The Favourite Is A Wickedly Fun Take On Traditional Period Pieces Dramas

I am really starting to dig this trend of costume period piece movies like Phantom Thread, Colette and now The Favourite that have their period-era characters talk and act like modern warts-and-all human beings. Though they didn't pioneer this trend (why, the Comedy Central TV show Another Period has been doing this for quite some time now), it is a nice departure from the norm in cinema where the default mode of doing these films is to depict historical time periods in a sacrosanct manner that has people acting as proper as possible. That's not quite the approach taken by The Favourite, which has more in common with a Marx Brothers comedy or even, in terms of ribald dialogue, a period-era version of a raunchy Seth Rogen comedy than it does with your average Stephen Frears film.

Dogtooth Is Weird, Warped And Well-Made. In Other Words, It's A Yorgos Lanthimos Movie.

Though he had directed two feature-length motion pictures before it, Dogtooth was the movie that really put Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos on the map thanks to its widespread acclaim and a nomination for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards. The same kind of rampant dark humor, understated line deliveries and grim tone that permeates the man's later directorial efforts like The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer are around in Dogtooth in abundance. In fact, Dogtooth feels very much like a precursor to The Killing of a Sacred Deer, not just in how it focuses on a family unit but also in how it feels like Lanthimos constantly dancing on the razor's edge of just how far he can push his actors and viewers with all the warped scenarios he puts them through.