#60: THE SUBSTANCE

STARRING: Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley and Dennis Quaid. Written, produced and directed by Coralie Fargeat. Budget $17.5 million. Running time 140 minutes.

On her 50th birthday, Elisabeth Sparkle the star of a TV fitness show is fired by the odious head of the TV studio, Harvey (Dennis Quaid) because she's too old, and ugly. Reeling from the shock, Elisabeth is hospitalised following a car accident and given a USB stick with an advert for something called The Substance, which offers her the chance for rebirth.

She takes the bait, and the drug is sent to her. Following an agonising delivery, through her spine, she gives birth to a younger, more beautiful version of herself, she transfers her essence into the new body and names herself Sue. The rules for The Substance are as simple to follow as those issued to the owners of a Mogwai. Elisabeth can only occupy the body of Sue for one week before returning to her own body for a subsequent week. It's that simple. Each week Sue must extract spinal fluid from the body of Elisabeth which she injects on a daily basis. Elisabeth/Sue is warned constantly that the two of them are one and not to forget it, or to take advantage of the week on week off rule.

Sue auditions as her own replacement for the fitness show and gets the gig becoming the next big thing and is loved and lauded by all. The trouble is, that one week just quite enough and Sue starts to push the limits leading to horrendous results.

This is a remarkable horror film, gory beyond belief, like a hardcore David Cronenberg film crossed with David Lynch with a healthy dose of Stanley Kubrick for good measure, think of it as a female-centric version of The Fly no less and you'd be in the same ballpark. The gore, for the most part achieved by practical effects are staggering, gross doesn't even begin to cover it, you'll see things you've never seen before, and the final act is an almost non-stop orgy of blood and gore which just keeps growing in outrageousness until a brilliant ending that perfectly bookends the film. 

Demi Moore is extraordinary, delivering a performance that is powerful and fantastically raw, similarly, Margaret Qualley gives it her all as the beautiful younger version of herself, rounding off the cast is Dennis Quaid who delivers a performance so OTT it fits in perfectly with the rest of this extraordinary movie, bringing a level of sleaziness worthy of Donald Trump and Harvey Weinstein combined. 

All of the male characters in this film are terrible, from the creepy horny next-door neighbour to the casting directors, to the assorted heads of various companies. The film has a strange detached feel and the look of a 1970s Cronenberg movie, the actors perform as if in a Lynch film and the styling reminds you of Kubrick.
Mixing a fantastic dose of humour into the horror is a brilliant move, and although this in no way could be considered a comedy, it still has some extremely funny black-humour. This film is French director Coralie Fargeat's second film and (rightly) won her the Best Screenplay award at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.

Ultimately this film is about the fear of getting older and the contempt that society has for anyone who dares to get old, especially women, an idea that underlines my own work with Psycho Gran and I found myself enchanted, delighted and enthralled by this fantastic film. I loved every single gore soaked second and marvelled at the bravery of both Moore and Qualley and their performances. 

An astonishing film that cannot be described and needs to be seen to be believed, just be warned it's the gorest film I've seen in absolute decades. 

10/10 

#56: BETWEEN THE TEMPLES

Starring: Jason Schwartzman, Carol Kane, Caroline Aaron, Robert Smigel, Madeline Weinstein, Matthew Shear and Dolly de Leon. Written by C. Mason Wells and Nathan Silver. Directed by Nathan Silver. Running time 111 minutes.

Just like The Holdover, this is another film channeling a feel of the 1970s, of the sorts of films made by Hal Ashby, Robert Altman and Arthur Hiller.

Jason Schwartzman is Ben Gottlieb, a cantor, suffering a severe crisis of faith following the accidental death of his wife that's left him unable to sing. He's moved back in with his two mums, Meira and Judith and seems to spends his days (or nights) getting into drunken fights in bars and making half-hearted attempts to kill himself. Then into his life walks Carla (Carol Kane), a retired music teacher who's decided to complete her bar mitzvah and so begins a relationship that rekindles his faith and sort of grows into something that might be romantic. On the other hand, it might also be the moment Ben's mental breakdown happens. 

