Welcome to the last podcast of the 2023 movie season! And what a perfect show to end on. Yorgos Lanthimos doesn’t make movies for everyone. He’s an absurdist filmmaker who loves to provoke and shock. And yet, somehow in the midst of his surreal, profane and metaphor-rich takes on life, Lanthimos manages to tap into profound truths. Poor Things is no exception.
Set in a fantastical steam-punk version of Victorian London, Poor Things tells the tale of Bella Baxter (Emma Stone) who commits suicide while pregnant and wakes up as a new creation. An experimental surgeon named Godwin (Willem Dafoe) has taken the brain of Bella’s infant and placed it inside her own head. Over the course of the film, we see Bella develop from a child to an adult inside the same grown body, and learn the meaning of justice, virtue, and wisdom along the way.
Join Jon and Tim as they discuss the Greek Weird Wave, discovering True Detective, bashing Only Murders in the Building, Tim’s creepy movie theater experience, why Emma Stone will win Best Actress, the show that changed Jon’s life, Mark Ruffalo’s best performance, the ultimate feminist metaphor, Barbie or Poor Things as the best feminist film of 2023, why James Bond is pathetic, vaginal architecture, viewing life from a new perspective, Frankenstein’s violence vs. Bella’s sexuality, controlling bodies as the root of injustice, why we serve a scarred God, and the pursuit of virtuous pleasure.
