SYNOPSIS: In “The Substance,” a new splatter film starring Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley, and now playing in theatres, Hollywood actress Elisabeth Sparkle is willing to do anything to be younger, more beautiful, more perfect, including using a new, black-market drug that promises to create “the best version” of herself. The cell-replicating substance does indeed create a new, younger version of Elisabeth, but youth comes with a price and some potentially horrifying side-effects.
CAST: Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid. Written and directed by Coralie Fargeat.
REVIEW: In its willingness to push buttons, “The Substance” is quite unlike any other movie you’ll see this year.
Violent and gory, and culminating in uncontrolled chaos, it’s a horror film about the downside of selfishness and the virtue of playing by the rules. It’s a showbiz cautionary tale, à la “Sunset Boulevard” by way of “The Picture of Dorian Gray” and it allows Demi Moore to let her freak flag fly.
The dual quest for youth and fame is front and center. Both subjects have been essayed before in film, but never with such squirm inducing intensity. It’s outlandish, unrealistic and over-all rather silly, and yet, the idea of using some sort of substance to change your body seems less outlandish, unrealistic and not quite as silly in the age of Ozempic usage and plastic surgery ads beamed into our homes via TV and the internet.
The question at the heart of the film, “Have you ever dreamt of a better version of yourself? Younger? More beautiful?” isn’t some wild horror premise. It’s a common notion, pushed to an extreme. Because it is a question thrown at us daily through advertising, the action becomes wretchedly relatable, even if the exact situation isn’t.
As a faded Oscar winner who takes an opportunity to literally shed her old skin, Demi Moore is perfectly and ingeniously cast. She is obviously a successful movie star in real life, so when we see her wracked by insecurity when she overhears obnoxious studio head Harvey (Dennis Quaid), in full-on Hollywood a-hole mode, bellow, “Find me somebody new, now!” it packs a punch. It may be a career best performance for Moore. At any rate, it is certainly unlike anything she has ever done before.
As Moore’s younger, “best” self, Qualley shines. Moore undergoes the broadest physical change, but, as Sue, Qualley takes the character on a journey from naïve and sweet to calculating and disturbing.
“The Substance” has a lot on its mind. Writer/director Coralie Fargeat’s infuses the story with her thoughts on youth, beauty, fame and Hollywood’s unrealistic beauty standards, and uses body horror coupled with the bonkers, Grand Guignol ending to make her points. It goes on a bit too long, but Fargeat’s gruesome vision, and the finale’s ankle-deep bloodbath, is a thing of terrible beauty.
I join Shane Hewitt on his Bell Media Radio Network show to talk about Demi Moore quest to normalize farting and Wesley Snipes’s two new Guinness World Records.
Then, stick around for Booze and Reviews! This week I’ll tell you about the new Matt Damon heist flick “The Instigators” and then tell you about Boston’s boozy history!
LOGLNE: The documentary “Brats” skims across the surface of 1980s popular culture to present a breezy portrait of a group of very famous young actors who came-of-age while appearing in coming-of-age films. Labelled “The Brat Pack” in a 1985 New York Magazine cover story, they appeared, in various combinations, in decade defining films like “Pretty in Pink,” “16 Candles” and “St. Elmo’s Fire.” In firsthand interviews with fellow Brat Pack members, director Andrew McCarthy looks back at the effects of youthful stardom, and being labelled a brat in the press.
CAST: Andrew McCarthy, Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy, Timothy Hutton, Demi Moore, Rob Lowe, Lea Thompson, Jon Cryer, Lauren Shuler Donner, Howard Deutch, David Blum, and in archival footage, Molly Ringwald and Judd Nelson.
REVIEW: There’s an old saying that sums up McCarthy’s approach to “Brats”: “Within every challenge lies the hidden treasure of self-discovery.”
As director and host, he spends a great deal of the film, pushing the idea that being labeled, at a young age, the Brat Pack, has been limiting to the careers of all the actors involved. Directors, producers and studios, he asserts, didn’t take them seriously and wouldn’t hire them to appear in anything other than films aimed at teenagers.
For McCarthy, at the film’s onset at least, the premise appears to be an existential crisis. The subsequent interviews, with various pop culture experts like Malcolm Gladwell, and McCarthy’s fellow Brat Packers, feel like therapy for the actor; a way to understand his complicated relationship with a cultural moment that had a profound personal impact on his life.
