Best Yorgos Lanthimos Movies

8. ‘Kinetta’ (2005)

Image Credit: © Kino Lorber / courtesy Everett Collection

Lanthimos’ solo directorial debut, ‘Kinetta’ was released all the way back in 2005, but didn’t receive a proper American release until 2019. It’s an obvious first film, containing kernels of ideas that he would flesh out and explore in his future work, including ‘Dogtooth.’ The scattered mood piece follows three amateur filmmakers (Aris Servatelis, Evangelia Randou, and Costas Xikominos) making a movie at a seaside resort, revolving around Randou’s character being humiliated and brutalized. It’s an intriguing premise that doesn’t take off: the dynamic between the trio never totally comes together, and the themes of gender dynamics and human cruelty feel a bit rudimentary. ‘Kinetta’ is a sign of great things to come, but it isn’t necessarily a great thing in and of itself.
7. ‘Kinds of Kindness’ (2024)

Image Credit: Atsushi Nishijima

Anthology films are hard to get right. Sure, three films in one is an intriguing structural challenge in theory, but in practice, they frequently wind up feeling indisputably minor and fleeting. Lanthimos doesn’t quite avoid this pitfall with ‘Kinds of Kindness,’ his meaner, crueler follow-up to ‘Poor Things,’ but if nothing else, it’s refreshing to see the director back in the off-putting mode that defined his early career. Writing the script with Efthimis Filippou — his screenwriting partner who helped shape ‘Dogtooth,’ ‘Alps,’ ‘The Lobster,’ and ‘The Killing of the Sacred Deer’ — Lanthimos seems determined to sharpen his hostile edge in this triptych of twisted dom-sub relationship stories; ‘Poor Things’ and ‘The Favourite’ feel quaintly accessible in comparison. The provocation doesn’t add up to that much, though; the three stories are all a little too similar in their obsessive look at control and self-determination to reveal much new when placed alongside each other, and the nearly three-hour runtime results in a film that bores more than it shocks. ‘Kinds of Kindness’ ultimately works most effectively as an unusually vicious acting showcase, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing when Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, and especially standout Jesse Plemons are so readily capable at finding unique and bitter notes to hit across the multiple roles they take on.
6. ‘Alps’ (2011)

Image Credit: ©Kino International/Courtesy Everett Collection

Created in between his breakout film ‘Dogtooth’ and his English debut ‘The Lobster,’ ‘Alps’ shares obvious DNA with the former — although this chilly, detached look at human relationships might be a little too oblique for its own good. That said, it has a killer premise, following the titular secret company Alps, which offers grieving people a way to come to terms with the loss of a loved one by impersonating the recently deceased. It’s a film that thrives off ambiguity, both in terms of the boundaries between authenticity and recreation as well as the meanings behind the interactions of the odd, eclectic ensemble at its heart.
5. ‘Poor Things’ (2023)

Image Credit: ©Searchlight Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection

For all of its nudity and reanimated corpses, ‘Poor Things’ is by a wide mile the most approachable film Lanthimos has ever put out. Whereas the director tends to veer toward the bleak and the bitter, his adaptation of Alasdair Gray’s novel is an outright empowerment fantasy, tracking the sexual and personal awakening of its young protagonist Bella Baxter across a madcap tour of Europe. It’s not a surprise that the film became Lanthimos’ most successful when it feels primed to be included in #goodforher memes. And there are many pleasures to be had, from the decadently garish production design to the committed comedic performances from the ensemble cast. On a whole, it often threatens to ring a bit hollow, particularly in its ending, which lands for uplift and triumph and lands with a rather underwhelming thud. Keeping the ship from ever crashing is Emma Stone’s central performance, which makes Bella’s mental transformation from child to fully-formed adult a wonder to behold.
4. ‘The Favourite’ (2018)

