Lay The Favourite.
120 Mins. Starring: Olivia Colman, Emma Stone, Rachel Weisz, Mark Gatiss, Joe Alwyn & Nicholas Hoult. Director: Yorgos Lanthimos.
F### favouritism! By royal depravity there are games afoot regarding 'The Favourite'. And playing us all in that regard, Yorgos Lanthimos deserves this. The director of his own dynamic has already changed the moviemaking game and our warped minds with a couple of Colin Farrell classics. First scuttling around with 'The Lobster' and today's APPlied attitudes to date and swipe right mate selection in the modern worlds view of real love versus reality, were anything else or even the singled out demonising nature of isolated solitude feels animalistic. And then last year came the eye for an eye, family sacrafice of biblical proportions and implications in 'The Killing Of A Sacred Deer'. Lanthimos' most legendary, yet unheralded picture portrait yet. But now the red carpet has been rolled out for a knighted Yorgos and the crowning awaits with this sacred dear. The director is about to make a killing like he was boiling lobsters. Mixing and manipulating a cauldron concoction of lustful love and brooding betrayal in a royal house of lies and deception. Were cold chivalry like parliament wigs and make up disguises the real ulterior motives of corruption and wants and desires in a place of petulance. In a monarch of individuals old enough to wear the roses of jewels, but seem more intent on twirling a crown circling a game of thorns. Bawdy, ballsy and bloody brilliant, Yorgos with wicked delight let's all this play were the pieces may fall in this loves game of chess, but still gives us some checkmate lessons to learn that will make our very ways of this world bleed if we don't pay heed. A royal distinction worthy of an Oscar, yet there is more under that gown as you bow. From garter to all the heel to bedpost string tightened corset tries to hide in vain. And this period costume drama mirrors a dressed up today that see us hiding behind our screens and feeds with what we say, mean and feel. But this is one timeline you can favourite.
'The Crown' of Netflix's most prestigious streaming show has been passed from the 'Spiders Web' of 'First Man' star Claire Foy to the outstanding Critics Choice and we're sure more Best Actress awards winner here, Olivia Colman. And in reuniting with both 'The Lobster' and the throne, from Lizzy to the madness of Queen Anne, she has the coronation experience of these crown jewels down. Usurping everything here with her wonder and true wit that isn't for the halfs and half nots. After already playing Queen Elizabeth years ago on 'Hyde Park On The Hudson'. Not to mention Carol Thatcher next to the legend of Meryl Streep in 'The Iron Lady'. Surely the amazing actress who is about to move from the small screen of the best of British 'Broadchurch' and 'The Night Manager' to the big silver one like the reverse of the BBC's latest 'Les Miserables' adaptation isn't far from being knighted in more ways than one. Bringing with brutual and bountiful belief the two sides in life and its stories of comedy and tragedy amongst all the faces in this made up, but historical account of dramedy (watching her chew out the servants when she gets taken down a peg is service to hilarity ensuing). As everyone tries to play her like a fiddle in the corner of her art decorated and gold room of abundance and emptiness, she has more than one scheme out for herself. And it's as sore and needing as the gout that has stubbed her and left her wheelchair pushed or bed bound. The latter and the "soothing" that comes with it being her preferred pram to throw the toys out of when she or her waterworks can't get her own way. She will have her cake and threw it up too. All this hissing and fainting fits when everyone is waiting for her deciding rule longer than people waiting on May or even later in this year than that month to see what is happening with Brexit. And just like hiding behind the "right honourable" cheers and jeers of Prime Ministers questions, everyone behind these fake drills and facades here in more ways than one are at it like the seventeen (wait 'till you heartbreakingly find out why) rabbits that roam these haunted halls like looking for carrot's by candlelight.
Cousins to the affections of the throne in these affairs of state is the period presence of 'My Cousin Rachel's Weisz and 'La La Land' Oscar stepper Emma Stone, serving for more gold like she did in last year's criminally underrated 'Battle Of The Sexes' as the equally Venus sister legendary Billie Jean King. Deuce. Anyone for more than tennis here? No balls please! Because this is the war of the fairer sex here and even with canons raging on the frontlines of decision time, there is so much more being breached beyond the closeted chambers of this bedroom as the men of this mansion fret. Like the Mycroft mind craft of 'Sherlock's' brother himself Mark Gatiss. The 'Long Halftime Walk' with blue balls of 'Billy Flynn' star Joe Alwyn. And a standout-even more than the regalia-Nicholas Hoult, trying to out put a halt to proceedings like he tries to 'Mad Max' ashy crazy steal the show if you want to talk about a boy with a beast of a performance. Yet out on the range with Stone and Weisz shooting birds, these musket muzzle, blunderbuss blasting standoff scenes are true firecrackers to show the brimstone and fireworks that lie beneath the eyes of fire that dart from desire to the hate of scarlet letters thrown to the fireplace. Living on her lap, through Yorgos fish eye lens at first it looks like these love triangle rivals are beck and call obediently answering to every cry from someone Tom Hiddleston's God of Mischief Loki would term a "mewling quim" (still amazing he got away with that one in a Disney movie). And as an aside I've never heard funnier usages of the phrase "C U Next Tuesday"...and I'm a 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' aficionado. But in all veiled reality, with their own agenda these lovers in there own demand are playing games of their own destiny manifest making. Emma is stone cold in her 'All About Eve' rise from the mud of a fall from grace and carriage, to the saddle of the highest horse she rides away on. One that may gallop to her next reward for her most niche and nuanced performance of the human condition and all its afflicting side effects yet. But in this women of wonder big-three that concludes Lanthimos legacy making holy trinity of best pictures, it's the razor sharp 'Disobedeience' of Rachel Weisz who wows and steals it all show and curtain. From the care of counsel to the revenge of a scoundrel, pirate patch and revolution scar seal ready and high-tailed dressed to the outstanding occasion of an obtuse conclusion to this duck race. One that really quack covers all bases of the sacrafices sought and the manipulations made in the strive for a stand of a better love and life for better, or oh so much more worse. Hilarious, heartbreaking and breakdancing(?) all to crazy chapters of letter opener dagger scoring strings, you've never had a favourite movie as wickedly f##### up and weird (save choosing lobsters and hunting deer) as this. What the frock! TIM DAVID HARVEY.
Further Filming: 'Mary Queen Of Scots', 'The Lobster', 'The Beguiled'.
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