Always Good Movies

Direction: Sierra Falconer
Country: USA

Executive produced by Joanna Hogg (The Souvenir, 2019), Sunfish (& Other Stories on Green Lake) is a soulful five-vignette anthology directed by newcomer Sierra Falcone. The semi-autobiographical film, built around coming-of-age themes, follows a 14-year-old girl who discovers a love of sailing while staying with her grandparents after her mother’s recent remarriage; a young violinist striving to excel at a summer music camp under the pressure of his ambitious mother; a brief, tragic romance between a dreamy fisherman and a rebellious young woman; and the deep bond between two sisters who run a bed-and-breakfast on Michigan’s Green Lake.

Through carefully framed shots and a cohesive ensemble cast, Falcone tackles mature themes while maintaining a gentle patina of softness across the film. There is a generosity of spirit and a sense of lived experience that lift Sunfish above more conventional indie dramas. The screenplay’s objectivity and simplicity may frustrate viewers seeking denser plotting, but Falcone has an undeniable gift for tuning into deftly tactful wavelengths, rendering each story with a delicate, warm sensibility.

These modest, uncynical tales make space for compassion—occasionally moving, never manipulative. The actors bring nuance and vitality, often adding just when the film seems to risk subtracting from itself.

Direction: Yorgos Lanthimos
Country: USA

Collaborating once again with screenwriter Efthimis Filippou, Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos offers a cruel absurdist triptych that is too zany to be taken seriously. The film features a recurring A-list ensemble cast—including Emma Stone, Willem Defoe, Jesse Plemons, Hong Chau, and Margaret Qualley—in three dark stories about empowerment, where controllers/abusers humiliate those under their control. It is illogic, extreme, sexually daring, and obsessively moody, embodying a contemporary exploitation of relationships whose levels of darkness are deeply unfamiliar.

Visually neat, the film is filled with farces and traps, embracing a stylized approach that often succumbs to its more nonsensical ideas. If Poor Things (2023) was irreverent and magically astute, Kinds of Kindness feels tiresome in its fixation on provocation and shock, dwelling in gloomy places for 164 minutes. While it occasionally achieves a hypnotic intensity, the experience ultimately feels aggressively unsatisfying.

Frustrating in its irrational depictions of life, this anthology film feels more like an indulgent exercise in Lanthimos and Filippou’s signature weirdness and attention-grabbing writing. Potentially interesting ideas simply can't fill the emotional void at the film's core—a disappointment, given that Lanthimos has demonstrated inventive brilliance in films like Dogtooth (2009), The Favourite (2018), The Lobster (2015), and the aforementioned Poor Things. Viewers seeking more substance than mere shock value may find themselves infuriated by this latest offering.