THE SUBSTANCE — CANNES 2024

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If you've seen Alain Robak's hilarious 1990 horror blitz "Baby Blood," then you'll have some inkling for the wonderful gnarly extremes that "The Substance" delivers to its well deserving audience.

Writer/director Coralie Fargeat creates the most satisfying horror satire to come along maybe ever.

David Cronenberg must be falling over himself with jealousy.

Fargeat deftly quotes from films by such directors as Alfred Hitchcock, David Lynch, Stanley Kubrick, Darren Aronofsky, David Cronenberg, and Brian DePalma.

The Easter eggs just keep on coming. The special effects are amazing.

Taking a cue from Oscar Wilde's "The Picture Of Dorian Gray," Coralie Fargeat crafts a diamond-sharp satire that cuts in all directions at once.

Elisabeth (Demi Moore) is a wealthy L.A. television personality being pushed out of her job by corporate misogynist in-charge (Dennis Quaid).

Science comes calling after Elisabeth miraculously survives a car crash that puts her in the dubious medical hands of a shadow pharma company peddling a black market drug kit. The works give the user the ability to create a younger version of themself that they then trade off living between for seven day increments.

Margaret Qualley blows up the screen as Sue, Elisabeth's cunning younger, more beautiful, incarnation. Force of nature.

Vanity, jealousy, money, and fame make for a toxic Molotov cocktail of bad decisions.

Here is a whole lot of movie with some very poignant ideas about culture.

"The Substance" explodes with wit, heart, soul, and a whole lot of blood and guts.

What fun!

Rated R. 141 mins.

STARSHIP TROOPERS — SHOCKTOBER!

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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. 

THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH — SHOCKTOBER!

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"The Man Who Fell to Earth" is a brilliantly stylized science fiction satire about an alien who comes to our big blue ball with a methodic plan to deliver water back to his home planet, Anthea.

Director Nicolas Roeg expands on the success he enjoyed in his experimental film "Performance," in which he turned a British rock star into an imposing film actor overnight. Where Mick Jagger played an ironic character not unlike himself in "Performance," David Bowie transforms into his alien persona with a preternatural instinct that is purely seductive.

Bowie's humanoid alien recasts himself as Thomas Jerome Newton, an orange-haired genius with a stack of original technology patents that will enrich him with the billions of dollars he needs to execute his water transportation plan. After touching down in New Mexico Newton seeks out patent attorney Oliver V. Farnsworth (Buck Henry) in Manhattan to handle his newly minted business World Enterprises Corporation. Newton returns to New Mexico where he plans to construct a spacecraft to complete his mission.

Mary-Lou (Candy Clark), a helpful chambermaid at Newton's hotel, romantically attaches herself to the alien. The couple move in together and slip into a comfortable pattern of American married life. She introduces him to religion, addiction, and sex as he becomes obsessed with television. He tells her, “The strange thing about television is that it doesn’t tell you everything. It shows you everything about life for nothing, but the true mysteries remain. Perhaps it’s in the nature of television. Just waves in space.”

Rip Torn plays Nathan Bryce with his usual maniacal glee. The character is a sex-addicted college science professor whom Newton hires to create an energy system for his spacecraft. Nicolas Roeg's intercutting of analogous sex scenes with Bryce's different female partners establishes the era's attitudes. There's playful violence in the sex scenes that is jarring for their honesty and subtext.

Yet Bryce loses his proclivity for young women in the face of his enormous salary and the challenging nature of his work for Newton. But he also becomes excessively curious about his strange but trusting employer. Bryce's tendency toward exploitation will cost the alien his anonymity to government officials who co-opt his riches.

Based on Walter Tevis's 1963 novel, "The Man Who Fell to Earth" is a prescient story about the clash between consumerism and intimacy, and between capitalism and the ecology. Newton's alien planet represents a fading utopia that is as much a state of mind as it is an actual place. Newton's flagging sense of responsibility reflects the systematic culture of betrayal that consumes him body and soul.

Rated R. 139 mins.