well I think the academy were voting for the STRONG-AND-INDEPENDENT-WOMAN character.

As someone who understands infant language acquisition, and linguistics and syntax, I can say whoever wrote this gets it ALL wrong. Really.

Just dross, like the same director';s awful THE LOBSTER too.

and NOT original at all - watch or read FRANKENSTEIN. or maybe read a Czech novel published 18 years before HG Wells The Time Machine called EINSTEIN'S BRAIN in which the scientists brain is transplanted into a dead soldier on a battlefield who then travels through time.

I am just baffled why anyone admires or enjoys pretentious dross like this. When I think how hard it is for people to get basic funding for a decent film, or get a novel published, while boring, pointless drivel like this wallows in ponds of riches. I give up.

A cinematic smorgasbord of delight - Poor Things review by Alphaville

A surreal fantasy beautifully directed, quirkily shot and scored, opulently staged, funny, grotesque, raucous, outrageous and defiantly anti-snowflake (eat you heart out, Barbie), this is a scintillating riposte to the bland TV-fare that often passes for film these days. Weird and wonderful, with outrageous sex scenes and gorgeous set designs of a surreal Lisbon, Paris… all luxuriating in deep-focus detail that makes it a feast for the eye. Just watch it.

Imposture? - Poor Things review by CSF

I hate when people think they re-discover periods like The Avant-Garde or the Absurd. Only geniuses like Peter Greenaway, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Luis Bunnuel could create this style...with style. At least they were not boring.

Or else, it is above my Art station.

Pretty, but far too long - Poor Things review by DM

The book is ambiguous (we don't know if Bella is really a Frankensteinian creature) and set in the real world. The movie is unambiguous, linear, and set in a steampunk world, or a kind of cosplayers' 19th century, that makes you wonder what is supposed to be fantastic and what people accept as normal. It's quite similar to 1960s "hip" picaresque movies, the only difference being that it's a young woman going through sexual experimentation rather than a young man. You get the point of each sequence long before the director thinks you have. The one point I thought there was a plot twist coming (this is a world in which brains can be transplanted, after all) it fails to happen, probably because the scriptwriter didn't think of it. So: read the novel instead.

Emma Stone gives amazing performance - Poor Things review by AS

This is definitely a movie you will either love or hate. It was the former for me. I loved the design and even the extreme use of 4mm wide angle lenses. It starts out as a Frankenstein-type film in monchrome with many references to the early twentieth-century movies of that ilk.

Later scenes in colour are dazzling with quite surreal cityscape designs.

Emma Stone is given a producer credit, presumably to give her control over the audacious sex scenes. There are laugh out loud moments too.

Boring - Poor Things review by HM

Rather Tim Burton in that an alternative world is created for the characters to move through. Very pretty, but what the heck this story is all about I have no idea. Over my head and I suspect most peoples. What did it tell me about the human condition? Nothing as far as I can tell. A baby's brain is transplanted into a dead woman's skull. Grown up body, but immature mind. So what? Stripped of experience how does an innocent relate to adult reality? That appears to be the premise.

It is overlong and a hard watch frankly.

A steampunk Odyssey which has incredible imagery but a long meandering script. Stone is great though - Poor Things review by Timmy B

Arriving with much fanfare, as well as plaudits aplenty, this Yorgos Lanthimos at his most esoteric & unpredictable. Set in a steampunk-era Victorian London, an experimental surgeon (Defoe,) find the body of a pregnant woman who has committed suicide. He then takes the brain of her baby & implants it into her mother's head, before reanimating her & making her his latest creation à la Frankenstein's monster. However, "Bella" has other ideas as well as a determination to see the outside world for herself, along with her new lover (Ruffalo) in tow.

As much as there was much beautiful imagery, along with a fearlessness & daring by Stone as the lead, after a strong first 3rd, the film then starts to wallow in its own weirdness. The story then becomes something of a preachy parable, with some highly unrealistic scenarios (working in a brothel is shown to overall be an exhilarating & totally safe experience, with no violent punters or threats from the Madame,) before attempting some sort of kumbaya ending, which to me didn't work.

But there was plenty to keep me interested & I absolutely think Stone deserved her multiple award wins, especially considering the amount of films released now which tell basically the same story.