OK, that’s it. I want off the art house bus if this is the kind of thing I’m supposed to like. I’ll just step off right here, find a Blockbuster, and rent all the Transformers movies for one night of brain-crushing stupidity. A smash-cut lobotomy so I don’t have to even pretend to like Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest.

I pretty much hated this flick… and even knowing there’s likely a deeper meaning to all three of the film’s “short” stories, I just didn’t get it. I couldn’t grasp onto what the point of any of it was and I’m not gonna given it the courtesy of a ratings bump for possibilities. I had to sit for nearly three hours, confined to my seat, bored out of my melting brain, wondering at what point would it be fair to just walk out (spoiler alert: I didn’t).

I’ve liked Yorgos’ weird movies in the past… he’s got an keen eye for finding just the right kind of odd. Sometimes they are slow, but they are onto something interesting. I can see it. But he’s been hit or miss with a few films but even those I somewhat admired.

This one… I just don’t get it. Three independent short films with the same cast. They might have been sufferable if they’d been half as long and been a little more penetrable. But at their length and the content they spin their wheels around, the film was just too long. And I know there’s some kind of theme about control or enforcing your will, or trying to stay out of the hands of those who would use or abuse you. Or something. I can see the skeletons of the theme but I was so bored at every minute that it was hard to figure out what they were goin on about.

I did appreciate opening the film with The Eurhythmics and the possibility that the lyrics spoke to the themes of the film. And, hey, the end credits of the second short set to Rainbow in the Dark…. that was kind of great. More of that nonsense, less of the other nonsense. That said, by the end of the third film, Yorgos chose to annoy me further by letting Emma Stone do a silly dance… please no more. The story doesn’t fit that routine so are we just screwing around now?

I guess I should crawl back onto the art-house bus and acknowledge that, with further analysis and a second watch, there might be something more tolerable here. But I can only rate it for the misery experience I had. Baffled, bored, and burdened. Sometimes the art just goes off the rails.

Score: 57