ObsessiveCinemaDisorder

I winced, cringed, and laughed nervously throughout The Substance, the arthouse body horror film from French director Coralie Fargeat. Even covering my eyes at its most cringing toe-curling moments of dread and disgust, I loved every moment of it.

Elisabeth Sparkle, a fading film-now-turned-aerobics TV star, is fired by her producer, Harvey, due to old age. Desperate to stay in the spotlight, Elisabeth injects an underground illegal substance that creates a copy of her younger self...

The film's opening shot, which I will not spoil, is the perfect visual exposition, showing how the Substance functions. Immediately, I nervously giggled, dreading all the horror that was about to unfold. What an opening...

To follow the adage "good artists copy, great artists steal," The Substance is Ocean's Eleven, pulling the perfect heist in glorious style, simultaneously stealing from Stanley Kubrick, David Cronenberg, and Requiem for a Dream.

I wonder how different the film would have been if it used an original style. The lack of an original style is perhaps the reason that it won Best Screenplay instead of the Palme d'Or at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. But no, that's not Coralie Fargeat's primary concern.

These combined visual styles act as a shorthand, punctuating the moment with established cinematic language efficiently, rip-roaring through its long list agenda of shock and awe.

Writer-director Coralie Fargeat destroys the male gaze, delivering endless gratuitous fast-cut pounding close-ups of the female body until it's nauseating. There's no subtlety to speak here. Supertext is subtext.

The film brilliantly dramatizes the surmounting pressure women (I'd argue everybody) go through as beauty standards become increasingly unreachable from make-up, diet, cosmetic surgery, and now AI filters... It's increasingly difficult to accept one's looks as they are.

Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, and Dennis Quaid deliver great performances, each equally physical and daring, and are committed to taking things up to eleven. If the awards trends blow in its direction-and the Golden Globes indicate so, I suspect Moore and Quaid will receive award nominations.

If I had to sum up Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga in one word, the keyword is "lore."

The story chronicles Furiosa's life journey from being kidnapped from the Green Place as a child by warlord Dementus to becoming the Imperator Furiosa for Citadel warlord Immortan Joe.

Having spent over a decade fleshing out the world and backstory for Mad Max: Fury Road, George Miller is eager to present the history of the Wasteland, spanning 15 years and showcasing previously-mentioned geographic landmarks, like Gastown and Bullet Farm. Furiosa plays partly like The Silmarillion from the Lord of the Rings series, delivering supplementary footnotes.

George Miller's most impressive trait as a filmmaker is his unflinching eye for detail and, more so, his profound respect for the audience to catch it all. Miller goes to great lengths to ensure there's a story behind every nut and bolt on screen and even encourages actors to hold scene workshops in rehearsals to build backstories, believing that the audience will sense the story behind the story.

Miller's comprehensive vision remains the best part of Furiosa. However, it's not as compelling as discovering details for a backstory. It feels like Immortan Joe's giant monster truck from Fury Road, gunning it in reverse from the desert back inside the Citadel as the fire goes back into the Doof Warrior's guitar...

There are moments of brilliance, no less.

The opening kidnapping sequence is jaw-dropping with how it incorporates the choreography with the desert environment. I don't know anything about firing rifles on a motorcycle while covering your tracks, but I suppose it would go something like the way Miller presents it.

There's also a heist sequence involving powered parachutes attacking a supply tanker that was pure insanity. Remember, everybody in the Wasteland is going bonkers.

Wearing a rubber nose, Chris Hemsworth is reveling in delight as Dementus, completely released from being a leading man and chewing scenery left and right, as if it was his last villain role ever. However, Dementus loses that edge towards the end.

Alyla Brown, who plays the younger Furiosa, was the standout performance. She had the harder job of playing Furiosa's trauma and setting up all the hardened rage for Anya Taylor-Joy's adult Furiosa. There's a brilliant transition between the actresses, of which technical details I will not reveal here.

Anya Taylor-Joy delivers a great silent film performance, playing all the pent-up rage in her expressive eyes and through body language in the action sequences. The Furiosa role is ultimately still Charlize Theron's, who owns more iconic moments and the more important story.

