"The Substance"

This week, we review Cannes and awards season darling Anora. Another exploration of director Sean Baker's working class milieus, this story of a fiery stripper who falls in with an immature son of Russian oligarch is a barnburner showcase for Mikey Madison, Mark Eydelshteyn, and Yura Borisov. Does it live up to its festival hype?

For better or worse, Bertrand Bonello's The Beast is one of the most memorable movies of 2024. A discombobulating sci-fi trip through time that stars Lea Seydoux and George Mackay, it explodes the kernel of loneliness at the center of Henry James' 1903 novella - The Beast in the Jungle - into something much more...perplexing.

2024's challenger to last year's "Barbenheimer" phenomenon is here in the form of the Gladiator II and Wicked double feature. We review both highly anticipated films, and our discussion just might surprise you! Tune in and find out!

This week we review Edward Berger's Conclave, a papal conspiracy thriller in the guise of a serious business, hiding a goofed-up B-movie underneath. We talk about its twists and turns, its murderers' row of a cast, and its absolutely preposterous ending. Will this make our best-of-the-year lists? Tune in and find out!

This week, we review Aaron Schimberg's under-the-radar indie darling, A Different Man, an unlikely companion piece to this year's The Substance and may even overtake it as the essential 2024 text on self-hatred and the self-wounding blade of wish fulfillment. Effortlessly smart without an ounce of ostentatious force, this is a movie with a million layers underneath its cruel, nasty joke of getting exactly what you want. Tune in to our review!

This week we review Pascal Plante's Red Rooms, an under-the-radar indie that's taken the horrorsphere by storm. A serial killer thriller that finds power in its restraint and shocking prescience, Red Rooms is an evil — yet vital — film to understand the stranglehold of postmodern, screen-abetted detachment. We discuss our culture of macabre obsessions, parasocial madness, and growing numbness, as well as Juliette Gariépy’s incredible performance at the center of this film.

This week we review the new Max series continuing Matt Reeves' The Batman saga: The Penguin. Starring Colin Farrell, Cristin Milioti, Rhenzy Feliz, and Clancy Brown, the eight-episode miniseries details Oz Cobb's rise from Gotham nobody to connected crime boss. We review the first five episodes.

This week, we review Todd Phillips' highly anticipated sequel, Joker: Folie à Deux. Is it a misbegotten misfire? Or is it a movie with a strange set of balls? Is it both? We discuss its interesting metatext, spiteful movies, and the odd throughline between Joker 2 and Megalopolis.

Self-financed and over 40 years in the making, Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis is the most divisive movie of the year. Is it an unmitigated disaster or an old master's magnum opus? Or is it somewhere in between? We're all divided on this one, but we can all agree on one thing: you've never seen anything like this before, and you might not ever again.

Once again transmogrifying old-school exploitation into her own feminist styling of New French Extremity, Coralie Fargeat trades in the empowered bloodletting of 2018’s Revenge for body horror. Your mileage may vary with The Substance, but whether you wince, cackle, or simply abandon the theater out of disgust, one thing is quite clear: it's quite unforgettable.