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This Was the Year of Elevated Trash

There’s no shame in being a little trashy. Three of the year’s best movies are silly, soapy, or vulgar, but with a prestige sheen.

And what it does say is delivered with sledgehammer subtlety — repeated moments of Dennis Quaid’s unctuous producer Harvey telling women to smile — making the real selling point of The Substance not its thematic resonance but its portrait of rapid human decay. Kidman delivers a layered and admirably vulnerable performance, and the film does have something to say with its thorny gender and sexual politics — but it can just as easily be enjoyed for its cheap thrills, like the sight of Romy eating a hard candy out of Samuel’s hand while on all fours or lapping up a saucer of milk on their hotel-room floor. Regardless of the future awards success of The Substance, Babygirl, Conclave, and any number of edge cases — though sword-and-sandals is its own category, the CGI sharks in Gladiator II are pure trash — let’s hope this subgenre’s revival period is here to stay.

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