Mike At The Movies: One from the Cinema, One from the Tube

A still from Poor Things. Searchlight Pictures photo.

by MIKE ORLOCK

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Poor Things (rated R for lots of sex) is one of the more bizarre movies you’re likely to see this year, or any other year. 

If you’re a fan of the artsy and avant-garde, you’ve probably already seen this fantasy horror-comedy starring Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe and Mark Ruffalo. It follows on the heels of last year’s Oscar-winning best picture Everything Everywhere All at Once and racked up 11 Academy Award nominations to boot, so it has definitely found an audience.

Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos, working off a screenplay adapted from Alastair Gray’s 1992 novel, tells the story of Bella Baxter (Stone,) a woman brought back to life by mad scientist Dr. Godwin “God” Baxter (Dafoe.) The brain of an infant animates her adult woman’s body. We meet Bella somewhere in the toddler phase of human development, lurching unsteadily around “God’s” gothic dwelling as she struggles to speak and control her emotions. 

These early scenes showcase Stone’s considerable comedic gifts. She’s part Edward Scissorhands and part Frankenstein’s bride, and she’s so uninhibited in her movements and reactions it’s easy to see why she snagged an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. 

When she discovers that her body is capable of sexual gratification, she can barely keep her hands off herself. Then she discovers men in the form of Duncan Wedderburn (Ruffalo, also in the running for an Oscar as Best Supporting Actor.) The callow libertine sweeps her off on a picturesque journey through the finest hotels and seediest brothels of Europe, where Bella’s intellect continues to develop.

Lanthimos has worked the extremes before with mixed results in some of his previous films, like The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer. Poor Things is closer in style and substance to his 2018 film The Favourite, which starred Stone alongside Rachel Weisz and Olivia Colman in a send-up of palace intrigue and sexual shenanigans inside a royal court. 

Lanthimos knows how to stage the goofiest scenes in ways that don’t seem gratuitous and exploitative, so he’s got that going for him as a filmmaker. But as to what he wants you to take away from his catalog of human oddballs is an open question.

Poor Things is currently in theaters, but it will be available on Amazon pay-per-view Feb. 27 and Disney+/Hulu in late March or early April.

Nyad (PG-13), currently streaming on Netflix, tells the true story of Olympic swimmer Diana Nyad. Her quest is to become the first woman to swim the ocean from Cuba to Key West, a 90-mile undertaking that illustrates the human drive to conquer limitations.

We meet Nyad well after her peak as a competitive swimmer. She’s a woman in her sixties, unsure of what the next chapter of her life will hold and bored with the prospect of providing color commentary on TV broadcasts of swimming events. Played by Annette Bening, who scored a Best Actress nomination for her work, Nyad is still a fit female athlete with a restless, competitive soul that wants back into the limelight. She figures the best way to get there is by completing the swim she attempted earlier in her life but failed to finish. 

Looking for training help, Nyad goes to her best friend Bonnie Stoll (Jodie Foster, nominated as Supporting Actress for her portrayal.) The erstwhile athletic trainer comes out of senior living to train Nyad for what she considers a quixotic waste of time.

After the obligatory training scenes of Nyad at work in the weight room and the water, the friends enlist the services of salty dog sea captain John Bartlett (Rhys Ifans.) An expert at navigating the waters of the Gulf Stream, Bartlett’s role is to chart the course Nyad must swim and the best time of year for her to do so. The best scenes in the movie involve these three senior citizens planning for what two of them consider a fool’s errand.

Nyad marks the Hollywood debut of the directorial team Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin. The duo made the 2018 Academy Award-winning documentary Free Solo, which focuses on Alex Honnold’s unprecedented attempt to free climb the rock face of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. 

They bring the same drama and attention to detail to Nyad’s recreated endeavor as they did to Honnold’s real-time climb, scoring one of the best docudramas currently streaming. By the time Nyad concludes, you’ll likely feel as exhausted and exhilarated as the titular swimmer did at age 66, all without leaving the comforts of home.
In another lifetime, Mike Orlock wrote film reviews for the Reporter/Progress newspapers in the western suburbs of Chicago. He has also taught high school English, coached basketball and authored three books of poetry. He finished his two-year term as Door County’s poet laureate in early 2023.