Kinds of Kindness (2024)

Three stories, one cast, 164 minutes, and almost no warmth to hold onto in Kinds of Kindness. Yorgos Lanthimos reshuffles the same actors through every tale, so Jesse Plemons, Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley and Hong Chau keep reappearing as brand-new people. In the first, Plemons plays an office worker whose boss picks everything for him, from his house to his wife, and treats him to gifts like a smashed John McEnroe tennis racquet. In the second, a cop’s wife comes home after being lost at sea, except her shoes no longer fit and the family cat wants nothing to do with her. In the third, Stone goes looking for a woman with a gift that sounds impossible. Plemons is terrific in all three. But this is Lanthimos at his most cold-hearted, and by the third story the bleak jokes feel like a dare. A 6.2 because the strangeness is thrilling for an hour and exhausting by the third story. $42.17 says your cat ignores you tonight and you start wondering if it’s really your cat.

What works: Jesse Plemons is outstanding across all three roles, and watching the ensemble swap identities from story to story is weirdly delightful.

What doesn’t: At 164 minutes the chilly, misanthropic tone wears you down, and the stories rarely give you anyone to care about.

Who it’s for: Lanthimos devotees and anyone who likes their comedy deadpan, strange and very, very dark. Grown-ups only.