Image Credit: Fox Searchlight / Everett Collection

‘The Favourite’ saw Lanthimos trade dull modernity for ornate historical fiction without losing his signature psychological thrills. Set in the high-stakes world of 18th-century English court politics, the film retains all the jagged humor and character study of Lanthimos’ earlier works dripped in a vision of royalty that’s more revolting than romantic. Anchored by a fantastic central trio of Olivia Colman, Emma Stone, and Rachel Weisz — all of whom turn in career-best performances — the film focuses on the twisted love triangle of sorts between the ailing, immature Queen Anne (Colman), her court favourite and lover Sarah (Rachel Weisz), and Sarah’s social-climbing cousin Abigail (Stone), as they subtly compete for the Queen’s loyalty and favoritism. It’s a masterful dissection of social politics that hides its icy cold blackness behind its luxurious wigs and gowns.
3. ‘The Killing of a Sacred Deer’ (2017)

Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection

Lanthimos makes uncomfortable, audacious movies about people going against accepted norms, for better or worse. ‘Worse’ definitely applies to the actions taken in ‘The Killing of a Sacred Deer,’ which (mostly) drops the black comedy present in earlier Lanthimos films in favor of pure horror. In a genuinely terrifying performance, Barry Keoghan is young teenager Martin who befriends the heart surgeon Steven, (Colin Farrell) who once treated his now-deceased father. What seems like a perfectly innocent relationship grows increasingly unstable, as Martin inserts himself into Steven’s family life and begins to enact his revenge in increasingly twisted ways. What makes ‘Killing of a Sacred Deer’ so scary is how aggressively the ugliness of the characters is hidden by a stilted, polite veneer that fails to conceal the rot in their heart. You’d never think someone eating spaghetti could be one of the most tense scenes in a thriller, but you’d be wrong.
2. ‘Dogtooth’ (2009)

Image Credit: ©Kino International/Courtesy Everett Collection

Most of Lanthimos’ movies are pitch-black comedies in some way — even the ones that don’t usually have a funny streak. But the director never made a movie funnier than ‘Dogtooth,’ the director’s shocking, disturbing, and hilarious American breakthrough. In a large, fenced-in compound, a husband and wife live with their three adult children, who have never left their home and have no knowledge of the outside world. The couple, whose motives for their unusual parenting go entirely unexplained beyond a pure desire for control, feeds them lies about an older brother murdered by a vicious housecat, promising them that they can only leave the compound once they lose their dogteeth. Lanthimos stilted, signature style has never felt more appropriate than it is for this uncomfortable premise, transporting the audience to a miniature pocket society that feels completely alien to our own. But puncturing this twisted look at how parents mold and break their children is a vicious sense of humor and irony that makes ‘Dogtooth’ one of the funniest comedies of its decade. —WC
1. “The Lobster” (2015)

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At once a beautiful love story and a strange satire on humanity’s obsession with pairing each other up, “The Lobster” is the film that most successfully matches Lanthimos’ detached look at human norms with real emotion and longing. Colin Farrell, in one of the best performances of his career, plays sad sack David, who lives in a world where all single people have 45 days to find a romantic partner or they’ll be transformed into an animal. With his wife leaving him for a new man, David is forced to spend time at a bizarrely totalitarian hotel looking for a new companion or be turned into the eponymous shellfish. His attempt to break out of this rigid world by joining the anti-love “loner” colony in the woods doen’t work out for him either, when he falls in real love with one of the agents (Rachel Weisz). It’s a gloriously weird premise that makes for great comedy and satire, exploring the strange world of heterosexual mateship from an offbeat path, while retaining its human core thanks to Farrell’s soulful turn.

Every Yorgos Lanthimos Film Ranked, from ‘Dogtooth’ and ‘The Lobster’ to ‘The Favourite’ and ‘Poor Things’

Wilson Chapman

8. ‘Kinetta’ (2005)

7. ‘Kinds of Kindness’ (2024)

6. ‘Alps’ (2011)

5. ‘Poor Things’ (2023)

4. ‘The Favourite’ (2018)

3. ‘The Killing of a Sacred Deer’ (2017)

2. ‘Dogtooth’ (2009)

1. “The Lobster” (2015)

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