Stimulating, combustible, nauseating, and repulsive are all perfect adjectives to describe director, writer, co-producer, and co-editor Coralie Fargeat’s (Revenge) explorative and provocative The Substance. This film doesn’t just knock on the door of critiques of the societal obsession with youth and beauty but blows off its shutters. The Substance offers no subtlety in its themes. This film is designed to make its audiences feel as squeamish as the entertainment industry’s treatment of women, particularly older women. The impossible beauty standards and society’s preoccupation with youth (particularly young, attractive women) are nothing new. Fargeat meticulously brings this to the forefront and apologizes for nothing. Nor should she.
Beetlejuice (1988)
A bit of rose-tinted childhood nostalgia can evoke memories of when life felt less chaotic and the future was full of unlimited possibilities. I remember seeing Beetlejuice with my friend Mark during sixth grade. I remember it distinctly because it was the first movie I saw in a theater without an adult present. My mom dropped the two of us off before and picked the two of us after the movie. It would not be such a significant milestone today as it was then, as this was long before the Internet, let alone cell phones. We had to look up the movie times in the newspaper and guess at the movie’s runtime based on the start times of when your film would start and when the movie after yours would begin. If there was an emergency or a miscommunication, it involved going to a pay phone and calling your home’s landline, praying that someone home could answer. I hadn’t thought about that day in years. With the 2024 release of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, I decided to revisit this Tim Burton (The Nightmare Before Christmas, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) classic. My recent rewatch of Beetlejuice in preparation for the sequel brought back that fond memory.
After Everything (2018)
Jeremy Allen White has a commanding presence. Whether he’s the troubled but brilliant New York chef Carmy Berzatto in FX’s The Bear or the successful but haunted professional wrestler Kerry Von Erich in The Iron Claw, Allen shows how to make his character the one that you can’t take your eyes off of in each scene. Before his recent success and recognition from this show and movie, Allen was known for his recurring role on Showtime’s Shameless. During the show’s decade-long run, White was carving out a name for himself on the big screen during that time with critically acclaimed but mostly unseen Afterschool, We Gotta Get Out of This Place Bobby, and co-directors Hannah Marks (Don’t Make Me Go, Turtles All the Way Down) and Joey Power’s romantic dramedy After Everything.
Trap (2024)
Veering away from the supernatural-themed movies with unique twists that defined the first decade of his career, M. Night Shyamalan (Signs, Old) ventures into a genre designed to induce a different type of suspense. While unique, Trap is so farfetched and full of contraptions, conveniences, and implausibilities that it almost finds itself in the unenviable “it’s so bad, it’s good” category. Fortunately, the first two acts built enough tension that not even the ridiculous conclusion could derail the film completely.
The Bikeriders (2024)
Director Jeff Nichols (Take Shelter, Mud) is an expert at creating ordinary characters, putting them in everyday situations, and allowing interactions and relationships to carry the story. He has masterfully accomplished this through films I adore, such as Shotgun Stories, Take Shelter, and Mud, and through films, such as Midnight Special and Loving, that aren’t quite as good as a whole but still have well-crafted characters. The Bikeriders, his most recent film, follows a similar blueprint but fails to tell an exciting story or have a single character we genuinely care about. While well made with a stellar cast that put forward the effort, the film was a snoozefest.