The chemistry between Schwartzman's Ben and Kane's Carla is what makes this film zing, it feels so organic and natural and as their friendship becomes something more (or does it), the strains it puts on their own respective families gives the film its humour and heart. The film explores grief, romance and faith from a Jewish perspective and yet feels inclusive. Schwartzman is always good, but it's hard to reconcile this 40 year-old man with the young man of Rushmore. Plus he looks so much like Steve Carell that it becomes jarring. That said, Carol Kane is a delight, funny, relaxed and scintillating, and they're both natural comedians. He feels like his generations Alan Arkin and her Madeline Khan.

The story might be slight and but the journey it takes us on is at turns cringey, funny, touching but always entertaining. 

Overall, a satisfying and entertaining comedy about grief, love and life. 8/10

#58: THE CRITIC

 

STARRING Ian McKellen, Gemma Arterton, Mark Strong, Ben Barnes, Alfred Enoch, Romola Garai and Lesley Manville. Written by Patrick Marber, based on Curtain Call by Anthony Quinn. Directed by Anand Tucker. Running time 101 minutes.

It's London in 1934, how do we know it's London, well it's that ruddy fog which fills every scene of this movie that sort of gives it away. Sadly, London of the middle 30s consists of just three vaguely old buildings, one old outside toilet and a park, hence the need for fog.

Anyway, in the world of the critic of the 1930s, none stride as tall as Jimmy Erskine (Ian McKellen) the theatre critic for The Daily Chronicle, he's spiteful, wilful, well into his 70s and secretly gay, living with his live-in lover and personal secretary, Tom Turner (Alfred Enoch). Erskin's been spewing his bile in print for the past 30 odd years and his voice is beginning to lose his lustre, especially for the paper's new publisher, and owner, Viscount David Brooke (Mark Strong) who has taken over the paper following the death of his father. And whereas his father delighted in Erskine's ruthless, vitriolic, and caustic reviews, most of which is aimed at actress Nina Land (Gemma Arterton), young Brooke isn't as partial.

Brooke asks Erskine to tone down his biting reviews in an aid to boost readerships and promptly starts sacking the old guard. Knowing his card is marked, Erskine throws caution to the wind and following a drunken gay orgy gets arrested by the police for lewd behaviour. When news of his arrest reaches the ears of Brooke, Erskine is fired and desperate, he embarks on a blackmail plot to save his career. When he discovers that Brooke is infatuated with the target of his hate filled reviews, actress Nina Land (Gemma Artrton), Erskine hatches a plan to blackmail the publisher which ultimately leads to murder, suicide and ruin.

This is Ian McKellen's film - lock, stock and barrel and boy do we know it, from the second he arrives till the moment he leaves he owns this film, and while the likes of Mark Strong, Gemma Arterton, and the criminally underused Lesley Manville, give it their all in the acting department they are but 40 watt bulbs to McKellen's 200,000 Lumens performance. That's not to say he overacts, he doesn't, it's just he's so magnetic he absorbs all attention like a blackhole.

As usual, it's good to see a film with a story not hamstrung by robots, superheroes, CGI effects and bombastic special effects. What a change to see an adult story told by good actors. Sadly though, this is all surface and lacks any sense of deeper intrigue or duplicity, it's all writ large on the screen. The film hints at the risks of Erskine and Enoch's forbidden love, or lust, but it's dealt with all too quickly. Similarly, Erskine's sinister blackmail plot, while offering a clever idea feels all too pat and too quick in its resolution. What's lacking is a deeper dive in the psyche of Erskine, it would have been far more interesting to see the collapse of the man, or witness more of his Machavalian manipulations of those people about him to achieve his goal. 

He's an unpleasant character and yet you feel he needed to be more repellent, more desperate to hold onto his lifestyle, more willing to do anything to hold on to what he had. Instead we just get a quick character study and a plan that unreels too quickly leaving the whole thing to feel undercooked.

