Though I don’t remember many of the particulars of Jang Joon-hwan’s iconic environmental thriller Save the Green Planet!, which I only saw once when it first came out in 2003, its creepy uniqueness has somehow lingered. It’s one of those movies whose vibe overrides its story and characters, an unsettling experience that stays with you. Yorgos Lanthimos’s adaptation (from a screenplay by Will Tracy), titled Bugonia, is very much an update, since the idea of a terrorist with altruistic intentions kidnapping a corporate leader to regain some sort of balance to a dying world makes more sense in our conspiracy-dominated age, and it adheres to the black comic tone that I remember so vividly from the original. But making special note of the plot as I watched Bugonia I wondered if I would be as taken by Jang’s movie as I once was; or, maybe, they aren’t as similar as others have made them out to be.

Lanthimos has already ably demonstrated that he himself is a unique filmmaker, though, to date, the only one of his features I wholeheartedly liked was his most atypical—The Favourite. Much of Bugonia is a two-hander. Teddy (Jesse Plemons) is a clearly deranged conspiracy theorist-cum-beekeeper who channels his anger regarding what happened to his mother Sandy (Alicia Silverstone) after she undertook a drug trial toward the CEO of the responsible pharmaceutical company, Michelle (Emma Stone), and concludes—with the help of fringe podcasters—that Michelle is a representative of an extra-terrestrial race bent on subjugating Earth. He and his less coherent and totally suggestable cousin, Donny (Aidan Delbis), kidnap Michelle from her billionaire compound in Keystone Kops style and drag her back to their lair, where they shave her head (her hair is how she communicates with her kind), slather her with antihistamine cream, and chain her up before Teddy starts aggressively interrogating her as to the intentions of what he calls “Andromedans.” At first, Michelle tries to use her logic-based corporate mindset to reason with Teddy, a gambit that only makes him angrier and leads to more punishing techniques to extract information that Michelle keeps insisting she doesn’t have. It’s a classic captive torture dynamic that gets both uglier and funnier in a style that Yanthimos has perfected by this point, though I’m not sure it’s a methodology that always works. 

The thread that keeps Teddy viable for the audience is his assertion that the Andromedans have effectively destroyed our planet as they’ve gradually taken it over. He argues his case convincingly, which shows how carefully Tracy and Lanthimos have absorbed conspiracists’ reasoning, and it says something about their own dramatic intentions that viewers, regardless of their political leanings, sympathize with it. However much Michelle objects to this theory, it’s difficult for her to deny that the planet is in serious trouble and that leaders like her are the cause. Were that Tracy and Lanthimos more interested in this line of development than the bonkers one they ended up presenting, the movie might have won me over, but the ending felt like a cheap rug pull, and I don’t remember feeling that way at the end of Save the Green Planet!, but maybe it’s just because I’m older.

Crime 101‘s appeal is almost the opposite of Bugonia‘s. Bart Layton’s action thriller doesn’t subvert any of its genre elements. If anything, it doubles down on them, an approach that many fans of said genre will probably find refreshing since there’s nothing to get in the way of the plot’s relentless forward march to a conclusion that is clear to everyone, including the characters. 

The film’s hook is its very sympathetic criminal protagonist, whose been given the almost hilariously generic name Mike Davis (Chris Hemsworth). Mike’s m.o. is holding up plainclothes couriers of high-end jewelry, which, of course, is insured. He charts his heists meticulously so that he never has to use violence to achieve his goals. From the beginning, we’re beaten of the head with the intelligence that Mike is from a poor background, raised as a foster child, so there’s a certain Robin Hood quality to his larcenous vocation. And while he lives in relative splendor now, he harbors misgivings about what he’s doing and thus has no social life to speak of, until, of course, he meets a young woman (Monica Barbaro) who takes his fancy—after a fender bender, no less—and gives him a reason to get out of the racket. But, of course, he decides to pull off one last doozy of a job. 

Mike’s foil is an LAPD detective (Mark Ruffalo) who has come up with a theory about Mike’s robberies that none of his colleagues take seriously, and which has to do with how all the heists take place somewhere along expressway 101. Consequently, Layton, adapting a novella by Don Winslow, sets up a classic cat-and-mouse situation that keeps the viewer intrigued. Unlike a lot of recent crime thrillers with cat-and-mouse structures, this one is very easy to follow. In fact, there’s something about the whole construct that’s simplistic to the point of being almost insulting. The dig on capitalism is exaggerated by a string of rich assholes whose comeuppance is treated like bon bons for the audience, and the one truly evil criminal (Barry Keoghan, the only weird performance in the movie) is almost a cartoon. At 140 minutes, Crime 101 risks overstaying its welcome but manages to be pretty good company. Just don’t expect it to linger afterwards. 

Bugonia opens today in Tokyo at oho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5060), Toho Cinemas Hibiya (050-6868-5068), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063), 109 Cinemas Premium Shinjuku (0570-060-109), Kino Cinema Shinjuku (03-5315-0978), White Cine Quinto Shibuya (03-6712-7225), Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills (050-6868-5024)

Crime 101 opens today in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5060), Toho Cinemas Hibiya (050-6868-5068), 109 Cinemas Premium Shinjuku (0570-060-109), Shinjuku Piccadilly (050-6861-3011), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063), Toho Cinemas Shibuya (050-6868-5002), Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills (050-6868-5024).

Bugonia home page in Japanese

Crime 101 home page in Japanese

Bugonia photo (c) 2025 Focus Features LLC

Crime 101 photo (c) 2026 CMTG