Joey Magidson
Welcome back to my Home Movies! This week, we have a surprisingly strong Oscar contender in The Substance hitting shelves. Today also includes some interesting 4K re-releases, as well as a more modern Criterion Collection release. Read on for more…
Joey’s Top Pick
The Substance
The Substance is such a wild film, it’s surprising that it has become such a legitimate Academy Award contender. Now, I think Demi Moore deserves the Oscar and Margaret Qualley deserves to be nominated, no doubt. It’s just fun to see such a graphic movie embraced by voters. Plus, it’s just so damn good, too. I spoke to filmmaker Coralie Fargeat here about the flick, while I said the following in my rave review (found here) at the time:
It has become a cliche to say that a horror film is extreme or unlike anything you’ve ever seen. Too often, the degree to which something is gory or out there is exaggerated, resulting in some level of audience disappointment. Well, I’m here to tell you that The Substance warrants those kinds of brash comments. A body horror satire with terrific performances, it’s as out there as it gets. No matter what you’ve heard, you’re not read for this flick, and I mean that as a major compliment, too.
The Substance goes hard. It does so in service of a metaphor that wouldn’t jive with subtlety, that’s for sure. Women in Hollywood, the aging process, sexism, it’s all in here, done in a savagely satirical manner. Plus, again, this is a very graphic body horror epic, at nearly two and a half hours long. Is it going to be for everyone? No. Was it very much up my alley? You better believe it. This is one of the most darkly enjoyable experiences of the year.
Also Available This Week
The Cell (4K)
Here
Jackie Brown (4K)
Kill Bill: Volume 1 (4K)
Kill Bill: Volume 2 (4K)
Reservoir Dogs (4K)
Venom: 3-Movie Collection (Blu-ray)
Criterion Corner
The Grifters
From The Criterion Collection: “A dark-hearted neonoir comes to a boil under the bright Los Angeles sun, in British director Stephen Frears’s rousing adaptation of the novel by dime-store bard Jim Thompson, a film that raises pulp to the realm of existential tragedy. A possessive mother (Anjelica Huston), her cynical son (John Cusack), and his scheming, seductive girlfriend (Annette Bening) are career swindlers circling one another in an elaborate emotional confidence game that grows increasingly perverse as love and trust turn to betrayal and Oedipal undercurrents rise to the surface. In Frears’s first film made in Hollywood, the ever-assured director and his trifecta of magnetic actors conjure a moody, unstuck-in-time vision of toxic Americana.”
Stay tuned for more next week…
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