THE MACHINIST — SHOCKTOBER!

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The ever intense Christian Bale plays Trevor Reznik an emaciated factory machinist who hasn't slept in over a year.

Trevor’s constant eerie hallucinations cost a coworker his arm.

Damn.

This is one tightly wound horror movie that will send cold chills down your spine.

"The Machinist" is a well-crafted psychological thriller about self-deception and tragedy, told against an eerie landscape of terrifying dislocation and isolation.

This is one effed up horror movie.

This film's haunted house centerpiece makes it ideal Halloween viewing.

Director Brad Anderson ("Bates Motel") goes too heavy on the film's trendy gray-green color visual scheme, but delivers Scott Kosar's hip script in film that's sure to inspire a cult following.

“The Machinist” will withstand the test of time.

Jennifer Jason Leigh is persuasive as Reznik's prostitute girlfriend.

Christian Bale's acting efforts border on dementia. Christian Bale goes all out, and thankfully it pays off big time. I don't think Christian Bale has yet to make a bad movie.

At its heart, "The Machinist" is an anti-automobile satire with more than a few barbs thrown at corporate culture of neglecting and abusing its workers.

Burner.

Rated R. 102 mins. (Paramount)

WORKING GIRLS — THE CRITERION COLLECTION

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Groupthink doesn't live here, critical thought does. This ad-free website is dedicated to Agnès Varda and to Luis Buñuel.

Punk heart still beating.

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Lizzie Borden's third film, behind "Regrouping" (1979) and "Born In Flames" (1983), is a perfect chamber-piece of neo-realist social satire.

The film's feminist trappings of an '80s era Manhattan brothel provides the frame for a piercing commentary on the effects of American capitalism on women.

"Working Girls" could easily be adapted to be a modernday Broadway play.

It would be a sensation for its timeless qualities of social, sexual, and economic truth.

Molly (Louise Smith), a professional photographer, lives with her lesbian girlfriend when she isn't working as a sex worker in a Manhattan brothel run by a domineering madam.

"Have you ever heard of surplus value?"

That theme line shoots like a sharp political dart when a character speaks it.

“All workers create more value at work than they receive in wages. The extra surplus value goes into the boss’s pocket as profit.”

Surplus value is "the surplus produced over and above what is required to survive, which is translated into profit in capitalism. Since the capitalist pays a laborer for his/her labor, the capitalist claims to own the means of production, the worker's labor-power, and even the product that is thus produced."

Female hands hold cups of coffee, count money, and remove cum-filled condoms.

Everyone chisels; there is no place to hide.

Not Rated. 93 mins.

STARSHIP TROOPERS — SHOCKTOBER!

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Groupthink doesn't live here, critical thought does. This ad-free website is dedicated to Agnès Varda and to Luis Buñuel.

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Paul Verhoeven's presciently cynical satire of American politics is loosely based on Robert A. Heinlein's 1959 science fiction novel which went on to win the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1960.

The movie is equal parts comedy, war action, spectacle, and satirical commentary.

Verhoeven's outrageous sci-fi epic piles on layers of observations about the nature of militarization in a story about young-and-lovely high school graduates (equal opportunity for girls and boys) going off to war against an invading army of giant arachnid bugs from the planet of Kelndathu.

All this wasted beauty. 

In the film's near future, American society has fully integrated political indoctrination through a constant barrage of public media propaganda to effect its fascist motives.

In a world where "Service guarantees citizenship," even if the rich don't have the right to be citizens, every kid wants to do a great job for the Fatherland — and die! Oh, the glory of war. 

"Starship Troopers" is a canny war satire that outshines even Kubrick's great satire "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb."

The bugs, the bugs!

Rated R. 130 mins.