10 'WTF Did I Just Pay To See' Movies

Despite enjoying a prolific 60+ year career producing visual art in all mediums, alongside novels, stories, plays and poetry, Alasdair Gray is still not a household name outside of Caledonia, nor a well-recognised figure beyond the British Isles. The Scot's idiosyncratic writing style blends humour, surrealism and social commentary into a self-consciously postmodern bundle, incorporating his artwork onto the page, and while Gray's best known work is the mind-bending epic Lanark, the world now knows another far better: Poor Things.

Emma Stone stars as Bella Baxter, a woman with a juvenile's brain, who decides it's time to break free from relative captivity with her creator, Dr Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe), and chart her own path of social and sexual liberation. Director Yorgos Lanthimos's decision to excise Scotland from the film allowed him to dodge some of the larger socio-political ideas embedded in the original novel, but everything else about Poor Things is true to form, and a wonderful interpretation of Gray's work. That includes all the quirks, eccentricities, absurdities and overarching tone of congenial insanity.

In a world of pastel clouds, gold cities and high fashion, Bella discovers masturbation, sexual pleasure and herself, becoming an adventurer, a prostitute and a surgeon (in that order). The whole affair is brought to life by some eye-popping cinematography and set design, making the stranger parts of the characters and narrative seem totally at home.