Amazing

Rating: 9/10 (18 December 2018)

The Favourite Review:
The Favourite is Yorgos Lanthimos's new comedic period piece centering around the reign of Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) in the early 18th century. Sarah (Rachel Weisz) is the caretaker of Anne and basically runs the country for her. Eventually, Sarah's relative, Abigail (Emma Stone), is employed at the castle and it becomes a battle between Sarah and Abigail to become Anne's favorite. This movie was in my top five movies to see this year so I was super thrilled to get the chance to see it. Yorgos Lanthimos has directed two movies which I really like, The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer. He always has great direction to his bizarre movies. This movie is amazing and his best yet. The story is dramatic, comedic, and crazy. The three women brought so much to the film. I can't picture anyone else to cast differently. Olivia Colman has her best performance yet. She's nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Actress Comedy/Musical and it's between her and Emily Blunt for Mary Poppins Returns. Both Stone and Weisz are nominated for Best Supporting Actress. If there was separate categories for Supporting Actress one of them would win. They equally did a fantastic job. The character dynamics were amazing. There was so much development and shifts that made the characters so interesting. Along with the shifts in the characters there were great shifts within the story. There are many twists and turns within the story that were executed well. The screenplay may get nominated for Best Original Screenplay, like it was for the Golden Globes. Probably won't get nominated for Best Director even though Yorgos Lanthimos did such a good job. The cinematography by Ryan Robbie was beautiful. He's done cinematography for A24 films but has never been nominated and probably won't for this. There is no score, like all of his movies, but the pieces picked out worked very well with the story. The production design could get nominated because it was so extravagant. The costume design was really good. And the makeup and hairstyling was good, but it wasn't in the Oscar Shortlist. My only critique was there were only a couple slow spots but I didn't make too much of and impact on the overall product. The Favourite is a fun, beautiful film that is a big Oscar contender. It is getting very good reviews on all platforms, except for audience score on Rotten Tomatoes (60%) but IMDb is by the people and it has a 8.3/10). I would highly suggest seeing it, though it's a limited release and won't be anywhere around here (I had to go to Madison).
My Grade: A