There's notably more use of CGI in Furiosa compared to the practical approach from the previous installment. It's hard to fault an 80-year-old director for not spending six months in the desert shooting action.

I recommend Nick Buchanan's Blood, Sweat & Chrome: The Wild and True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road as a companion book. It tells the complete production story, equally exhilarating as the film itself, and makes you appreciate the rare cinematic miracle Fury Road is. If everyone knew how hard that film was to make...

The fact that Furiosa falls short of Fury Road's technical prowess is not the reason it's the lesser film.

In the end, Furiosa is still a backstory that has been told in Fury Road. We know the dots vaguely already, and discovering the minute details is not as exhilarating as experiencing a new story altogether.

Still, I'm a sucker for George Miller's vision of the Wasteland, soaking up all the succulent design details that keep the imagination going. I hope there will be more.

But that iconic shot of Charlize Theron screaming in the desert from Fury Road said it all.

Stuntman is a heartfelt tribute to Hong Kong action cinema and to its unsung forgotten Hong Kong stuntmen who elevated it to its heights from the 70s to the 90s.

Sam Lee, a washed-up retired action choreographer who has since worked as a Chinese chiropractor, is recruited by director Cho to film a 1980s-style Hong Kong action film as the action director.

Sibling directors Albert Leung and Herbert Leung dissect the harsh life of an 80's Hong Kong stuntman in the present day. We are shown the danger of risking injury for art, the time taken away from family, and the consequences when a fellow stuntman gets injured.

Stuntman opens with its own 80's HK action movie-within-a-movie, featuring cops and robbers fighting in a mall in a Jackie Chan Police Story aesthetic.

The action sequences, each involving shooting a dangerous stunt, are well executed with an interesting dynamic shift at play. The audience is watching a dangerous movie stunt, except this time, the script has you caring about the stuntman who's about to get hurt for your pleasure. It puts the audience into a nerve-wracking and guilty place, as we never consider what stuntmen go through for our entertainment.

I wish this film had a higher budget for its action sequences, as it seemed like it was pinching pennies. Also, the film uses faux action movie titles to refer to actual Hong Kong action films it probably doesn't have the rights to.

Best recognized as Bruce Lee's Shaolin pupil who's smacked in the head from Enter the Dragon, Hong Kong action choreographer Stephen Tung gives an understated lead performance as Sam. With Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In this year, Terrence Lau is on the rise, establishing himself as a lead who can do action and drama.

Kung Fu Stuntman, a documentary detailing Hong Kong stuntmen through Hong Kong movie history, is a great companion piece to Stuntman. You can see all the real-life ingredients used in Stephen Tung's character.

The Leung brothers end the film on an open note, a visual metaphor that asks where Hong Kong stuntmen will go in the future.

That's where I drew a line with Stuntman...

As the credits rolled, I took away a different theme than perhaps what the directors intended. I prefer to view the film as a story about how people lose things as they age. Everything has its time. Something starts, gets trendy, and hits a high point until its importance is eventually forgotten.

Hong Kong action films had their time. Those death-defying stunts grew out of that particular time and place when Peking Opera students were transitioning into filmmaking and attacked the job with a fighting spirit, the Hong Kong spirit.

Stuntman captures that melancholy beautifully. I don't feel it's something to be mourned.

HK film professionals love saying, "Hong Kong cinema is dead..." It's usually said with a wistful sigh in behind-the-scenes interviews, live Q+As, and film articles, and now I'm hearing it in an actual Hong Kong movie, sitting inside a Hong Kong movie theater with fire exits.

This quote is said 4-5 times in Stuntman. And frankly, it's exhausting... and hypocritical. This film was made through the First Feature Film Initiative, a Hong Kong government scheme aiming to nurture new talent in the film industry.

Hong Kong Cinema has passed its prime, sure. Significantly fewer films are produced now than in the 80s and 90s, fine. Imagine my voice going up an octave for the next sentence-I can understand it as a "woe is me" comment...

I just have the feeling that one day, the people who say "Hong Kong cinema is dead" will be dead.

Hong Kong cinema will be fine.