And while McKellen is great, the whole film fails to truly engage, it all feels a little too surface, with no real depth. 

7/10   

#57: BEETLEJUICE BETTLEJUICE

 

STARRING: Michael Keaton, Wynona Ryder, Catherine O'Hara, Jenna Ortega, Justin Theroux, Monica Bellucci, Willem Dafoe. Story by Alfred Gough, Miles Millar and Seth Grahame-Smith. Screenplay by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar. Based on characters created by Michael McDowell and Larry Wilson. Music by Danny Elfman. Directed by Tim Burton. Budget $100 million. Running time 104 minutes. 

Arriving a mere 36 years after the original, this much longed for sequel reunites most of the original cast and several new ones for one more go on the Beetlejuice merry-go-round. Directed by a creatively spent director and surviving purely on the goodwill generated by its lead actor, this is a film with none of the wit of the original, or scintilla of its charm, a film which crams four subplots into its running time to create an experience that defies physics by seeming to last longer than the gap between the first and second movie. 

The plot finds an adult Lydia Deetz (Wynona Ryder), a pill-popping burn-out who hosts a popular TV show called Ghost House, she's being aggressively dated and perused by her manager Rory (Justin Theroux) who wants to marry her for her money. Lydia is also estranged from her daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega), who hates her mother for not being able to see the ghost of her dead father who died mysteriously while traveling through the Amazon rainforest. When Lydia discovers her father has been killed and eaten by a shark she returns to the family home to be with her stepmother Delia Deetz (Catherine O'Hara), now a successful modern artist. Meanwhile, Astird, a deeply depressed schoolgirl comes home for the funeral and meets a local boy and the two form a relationship. Meanwhile in the afterlife, Beetlejuice who is now the boss of the newly deceased division is still trying to get it on with Lydia, and Willem Dafoe as Wolf Jackson - a ghost detective is trying to capture Monica Bellucci's Delores, Beetlejuice's ex-wife, she's somehow back for revenge after Beetlejuice dismembered her with an axe.

The film is an unholy mess, with tonnes of backstory and subplots constantly bogging it down, for large portions of this film major characters disappear while the rest of the film slowly trundles on boringly and without any true spark or excitement. And while this film isn't the complete cluster fuck that Boredlands was, it's not far off. 

The middle portion of the film sees all these various plot points play out in slow succession but without any involvement or excitement that is until the final act finally rolls slowly into play.

Utilising the possession scene from the first film as its template, the third act set in the local church, gathers all the cast together for a rendition of Richard Harris's sublime McArthur Park hit. It's this sequence that saves the film from being a total crushing disappointment but alas despite being the absolute high-light of the entire film, it's sadly far too little far too too late. 

The cast, every man-jack of them, give it their all, trying their damndest to make this whole sorry mess work, but they're just not given any help from the bloated script, or tired direction. Burton uses the same camera tricks endlessly, as he flies his camera over the town again and again, zooming in on the Deetz house, or the model of the house, not once, not twice, but each goddam time the sodding action cuts back to the house.

The film avoids making Beetlejuice the main focus to the expense of everything else and the individual story strands are amusing but just don't gell into a cohesive whole. And while Dafoe and the rest delight and revel in their roles Monica Bellucci is criminally wasted in the role of Bettlejuice's ex-wife.   

The original movie, which I watched just the day before seeing this, is blissfully brief, the plot is simple and the film moves at a pace but never at the expense of the story. This lazy creatively dead sequel avoids all of that by over egging the pudding so much it implodes under the sheer weight of story its expected to carry. 

Too much of everything ruins this film as does the bloated story and the complete lack of originality. 

Thank god for the willing cast of great actors all having a hoot, for them no blame is given, that rests purely on the shoulders and souls of the writers and director who deserve to burn in the pits of hell for all eternity for this bland, dreary dirge of a movie. 

