Anthology films are a mixed bag. Sometimes they are stories of groups of people in relationships or looking for love as in New York I Love You. Sometimes they are films that have different horrific stories in them like VhS Other times they are set in the Old West such as The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. The latest anthology film that has come out is from one of the biggest auteur directors in the world, Yorgos Lanthimos. His new film is called Kinds of Kindness and it has an all-star cast in all three of its stories.

Lanthimos has assembled a great cast of supporting actors and one two-time Academy Award winner, Emma Stone. There are three stories each having at first glance nothing to do with the others. The first features Jesse Plemons who works for an architect, but he doesn’t build anything. He just follows the orders of the owner of the company and his mentor played by Willem Dafoe. When he doesn’t do what his mentor tells him to do his life unravels around him. The second story features Plemons as a police officer who has lost his wife played by Stone and when she is rescued and returns she doesn’t seem like herself from Plemons character’s perspective. That’s when all hell breaks loose and some crazy stuff starts to happen to prove that something is indeed wrong with Plemons’ character’s wife, The third story is about a cult of people who are looking for a heeler, Stone and Plemons once again star in this story and they are looking for a woman who has eluded them played by Margaret Qualley.  The three stories are something I haven’t seen before.

Lanthimos is a director who has garnered a lot of acclaim for his weird and odd kinds of films. Dogtooth, The Lobster, The Favorite, and Poor Things are his most notable films, but they are nothing like his latest movie Kinds of Kindness. It seemed to me he was just being a little overindulgent with this anthology film. He has made a name for himself in the indie market and now he is just doing whatever he feels like just for the sake of doing so. Other directors can get away with that if they’ve won Oscars, but I don’t think Lanthimos has that kind of clout just yet.

Without spoiling the movie in any way there are a few things that connect the three stories. There are titles for each of the three parts that have a connection to the other short films within this anthology. A particular character shows up in all three stories, just don’t know where he’s going to pop up once his character is finished in the first story. That’s one of the most fascinating things about the movie as a whole. Also, the credits have things that are touched upon in each of the stories. The last thing I noticed that connects the three stories is that dream sequences or flashbacks are all done in black and white. Lanthimos is not trying to be super subtle here, but he does try to hide these things from the general public. Those with a keen eye like myself and others like me. Who is trained to look for specific things? In films like these. 

There are six recurring actors who are in all three stories and those are Mamadu Athie, Hong Chau, Joe Alwyn and the other three I’ve already mentioned. They all have different levels of roles in each of the three stories. Plemons and Stone both have equal time being the lead in two of the three stories and share the spotlight in one of the stories. Dafoe has different levels of screen time, but he plays three completely different kinds of characters in each short film within the anthology. The cast as a whole is all good in their various roles in each of the stories but feel Plemons had the better showing of things. I found myself genuinely caring about his plight in the first and second stories. He’s only in the third part a little bit compared to his screen time in the first two parts. It just showed me he has gotten better as the years have gone by. His range is crazy these days. Stone was good, but I think she; ‘s been better at other things. Specifically last year in another Lanthimos film, Poor Things. They all seemed to enjoy working together and that they are making another movie together which will be out in the fall of 2025.

In the past directors have done some crazy things and once they; ‘ve become so popular they get carte blanche to do whatever they want. I think that this isn’t always a good thing. These kinds of films, no pun intended, like Kinds of Kindness, are a prime example of that. These directors need some checks and balances within the creative process. These indie studios like Searchlight want notoriety and they give these directors a blank check to do whatever they want without any repercussions. The repercussions hopefully are that filmgoers won’t see bad or strange films from auteur directors like Lnthimos. I would like to see someone so creative do something more straightforward instead of something like this that is incomprehensible in its storytelling as a whole. It’s not all bad, but it’s not great either. Let’s just say that this won’t get the love that Porr Things got last year during awards season.

With any filmmaker, some of the technical aspects of a movie can make or break them at a given time. This one, in particular, has a lot of great technical aspects, one being the camera work, each of the stories has different styles of camera work. Distinguishing them from the others within the anthology, He forgoed the cat’s eye lens for a more straightforward method of filmmaking, I thought the look of all three stories was beautifully done. The score was a bit weird, but chimed in at the right moments to bring an interesting element to each story as well. I also liked all the various costumes and hairstyling in each of the short films, Jesse Plemons stuck out quite a bit in this regard, It’s funny because I see him in other films with these hairstyles so he probably was in between the other films while doing these short films within this anthology.

Kinds of Kindness isn’t going to be for the average filmgoer. In fact it may not be for all the critics and or film aficionados like myself and there are plenty of us around the world. It has a uniqueness that you rarely see in other films, but that also doesn’t mean it’s good either. Lanthimos has been given free rein it seems to do whatever he wants and that probably wasn’t a good thing from Searchlight Studios. Directors like him need to stop being so self-indulgent and give audiences something they can digest. This cast was pretty good, but Plemons showed range I haven’t seen him have in the past. The technical aspects were pretty good considering everything that was wrong about the storytelling elements. I won’t totally shut out Lanthimos, but he needs to do better in his next outing which is coming in 2025 with his collaborators from this movie Plemons and Stone.

2 ½ stars

Dan Skip Allen