Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.

If you’re wondering what to do on this long holiday weekend, I can tell you what you should do. Go see some movies. Here are two I recommend — an art house drama and a horror thriller. One’s a prequel in Manhattan, the other’s a triptych in New Orleans. 

Kinds of Kindness

Co-Wri/Dir: Yorgos Lanthimos

(Past reviews: Poor Things, The Favourite, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, The Lobster, Alps, Dogtooth, )

It’s nowadays in the American deep south, where a lot of strange things are going on. Robert (Jesse Plemons) is an executive who lives a highly regimented life. Each day he reports his stats to Michael, the CEO. These include exactly what he eats at each meal, how much he drinks, even whether or not he slept with his wife (Hong Chau) the night before. He follows his boss’s orders down to the smallest detail. In return, his boss pays his salary and his car and sends him pricey — but inherently useless— gifts. But when Michael orders Robert to murder someone, he draws the line.

Daniel (Plemons) is a police officer whose wife Liz (Emma Stone) is lost at sea in a boat accident. She is eventually rescued and returns home. But he insists she’s not really his wife: she looks, speaks and acts exactly as his real wife did, but he is sure she was switched for someone else. So he thinks of ways to expose her plot.

Two strangely-dressed members of a bizarre religious cult (Stone and Plemons) centred on bodily fluids, are seeking a woman to join their group, because of special powers she might have. But is their devotion to the cult leaders Aka and Obi (Chau, Dafoe) absolute? Or do they owe allegiance to certain outside forces?

Kinds of Kindness is a series of three short, complete films shown in sequence.  While each story has different characters, they are played by the same cast: Stone, Plemons, Chau, Dafoe, plus Margaret Qualley, Mamoudou Athie, and Joe Alwyn. Only one character, a cryptic, usually dead or nearly dead man known only as RMF (Yorgos Stefanakos) is in all three.

But this is a Yorgos Lanthimos film, so naturally it’s loaded with awkward behaviour, stilted dialogue, and  deadpan humour. He also flirts with the most shocking and gruesome themes imaginable, things like accidental suicide, cannibalism, self mutilation, and drugged sex, but presented in the most blasé way possible. The art direction is brilliant, presenting garish consumerism in the form of giant pantsuits and bright coloured sports cars. So uncool it’s beyond brilliant.

The acting is fantastic.

Plemons plays variations on a theme: angry white guy, kiss-ass white guy, and angry kiss-ass white guy. Dafoe is a domineering patriarch, whether all-powerful, ineffectual or benign. Margaret Qualley can sex it up as a kept mistress or play it down as a veterinarian.  And Emma Stone is perfect, as always, with fully-developed oddball characters in at least two of the films.  I know people who love Lanthimos’s movies and people who really hate them. I’m on the love side, but I can’t say Kinds of Kindness didn’t disturb me. It did.

But that’s part of his genius.

A Quiet Place: Day One

Co-Wri/Dir: Michael Sarnoski

Samira (Lupita Nyong’o) is is a depressed and lonely poet. She doesn’t live in NY City anymore; nor does she write. She lives in a hospice now, waiting to die of an incurable illness, with only a kind nurse (Alex Woolf) and a little black and white cat named Frodo to keep her company. But today will be a bit different. She and the the rest of the patients are heading into the city to watch a show. Sam agrees to go, as long as she can have one of the things she misses most — a slice of NY pizza. But the trip is cut short by a surprise emergency announcement: everybody must leave the city immediately! The emergency is a series of fighter jets that are dropping something on the city, something dangerous and deadly. Soon the streets are chaotic, filled with crashing cars and screaming people. Sam is separated from her group, stunned by a huge explosion that leaves her covered with dust and ash.

What’s going on? A small army of enormous creatures that look like a deadly cross between insects and gorillas have descended on the city, slaughtering and eating hundreds of people at a time. They have long claws that can slash you apart, and can find you using their extremely sensitive sense of hearing. They can hear a pin drop a mile away. On the other hand, they can’t see, they can’t smell, they can’t swim. So if you stay completely still and make no human -ike noises, they can’t find you.  The tunnels are flooded and the bridges destroyed to contain the monsters so the only way off the island is by ferries leaving the South Street Seaport. Waves of people head south… except Sam., her cat and an Englishman in a suit she met named Eric (Joseph Quinn). They’re walking against the tide, heading up to Harlem together to claim that last slice of pizza. But can they stay quiet long enough to get there alive?

A Quiet Place: Day One is an apocalyptic, dystopian thriller horror.  Lupita N’yongo does an excellent job as a woman who is both strong and dying, adding pathos to what could have just been fear. I saw the IMAX version and the sound and camerawork is amazing, with blurred backgrounds and amazing tricks in the dark using flashlights and phones. Special effects are seamless; they look completely real. And there a number of moving scenes that rise above the usual horror you expect, like the foreboding in a marionette show. There are lots of poignant moments like that. Occasionally it goes over the top in its sentimentality, — like when Eric does a Charlie Chaplin style pantomime — but it usually stays in check.

Day One is a prequel to the rest of the Quiet Place series, giving some hints as to the origin of a world overrun by monsters, while intentionally leaving much of it unanswered. Are they aliens? Biological weapons? Were they created on earth or did they come from outer space? I don’t know, but it keeps you wondering all the way through this powerful horror thriller.

A Quiet Place: Day One, and Kinds of Kindness, both open this weekend in Toronto; check your local listings. This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.