For the most part, the interviews are interesting. Rob Lowe (who reminds McCarthy that they had a pretty good time at the height of Brat Mania) and Demi Moore (who uses words like “againstness” in her passionate replies of McCarthy’s questions) are the stand-outs, but all the conversations have a warmth born out of old friends reminiscing about a shared experience. There’s also a heaping helping of nostalgia—loads of great 80s hair, fashions and film clips—but the strongest whiff of wistfulness comes from McCarthy himself and his conflicted feelings regarding how his career intersected with the public and professional opinion of the Brat Pack.
“Brats” does become repetitive as McCarthy rehashes the same point over-and-over again but beyond the film’s self-indulgence comes a hidden treasure of self-discovery. I don’t know if McCarthy will ever truly accept how his life was shaped by his Brat Pack association, but by the time the end credits roll, he at least seems to realize that the advantages of being a Brat Packer far outshone the burden.
“Songbird,” a new film produced by Michael Bay and now on premium VOD, feels ripped from the headlines.
Like, today’s headlines.
The first film to shoot in Los Angeles during the lockdown details life during COVID.
Set in 2024, during the fourth year of pandemic, COVID has mutated, leaving the United States under martial law were infected citizens are forcibly removed from their homes. Treated like walking, talking biohazards they are housed in concentration camps called Q-Zones.
Meanwhile, motorcycle courier Nico (KJ Apa) is immune. A recovered COVID patient, he has the antibodies to fight off the disease. When his locked-down girlfriend Sarah (Sofia Carson) is suspected of contracting the virus, Nico springs into action to save her from being taken away.
There are side characters galore, like Bradley Whitford’s sex-crazed record producer, a lovelorn veteran played by Paul Walter Hauser, Demi Moore’s protective mom and an over-the-top Peter Stormare as the evil head of the Los Angeles’ “sanitation” department–but most of them exist only to heighten the grim desperation of the situation.
“Songbird” isn’t a politicized screed about masks or the virus’ origin. Instead, it’s a star-crossed style romance—”You’ve never been in the same room,” says Sara’s mother, “but he loves you.”—set against the backdrop of the worst world event in decades.
It would be one thing if “Songbird” had something to add the conversation about COVID, but it doesn’t. Instead, it plays off our worst collective fears in clumsy and exploitative ways.
It’s likely to appeal to conspiracy enthusiasts who may finger their tinfoil hats in excitement at the mention of bracelets for “munies”—the immune—an unchecked department of sanitation who arrest at will, apps that will report you if your temperature is above normal and ever-present surveillance.
For those not inclined toward dystopian extremes, “Songbird” is a crass reminder of the real-life death, sickness, unemployment and heartache COVID has wrought. It feels tone deaf, and worse, it’s a bad movie.
It’s the second cinematic go-around for David Mamet’s 1974 play, “Sexual Perversity in Chicago.”
The 1980s version was a peak into the lives of yuppified twenty-somethings played by pretty people Demi Moore and Rob Lowe.
The new version, in theatres this weekend, changes the location form Chi-Town to Los Angeles, focusing on singles in their 30s. The story hasn’t changed that much, just the faces; this time around the pretty people are played by Michael Ealy, Regina Hall, Kevin Hart and Joy Bryant.
The story focuses on two couples. Danny (Ealy) and Debbie (Bryant) and Bernie (Hart) and Joan (Hall). The former are lonely hearts who find one another, but don’t discover the passion needed to sustain their relationship. The latter are all passion with no firm commitment outside of kinky sex and “No you didn’t!” one-liners.
Like the original film the story is organized around various holidays and seasons and follows most of the same plot points but that’s where the similarity ends. Keep in mind, this isn’t a remake of David Mamet’s play, it’s a remake of a movie that was based on Mamet’s play, so there is no reverence for the tone established by one of America’s leading playwrights.
The easy sentimentality of the 1986 film has been replaced by raunchy jokes and situations, and if it is possible for a film, outside of the kind that play at The Pussycat Theatre, to have too many sex scenes, “About Last Night” is that movie. Instead of plot we’re handed sex scenes, but the kind of sex scenes that happen under blankets and reveal nothing, physically or story wise.
