Poor Things
Critic Rating
(read reviews)User Rating
- Ireland,
- United Kingdom,
- United States,
- Hungary
- 2023
- · 141m
Director
Yorgos Lanthimos
Cast
Emma Stone,
Mark Ruffalo,
Willem Dafoe,
Ramy Youssef,
Jerrod Carmichael,
Christopher Abbott
Genre
Comedy,
Drama,
Science Fiction
After a young woman’s premature death, she is reanimated by an eccentric, late 19th-century physician who places a fetus’ brain in her skull. The woman, Bella, begins her life anew, and explores the pleasures of travel, sex, and education, free from the limiting prejudices of her times.
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What are users saying?
This film absolutely blew me away with its production design. The costuming and the cinematography are also a feast for the eyes. While I struggle with some of the film's script and pacing, it has an engaging story that inspires equally interesting conversation. I find people have such diverging opinions about this film, and hearing these different takeaways has only made me appreciate watching it more.
What are critics saying?
100
The Playlist by Rafaela Sales Ross
Not only is Poor Things one of Lanthimos’ most refined philosophical musings, but it is his most accomplished visual work, too.
100
Screen Daily by Jonathan Romney
Even as the film sails insouciantly into a rarefied imaginative stratosphere of its own, it’s anchored to emotional reality by a dazzling performance by Emma Stone – if anything, outdoing her revelatory turn in The Favourite.
100
Variety by Guy Lodge
Oddly moving in its fervor and abundance, Poor Things may appear a far cry from the harsh, stripped ascetism of an early work like “Dogtooth.” But they’re actually similar animals, fixated on taking people apart to find what makes them tick, what makes them swoon, what makes them interesting.
100
Vanity Fair by Richard Lawson
At its best, the film is indeed piercingly clever, proud of its peculiarity to a degree just shy of smugness. Though, the 140-minute film does begin to wear out its welcome in the last third, when the jokes have mostly all been made before and the only fresh additions are cumbersome matters of plot.
100
The Hollywood Reporter by David Rooney
Stuffed with rude delights, spry wit, radical fantasy and breathtaking design elements, the movie is a feast. And Emma Stone gorges on it in a fearless performance that traces an expansive arc most actors could only dream about.
100
Total Film by Jane Crowther
A funny, sad, bawdy, beautiful concoction that will haunt and provoke in equal measure.
100
The Telegraph by Robbie Collin
This triumphant adaptation, which premiered last night at Venice, strip-mines Gray’s book for all its funniest, fizziest and sexiest ideas, and leaves the chewier, more literary stuff on paper, where it belongs. I’d say purists might bridle, but speaking as one of them, I wasn’t just relieved, but overjoyed.
100
IndieWire by Ryan Lattanzio
Poor Things is the best film of Lanthimos’ career and already feels like an instant classic, mordantly funny, whimsical and wacky, unprecious and unpretentious, filled with so much to adore that to try and parse it all here feels like a pitiful response to the film’s ambitions.
100
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
Everything in it – every frame, every image, every joke, every performance – gets a gasp of excitement.
100
The Irish Times by Donald Clarke
It amounts to a dizzying feast of cinematic excess. But there is intellectual traction and psychological grit to the project.
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