X
- 2016
- R
- A24
- 1 h 59 m
- 2016
- R
- A24
- 1 h 59 m
Summary A love story set in the near future where single people, according to the rules of The City, are arrested and transferred to The Hotel. There they are obliged to find a matching mate in 45 days. If they fail, they are transformed into an animal of their choosing and released into The Woods. A desperate Man escapes from The Hotel to The W...
Directed By: Yorgos Lanthimos
Written By: Efthimis Filippou, Yorgos Lanthimos
- 2016
- R
- A24
- 1 h 59 m
- 2016
- R
- A24
- 1 h 59 m
The Lobster
7.1
Where to Watch
Summary A love story set in the near future where single people, according to the rules of The City, are arrested and transferred to The Hotel. There they are obliged to find a matching mate in 45 days. If they fail, they are transformed into an animal of their choosing and released into The Woods. A desperate Man escapes from The Hotel to The W...
Directed By: Yorgos Lanthimos
Written By: Efthimis Filippou, Yorgos Lanthimos
Where to Watch
Top Cast
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
Based on 44 Critic Reviews
82
91% Positive
40 Reviews
40 Reviews
9% Mixed
4 Reviews
4 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
Based on 44 Critic Reviews
82
91% Positive
40 Reviews
40 Reviews
9% Mixed
4 Reviews
4 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
The Lobster remains strangely romantic throughout, an absurdist take on the notion that great love stories — Casablanca, The Way We Were, Gone With the Wind — don't always end tidily.
A movie that explores the full spectrum of relationships with impeccable wit, delightfully dark humor and insights so sharp they verge on deadly.
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 542 User Ratings
7.1
73% Positive
394 Ratings
394 Ratings
16% Mixed
85 Ratings
85 Ratings
12% Negative
63 Ratings
63 Ratings
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 542 User Ratings
7.1
73% Positive
394 Ratings
394 Ratings
16% Mixed
85 Ratings
85 Ratings
12% Negative
63 Ratings
63 Ratings
In just two hours, Lanthimos built a complicated world and created its own boundaries and limits. He showed us two perspectives of this world from the same character. He showed us the character suffering, sacrificing, being in love, finding peace but also sorrow. He built up to an ending that left me on the edge of my seat, with feelings I don’t quite know how to process. This world and this man are far too complicated to express in simple forms. We can see loneliness. We can see companionship. They are easy to comprehend. It is what lies between them that is hard for all of us to make sense of.
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My favourite movie in 2016 for a lot of reasons. First of all, Yorgos Lanthimos has a completely original (at least from my experience) tone. The actors (specifically Farrel, Reilly and Weisz) play off of this tone well. Lanthimos's sense of humour is obviously an acquired taste due to it's obvious darkness and bleak nature, but I felt it worked really well. Didn't expect to love this as much as I did. 9.6
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Another strange, sometimes harrowing exercise in absurdity that resonates despite its weirdness.
The Greek filmmaker builds a stunning world with The Lobster, and much of its success stems from the inherent mechanics and the less-is-more storytelling that drops empty spaces for the mind to paint.
It may be based on universal human anxieties about love, relationships, compatibility and loneliness, but Filippou’s script takes on a defiant, prickly life of its own, refusing to play as an easy allegory.
The Lobster is more than a satire on the dating game. It digs deeper, needling at the status of our most tender emotions.
More a movie that you appreciate and ponder than one you embrace and enjoy. Whatever its intellectual pretensions, I am looking forward to never seeing it again.
Wonderfully bizarre and exceptionally thought provoking, "The Lobster" is a film that is so unique and, in its own way, beautiful, that it is hard to define or categorize amongst traditional filmmaking. The director conveys a focused vision with precision and gravitas, yet allows enough room for breathing space. It is needed to digest the heavy philosophical content tackling existentialism and the role of romantic relationships in modern life.
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Yorgos Lanthimos' The Lobster opens spectacularly, inviting your imagination to explore the grand dystopian future it presents. It proceeds to dole out sharp commentary on society's pressure to find and maintain a relationship at any cost, even by introducing a child to the dysfunction. However, all this goes to waste as The Lobster overstays its welcome. Without much more to say, the film drags along, promising a grand revelation in its finale. Alas, the final scene was telegraphed long ago to anyone paying attention, and lingers in the air like rotting shellfish.
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How does a movie go from extremely promising and interesting to a complete flop by the end? I’m not exactly sure, but the lobster manages to do just that in spectacular fashion. It’s almost as if the director wanted you to not like this movie. And some avant- grade pseudo intellectuals will jump at the opportunity to waste their time in the most pretentious way. There are some entertaining and humorous bits, but this movie never seems to understand when to pull back or accept that this should have just been a dystopian dark comedy, and not some lame attempt to preach the directors cynical beta male view of the world onto the audience. The basic motive and plot is so philosophically flawed that it seems like a 3rd grader wrote it, yet no one ever seems to catch how funny that is. Not the director or the cast, because later it devolves into awful sermonizing that is self defeating and horribly non entertaining. I kept hoping that maybe their would be some redeeming characteristic of ending to the movie, but alas it crashed and burned entirely as the movie progressed. Not to mention the major plot holes like “how come they can mess up change someone’s defining characteristic? Or why don’t they both just have an interest in something other than themselves? Like the real world.” Eventually the failed attempt at meaningful subtext is underwhelming and frustrating to the point of no return. If I see this director make another movie or this studio I’m almost bound to steer clear after that train wreck and waste of a talented acting cast and an original intriguing dystopian idea. This flopped hard halfway through.
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Production Company
Film4,
Bord Scannán na hÉireann / The Irish Film Board,
Eurimages,
Nederlands Filmfonds,
Greek Film Centre (GFC),
British Film Institute (BFI),
Protagonist Pictures,
Element Pictures,
Scarlet Films,
Faliro House Productions,
Haut et Court,
Lemming Film,
Limp Films,
Canal+,
Ciné+,
L'Aide aux Cinémas du Monde,
Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée (CNC),
Ministère des Affaires étrangères et du Développement International,
Institut Français,
MEDIA Programme of the European Union,
Lobster Productions
Release Date May 13, 2016
Duration 1 h 59 m
Rating R
Tagline An unconventional love story by Yorgos Lanthimos.
Website
http://www.lobsterfilm.co.uk/
Awards
Golden Globes, USA
• 1 Nomination
Academy Awards, USA
• 1 Nomination
International Online Cinema Awards (INOCA)
• 5 Wins & 12 Nominations
