MOVIES: The travails of women as felt by Demi Moore in a new horror movie

And in other films: a controlling mom, a fading husband and Transformers at play 

TIFF is over; The Life of Chuck, from a Stephen King story, was voted the audience favorite. One of the buzziest films there, was The Substance, as it was at Cannes. It's playing in theaters all across Canada already and leads my reviews today.

Meanwhile, VIFF is about to start and I want to put in an early plug for a film called The Stand. It will be shown there twice and it's a treat for news junkies and for observers of Indigenous action. It shows a logging blockade by the Haida in their traditional territory in British Columbia back in 1985 and with terrific archival footage takes us right into the standoff. It's also very informative. The issues argued there almost 40 years ago were finally settled just this year. 

I'll have more about it next week. 

For today, I have:

The Substance: 3 ½ stars

Transformers One: 3

The Invisibles: 3 ½ 

Never Let Go: 2 ½ 

THE SUBSTANCE: The audience at Cannes gave it a long standing ovation and the jury gave it the prize for best screenplay. But what to make of the people who walked out of it. They were surely grossed out by the horror spectacle it evolves into after starting out as a sly satire on how women are treated. Women live with demanding standards of beauty, are dismissed when they age and are preyed upon by the cosmetics and pharmaceutical industries. That's been said more than a few times before but writer-director Coralie Fargeat, who is from France, says it again and again with no sublety and a lot of rage. She sets it where her tone is apt, in the entertainment industry.

Demi Moore plays a fading movie star reduced to hosting an exercise show on TV and feeling her age. She hears of a rejuvenation product called The Substance, phones in and gets the product along with a strict protocol she must follow. It produces, out of her own back, a younger woman just like she was and played by Margaret Qualley.

 A Jeckyll&Hyde plot develops. They are not two people, the company rep warns. They are one. They must do as the instructions say. When one is out and about, the other is comatose in a secret room. They switch, a week on and a week off. But co-operation breaks down when the younger, named Sue, gets the job that used to be the older's. She's named Elisabeth Sparkle and seethes watching the sexy writhing that Sue has brought to the show. Dennis Quaid loves it. He plays a TV executive and is having a great time being exuberant and very crass. He's named Harvey. 

With the protocol broken, and the company refusing to help, the women fight each other. That escalates into a prolonged spectacle with crunched bodies and much blood and gore. Careful if you don't like that but a lot of the people at a screening the other night laughed along with it. A young film student told me she saw it as an anti-Barbie movie. Similar issues, definitely not as light. So, if you can take the horror and the frequent nudity in the film, you'll find it fun, spirited and speedy. (In theaters now, streaming on MUBI in the future) 3½ out of 5 

TRANSFORMERS ONE: I know. I know. Transformers are toys that little boys play with. Movies with them have been loud and dumb. They've been designed to sell more toys. Yeah, all true but they've been popular as movies, TV series and in other configurations. This new one is like adventure films we used to get from Hollywood. The whole family can enjoy it. 

For the fans there's a broadened story line here. They've seen throughout the various stories that two characters, Optimus Prime and Megatron, battle each other as sworn enemies. Well, they weren't always so. When they were younger they were best friends. So what happened? This prequel does a pretty good job, in animation and with good voice-actor work, explaining all. 

The scene is their home planet, Cybertron, where a war is raging. Beings called Quintessons have invaded and Sentinel Prime (voiced by Jon Hamm) is trying to fight them off. To do that he needs to find a device or book or something called the Matrix of Leadership. It's lost. Two men who could help are confined to working in the mines but have ambitions to get out of there. They are the future Optimus Prime, still named Orion Pax and voiced by Chris Hemsworth and D-16, who will be Megatron and is voiced by Brian Tyree Henry. One is an excitable ideas man; the other is becoming something of a fascist and that will break the friendship. Not all at once. Slowly. Before that the two dare to join a very public holiday race, which is shocking because they're only miners after all. Worse, they can't transform. The enabling device has been taken from them. Still, there a sense of fun in this episode, not the heavy bombast we've seen before. The director, Josh Cooley, is a Pixar veteran. The cast also includes Scarlett Johansson, Keegan Michael-Key and Laurence Fishbourne. Not unusual actually, the names these films attract. Years ago, Orson Welles did his last work for a Transformers movie. (In theaters) 3 out of 5

THE INVISIBLES: There's an intriguing idea here. A marriage is coming apart and the husband is disappearing out of it. Not just psychologically, which is probably common among married couples, but physically. He (Charlie, played by Tim Blake Nelson) repeats the same dream every night with his son in a space suit against a sky of fireworks. He mourns his stalled career and his status after being passed over for a promotion. A guy sits on him on a bus because he didn't even see him. A man walks right through him on the street. 

His wife (Gretchen Mol) goes to a therapist; he won't. Instead he goes to a bowling alley called Bowlero. It is something of an alternate reality. There are other men there who've become invisible like him. A former wrestler. A former mayor. And Bruce Greenwood as Carl is the man who runs it. “It's good here Charlie,” he says. “Open yourself up.” The film is a well acted and heartfelt depiction of his efforts to do that, mingle with and hear advice for the others and come back alive. It's about identity and finding connection which we can all relate to. Andrew Currie co-wrote this small but evocative film and directed it in Hamilton, Ont. (It's not playing there yet but it is in Toronto and will be in a few days in Vancouver) 3 out of 5 

NEVER LET GO: Home is where you're safe. Children know that but there's an extreme version here. Halle Berry as a single mother (seemingly. It's not explained) has moved with her two young boys into a country house close to the woods. She's tells them the world has come to an end; there's nothing left out there and the house will shield them from what she calls “the evil.” When they do go out, which they have to do to find food, they have to be connected to each other with a long rope. Her order is to “never let go,” hence the title. 
 

The boys, twins Nolan and Sam played by Percy Daggs IV and Anthony B. Jenkins, do as they're told but if you've ever seen a movie like this before you know that won't last. Mom's warning that evil can destroy them with just one touch starts sounding unreliable the more she repeats it. A mistake, a rope that comes free, doesn't seem to have the terrible effect she predicts. Two other happenings cast further doubt and one food forage that gets only tree bark to eat is also discouraging. So, is mom delusional? The film, directed in and near Vancouver by French horror specialist Alexandre Aja, spends a lot of time pondering that. She appears to be, then she doesn't. Back and forth. The film is about the perils of believing (anything, I suppose, parents, leaders, experts) but has only a tepid conclusion. Good woodsy atmosphere, though. (In theaters) 2 ½ out of 5