5/10

#55 & 59: ALIEN ROMULUS

 

STARRING: Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, Isabela Merced, Spike Fearn and Aileen Wu. Written by Fede Álvarez and Rodo Sayagues. Directed by Fede Álvarez. Budget #80 million. Running time 119 minutes.

And so we come to the 9th film in the Alien franchise after Alien, Aliens, Alien 3, Alien: Resurrection, Alien Vs. Predator, Alien Vs Predator: Requiem, Alien: Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. Well, you know what they say, 9th time's a charm.  

Chronologically speaking this takes place between Alien and Aliens, thus successfully ignoring the failed majesty of Alien 3 and the rest. 

Ditching the gross idea of characters who are, you know older than 30, in favour of a group of young diverse young people as it's cannon fodder is a shrewd move for Generation Z crowd this film is aimed at and who don't seem to be able to cope with ideas, films, or actors older than themselves. And it's much nicer for us Babyboomers, brought up on the first Alien film in 1979 as we get to watch these young snots getting the living shit ripped out of them. 

We meet our plucky band of young people, living on a mining colony blighted by perpetually night-time who are planning to borrow a spaceship and plunder a completely abandoned space station that is drifting above their miserable planet of its cryo-chambers so they can use them to survive the 9 light years of travel they have to do to escape to somewhere better.

What they find isn't a spaceship but a semi derelict research station called Romulus hurriedly abandoned and partially damaged after whatever those pesky scientists were experimenting on got loose. 

Through a series of stupid decisions, our band of hapless kids find themselves trapped onboard a crashing space station and separated from their spaceship and forced to navigate deep dark corridors filled with a veritable army of alien face-huggers and the occasional xenomorph to escape. Jeez, Mondays, am I right?

WARNING. WHILE THIS REVIEW CONTAINS NO ACTUAL SPOILERS, THERE IS ENOUGH INFORMATION SUBTLY ALLUDED TO IN THIS NEXT SECTION OF THE REVIEW THAT MEANS KEEN FANS OF THE ALIEN FRANCHISE MIGHT LEARN TOO MUCH. 

The crew feature Cailee Spaeny as Rain, our Ripley substitute - young orphaned, resourceful, but also small, and vulnerable – David Jonsson as Andy, Rain's surrogate brother and synthetic human, who's old and obsolete and as glitchy as fuck (I wonder if that'll play a part later on?) Archie Renaux as Tyler, heroic hunk and also ex-boyfriend of Rain, Tyler's pregnant sister Kay (Isabela Merced) whose pregnancy will obviously play a big part of later on, for obvious reasons, namely she's pregnant (great telegraphing guys), on and then there's Bjorn (Spike Fearn) who just so happens to be Tyler and Tay's cousin with synthetic issues and finally there's Navarro, the pilot (Aileen Wu), so obviously her card is marked.

This starts well and the build up is good, the exploration of the Romulus is gripping, and intriguing! Good grief, you think, have they got it right? Then the action starts and that too is good. Deaths occur and those too are gruesome, although nothing will ever compare with John Hurt's death in Alien. Taking elements from the first two films Fede Álvarez gives us an carefully sampled movie filled with bits we loved and then the third act roars into view, and sadly, dear reader, the whole film reveals itself to be nothing more than a remake of Alien: Resurrection, and goes from a solid 9/10 to a 'what the actual what' 7/10.

This gets so much right, the scares come courtesy of the facehungers who number in the hundreds and we get to learn a little bit more about those frisky little French kissers, that is before the aliens start emerging from the ceilings, floors and walls to whittle our band of cannon fodder down to the last girl standing, in this case Cailee Spaeny, doing her best Sigourney Weaver, right down to the now obligatory third act vest and kegs showdown.

Channeling both Alien and Aliens to the Nth degree and featuring a rather surprising, uncanny valley extended cameo, this film offers a great set up and a fantastically tense middle section, which sadly all comes undone when the whole film spins down into extreme nonsense in the final act. You can see what went wrong. Having scared the crap out of audiences for the whole film with aliens and face hungers, where else could you go?

