Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos has made a handful of very different movies over the past decade and a half, but his pet themes have a way of recurring in every one. Poor Things, Lanthimos’ adaptation of a 1992 novel by the Scottish writer Alasdair Gray, can be seen as the culminating expression of the filmmaker’s longtime obsessions: the horror of …
The final shot of “Pleasure,” Ninja Thyberg’s bold and provocative feature about Bella Cherry, a young adult film actress navigating the porn industry, sees her in a limousine, having attained the fame she craved with none of the happiness. In the other scene, Thyberg juxtaposes Bella’s auspicious bondage experience against her later filming a rough sex scene with a male …
