Poor Things (2023)

I've wanted to see this since I caught a few clips at the Academy Awards. My desire decreased when I learned that Yorgos Lanthimos directed. Nonetheless, almost as soon as it came to Netflix, I obliged.

In 19th-century London, heavily pregnant Victoria Blessington (Emma Stone) commits suicide. Victor Frankenstein-like Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) could simply revive her, but seeing little sense in bringing back a suicidal mind, he transplants her baby's brain into her head first. When he asks med student Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef) to help document the behavior of this "Bella Baxter," she can barely talk or balance, but she's learning fast. Eventually, Godwin talks Max into proposing to Bella. She accepts, but since Godwin would still require her to stay on his property all the time, she first runs off on an adventure with Europe-traveling lothario Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo). Neither she nor Duncan knows what they're getting into.

Bugonia (2025)

Nobody on screen says the title. It's a Greek type of ritual sacrifice once thought to produce bees, which appear sometimes herein for an analogy. That's about the only reason I felt the need to look at the movie's Wikipedia page, because the plot's easy to remember.

Cousins Teddy (Jesse Plemons) and Don (Aidan Delbis) kidnap pharma CEO Michelle (Emma Stone) and hold her in Teddy's house. Teddy is fully convinced that she is a high-ranking alien from the Andromeda Galaxy responsible for the slow ruination of many things for humanity. He demands that Michelle arrange a meeting between him and the Andromedan emperor on the lunar eclipse, which comes four days after the kidnapping. The longer Michelle doesn't do as Teddy bids, the less inclined he is to choose civility over rage. Slightly complicating matters are periodic check-ins by deputy Casey (Stavros Halkias), Teddy's former abusive sitter.

Crazy, Stupid, Love. (2011)

This title had turned me off for a long time, especially with the silly punctuation, which does not appear on the poster. Nonetheless, it still enjoys fairly high ratings after 14 years. I chose it last night because it was the first movie to come up on my Netflix list and promised to be rather different from what else I'd seen lately.

In an unspecified town that might be in California, Cal Weaver (Steve Carell) is taken aback when his wife of 25 years, Emily (Julianne Moore), tells him she committed adultery with coworker David (Kevin Bacon) and wants a divorce. He wallows in self-pity in bars until annoyed lothario Jacob (Ryan Gosling) offers to teach him how to attract women again. Cal becomes a successful player, but he can't stop thinking of Emily.

La La Land (2016)

Between its record-tying Oscar nominations and its high ratings across the main review sites, you might think this the best movie not just of the year but of the decade to date. I went in with no such assumption. One family member had had high expectations and was disappointed; another had low expectations and was impressed. It seemed only fair that my expectations be middling.

I had heard that it pays tribute to old-school musicals but is not like Glee. Nor, it turns out, is it to musicals what The Artist is to silents. It follows two present-day people who love different aspects of the past: Mia (Emma Stone), a barista who wants to be an actress and covers her room with classic film posters; and Sebastian (Ryan Gosling), a pianist/keyboardist with little interest in things outside of jazz, which can make it difficult for him to stay employed. As circumstances repeatedly bring them together, they fall in love, but the relationship has an awfully shaky foundation, tested by the dilemmas of whether to follow their dreams or settle....

The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)

I was not pleased when Sony announced the release of another Spider-Man origin story only ten years after the last. It's not that focuses on origins always bog down superhero movies -- Batman Begins and Iron Man are among my favorites -- but it sounded utterly unnecessary. If Spider-Man 3 was bad enough to induce a reboot, why not try showing him at a later point in his life, like most of the franchise outside cinema? Nevertheless, when I found this title on the library shelf, I got curious to see what changed.

I hope you don't mind heavy, albeit spoiler-free, comparisons and contrasts to Spider-Man (2002) and, to a lesser extent, Spider-Man 2 (2004). It's a bit hard for me to think about the reboot on its own terms, because the original series is something of a sore spot for me. Despite usually liking popular or even middling adaptations from comic books, and despite liking Spidey at least in concept, these entries utterly failed to take my breath away. No way would I check out the threequel. TAS-M has slightly lower ratings across the usual sites, but I knew that I might well beg to differ.

Birdman (2014)

At last I've seen half the Best Picture nominees, and one of the most favored at that! I had not been excited to see it, because what I'd read made it sound like The Wrestler with a little magic realism (which could be very good, just not worth excitement going in). Fortunately, what I got was far more distinctive and only occasionally predictable.

Director Alejandro González Iñárritu, previously best known for Babel and Amores perros, must have since taken lessons from his buddy Alfonso Cuarón, because this film loves long tracking shots even more than Gravity. Normally this technique helps you feel more present, but whenever it becomes clear that things have not been happening in real time, the scarcity of obvious cuts to other cameras enhances the surreality instead. And for all the credible dialog and genuine show biz concerns, you'd better believe it's surreal.