There's also the need for the WHOLE franchise and it's lore to be codified and the re-introduction of ideas that featured in Alien Prometheus and Covernant just muddy the waters. The great thing about the first Alien movie was that we didn't know anything, the creature was 'alien', now because modern audiences need to be told everything we have to have all this lore, it's what killed Star Snores. Continuity and story baggage   

It's great to see so many practical effects on offer, and practical sets, the design is classic retro-futuristic, blinking lights and switches, cathoray tube TVs and watching real people interact with real environments is a definite plus. It's got scares, action, horror and it moves at a good pace.

At the end of the day, this was a cleverly sampled remixed mix-tape of a movie, with nothing new, but with enough hints at past greatness to keep you sweet. 

7/10 (FIRST VIEWING)

6/10 (SECOND VIEWING)
I was surprised how boring I found this second time round. The characters let it down, and there's nothing new to take away from it with a repeat viewing. Alien and Aliens both give you more with each subsequent outing, not so this. You find yourself just marvelling at the inept stupidity of the characters and the horrendous fan service of the third act just exorcises any good will you might feel towards it. I suggest if you enjoyed it on the first viewing, then don't return. It's sins will out it.

 

#54: TRAP

STARRING: Josh Hartnett, Ariel Donoghue, Saleka Nigh Shyamalan, M. Night Shyamalan, Hayley Mills and Alison Pill. Written directed and Night Raven's song written by M. Night Shyamalan. Budget £30 million. Running time 105 minutes.

This is the first M. Nigh Shyamalan movie I've enjoyed since 2016's Split, and only the third out of his 16 movies. All his films, up until this one, featured a high concept combined with a twist ending  and I found it deeply annoying, mainly because I always guessed the ending far too early, I guessed the twist in The Village, in the first 5 minutes. Night has a terrible habit of badly telegraphing key plot points, "Swing high", for example from Signs which I find deeply irritating. And if The Village with its terrible twist broke my spirit, then The Happening was the final nail in the coffin. 

He always seems like a director who loves himself way too much and whose belief in his own abilities far exceeds his actual reach. 

And so to Trap. I went in expecting to hate it, but damn it if it didn't win me over with its silly, over-the-top script featuring glaring plot contrivances that only exist to propel this ridiculous story and a fanatically committed Josh Hartnett.

Josh plays Cooper a fireman and family man with a wife and two loving kids who just so happens to be a fantastically high-functioned organised serial killer with 12 confirmed kills who goes under the soubriquet The Butcher. He's taking his daughter, Riley (Ariel Donoghue) to a Lady Raven concert at a nearby stadium. Who's Lady Raven, I hear you ask? Well she's only the biggest star in the pop firmament, in this universe anyway and played by Night's daughter Saleka Nigh Shyamalan. Anyway, once they're in the stadium, Cooper begins to realise that he's trapped as the entire weight of the law enforcement descends on the stadium sealing him inside, from every member of the police force to the National Guard, FBI, CIA and probably KGB, who all gather outside to catch him. And so far so the trailer. Desperately Cooper looks for a way out while trying to keep his daughter off the scent, but as the concert winds down Cooper finds himself running out of options, that is until an opportunity presents itself...

I've never been to a mega concert featuring a super star pop idol but according to this film, nobody spends any time inside watching the star, they're all outside in the corridor around the stadium buying snacks, hotdogs, drinks, merchandising, or using the toilet so Cooper can move around unseen by everyone. 

Luckily a serious of coincidences and lucky breaks enable our loveable serial killer, whose latest victim is chained up in a basement somewhere in the city, to gain a way of moving about with impunity and to listen in on the police band radio while the lead psycho profiler carefully details what they're going to do to catch him. Phew that's lucky! It's also lucky that everyone Cooper meets falls for his charm and inadvertently help him to plot his escape. 

While this carries on we're treated to an extended music video of M. Night's daughter's musical stylings featuring music and lyrics he composed. There's a lot of it as we're treated to a good 30 odd minutes of her performance. No shade on Saleka, she's actually rather good and plays an important part in the second half, but it's also in this half of the film where the plot devices kick in with a vengeance.

