Eddington (2025) and Poor Things (2023)
Great movies here, just awesome. I saw these two in four nights, just ‘cause they feel like a lot. And I didn’t want to watch them without my full attention. I happen to watch both late at night, and these feel like movies that really want you to imagine the worlds of them as much as possible. ‘Cause they’re well designed. Like all the sets and locations have a creative specificity. Obviously, Poor Things has it with its beautiful sets that remind me of an edgier Tim Burton, but Eddington is about a fake town that shares a border with tribal land. And has a southwestern and South Park feel. Maybe thats just what a small town looks like, but I thought there was something darkly cartoonish about the homes. The green holding cell. The cloudy days and the ironic murals. All the character work is so well done. I mean every actor feels like a specific character. Joaquin Phoenix moves in a way I don’t recognize, but feels so real and natural that I started thinking back to other performances of his to try to imagine if his behavior is similar in other movies. He just had this awkwardness that felt so right for this sad Sheriff, I thought he should’ve been nominated again. Everyone in this movie is being these awkward and real people. It’s so good and its so Ari Aster. I love the goodbye between Phoenix’s character and Emma stone’s. It’s so pathetic, and Emma stone just glazes over with his weak hold over her. Its really smart. To see him retreat from any real power or self-respect, into the coward he becomes is so compelling. Especially because I want to like Phoenix from the start. I see his private struggle to have a healthy family and empathize with him. And then it all goes to shit because he’s humiliated past his ability to cope. I think the movie deserved more critical acclaim, even award nominations. Ari Aster is this guy who will win his Oscars, but maybe after he’s been overlooked a few times.
Maybe Lanthimos fits in the same category. I don’t think it was intentional, but his weirdest movies came after all the acclaimed ones. I’m thinking specifically of Kinds of Kindness (2024) and Bugonia (2025), both of which I really liked. Jesse Plemmons is a guy I’d like to copy for roles. So good and subtle. Really a great actor, can’t wait to see what else he’s gonna do. But anyway, I think Ruffalo should have won the Oscar for Poor Things. It should’ve been a tie, seriously! He is so fucking good in this movie and he’s an actor, like a lot of others, who’ve been working a long time, and haven’t won. Maybe RDJ really stretched in Oppenheimer, but so did Ruffalo, man. He was arch, but still with that realistic charm/believability that he’s so good at. It’s really a career defining performance and I hope he continues to take big swings, because it just looked like a lot of fun for him. Like there was a level of freedom there I hadn’t seen from him. He’s so good at being cool, that you think he’s just good at turning that on for various movies, but here he opened up in a different way that made him so memorable. I loved this movie, its so sexy and hot, and like socialist. Its very bold in a way that makes me want to jump up and play pretend in that world. Both movies have me on the edge of my seat with their far-out plots that seem to be moving toward horrible tragedy. Eddington much darker and scarier an ending, but still hopeful in the sense that there’s room to laugh at how meaningless our politics and personal opinions are, at least in the shadow of corporate greed and government corruption.
Also, Christopher Abbott, he’s a cutie for sure. And this was a different character for him. I liked his accent here.
Rolling Ferro