The story relies on the characters to maintain interest, but although they intersect—one of the movie’s stylish twists is the intercutting of scenes between the men and women to highlight their similarities and contrast their differences—the two couples seem to be from different movies.
Hart and Hall appear to be making a farce, while Ealy and Bryant are entrenched in a more sentimental—and duller—film. Hart and Hall have enough personality to make up for the dreary pretty people, but your enjoyment of the film overall may well be linked to your capacity for Kevin Hart’s wild antics.
“About Last Night” is frisky and a little freaky, but not as funny or insightful as it thinks it is.
Mr. Brooks stars Demi Moore and Kevin Costner. No, it isn’t some lost artifact from the early 1990s; it’s a tightly scripted, but slightly wonky new serial killer movie headlined by stars who were at the top of the form when the first George Bush was in office.
Costner takes a break from his usual nice guy routine to play the title role, Earl Brooks, a successful business man with a beautiful wife (Marg Helgenberger) and an even more beautiful home. His life seems perfect, but the far-away look in his eyes lets us know that everything is not right in Mr. Brooks’ world. You see, he’s an addict. He’s been on the straight and narrow for two years, but something is pulling at him. That something is Marshall (William Hurt) a mayhem loving imaginary friend who looks a great deal like the professor from Altered States.
Marshall convinces Mr. Brooks to indulge his bad habit one more time, letting loose the Mr. Hyde that Earl tries to keep under wraps. They don’t go on a drinking binge, start smoking or take drugs. Mr. Brooks is far too straight laced for any of that kind of behavior. You see, Mr. Brooks is addicted to killing, and Marshall is the bad influence who convinces him to stalk and kill innocent people. When the usually meticulous killer makes a mistake at the scene of the crime he opens himself up to scrutiny from not only a very determined police detective (Demi Moore), but also a wannabe homicidal maniac (Dane Cook) who blackmails Mr. Brooks into schooling him in the ways of the serial killing game.
We’ve seen the serial-killer-next-door scenario played out many times on screen, and as usual, in Mr. Brooks most of the female characters are underwritten. Helgenberger is wasted as Mrs. Brooks in a role that requires her to do little else than look good, while Moore’s determined cop routine, although well performed, is pretty standard stuff. In spite of its shortcomings Mr. Brooks has several points that vault it head and shoulders above the rest.
The story takes a few unexpected zigs and zags. Cook’s killer fan boy is a fun diversion and the seemingly red herring role of the daughter adds depth to the piece but it really is the performances of Costner and Hurt that make Mr. Brooks so entertaining to watch.
In Earl Brooks Costner, never an expressive actor, finds the perfect character fit for his acting style. Most of the time Costner’s bland approach undermines his characters, but Brooks is a man who controls his emotions, the blank look on his face hiding the barely controlled malevolence that wracks his brain. The actor’s dull exterior perfectly mirrors the image Mr. Brooks must portray to avoid being caught. This is a guy who looks like he couldn’t blow the foam off a glass of beer let alone put a bullet in someone’s head and that’s just as it should be.
William Hurt hands in a bravura turn as the evil alter ego who simply can’t contain his glee at the pandemonium he causes. He’s rotten to the core, but Hurt plays him more as a mischievous older brother who encourages his siblings to sneak a drink from dad’s liquor cabinet than a psychological force who pushes his host to commit heinous acts of murder.
A decade and a half ago these two actors almost co-starred in The Big Chill before Costner’s role ended up on the cutting room floor. Had that footage survived it would be interesting to see if they had the same kind of chemistry on-screen then as they do now. Mr. Brooks cooks with gas when those two do their evil twin routine.
Mr. Brooks isn’t on the same playing field as Silence of the Lambs or Psycho, but it is an interesting portrait of the killer next door.
SYNOPSIS: In “The Substance,” a new splatter film starring Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley, and now playing in theatres, Hollywood actress Elisabeth Sparkle is willing to do anything to be younger, more beautiful, more perfect, including using a new, black-market drug that promises to create “the best version” of herself. The cell-replicating substance does indeed create a new, younger version of Elisabeth, but youth comes with a price and some potentially horrifying side-effects.