M. Night has this very annoying habit of getting his actors to talk directly into the lens which is deeply intrusive and bloody annoying. Josh is very game as the lead actor and carries the film on his very broad shoulders, but he also looks uncomfortable in the part of a loving father and his interactions with Riley boarder on very clumsy and artifical. He's far better in the second act as his escape plan rolls into action and his final confrontation with a family member is very powerful. It's in these later scenes that he comes to life as his true nature finally reveals himself.

With all of it's ridiculous contrivances, plot holes and shocking convenient co-incidences this was an unintentionally funny film that can only be taken as a dark comedy, seen as a serious thriller it's a farce, but from the armchair of parody this was an enjoyable and satisfying romp that amused me far more than it annoyed me and bereft of a trademarked M. NIght Shamalyan twist ending was far more entertaining that I was expecting. 

6/10

#53: CUCKOO

 

Starring Hunter Schafer, Jan Bluthardt, Marton Csokas, Jessica Henwick and Dan Stevens. Written and directed by Tilman Singer. Music by Simon Waskow. Budget $7 million. Running time 103 minutes.

Another Cineworld Secret Screening, hoping for Alien: Romulus, but getting something else, something rather delightful, an experimental independent German horror film.

Cuckoo sees 17-year old Gretchen (Hunter Schager), forced to leave her home in the US and move back with her father, Luis (Márton Csókás) and her stepmother Beth (Jessica Henwick) and mute half-sister Alma (Mila Lieu) following the death of Gretchen's mother. Together the family travel to a holiday resort in the German Alps, where Luis and Beth have been hired by creepy resort owner Herr König (Dan Stevens) to design a new building. König offers Gretchen a job on front-of-desk of the resort, which beyond the odd honeymooning couple seems strangely empty. He warns her to lock the doors at 10:00pm and not to travel alone at night. Naturally she doesn't and ends up hospitalised after she's attacked by a mysterious white coated and hooded woman in huge sunglasses who can paralyse with her shrieking bird-like scream. But the trouble is no one seems to believe her, least of all her frustrated father. 

Gretchen begins to realise that something isn't right in the complex. Why do all the female guest keep vomiting and stumbling around drunk-like, what's up with the complex's hi-tech hospital, with no patients, and just what is that shrieking sound coming from the forrest? And why is König so interested in Alma?

The film plays on the concept of the Cuckoo, as you begin to wonder if it's Gretchen who's the Cuckoo in this family, or is it Alma. Feeling lost, bereaved and unwanted, Gretchen decides to runaway with an attractive French girl who comes to stay at the resort, and together they drive off after stealing the resort's takings. But their escape is cut short when they're involved in terrible car crash, caused by the hooded woman, and Gretchen finds herself once again in the strange hospital, with serious injuries. And that's when shit gets unreal and the bizarreness and weirdness accelerates.

Written and directed by Tilman Singer this is a genuinely entertaining horror flick that feels like early David Cronenberg crossed with David Lynch. he shows great flair and his direction feels fresh and original. There's one shot I really liked, a tracking shot where the camera, looking up, at Gretchen face tracks her across a room, it sounds odd to point out but it appealed to me. This is Singer's second film and I look forward to seeing more. Likewise,  Hunter Schager (Gretchen) who carries this film is superb, bringing a real believability to her role of the grieving Gretchen, and for once she doesn't come across as a over powered girl-boss, but a resourceful young woman desperate to survive. And not forgetting Dan Stevens who keeps turning up in these small indie flicks and fricking nailing it dead! I thought he was great in Abigail and once again he brings genuine unease in this. 

As the story unfolds and the secrets are revealed the film loses some of its charm, but not a lot, and the violent blood soaked final act is almost cathartic in nature. I was reminded of a previous European horror film from 2022 called Hatching, which together with this would make rather a good double bill.

8/10