celluloid

But as the authors show in this 240-page book, women like Louise Brooks, Ida Lupino and Katharine Hepburn blew through the celluloid ceiling and lifted up generations of women in the movies.

The opening lines to the Kinks’ classic song “Celluloid Heroes,” about the ephemeral nature of fame, comes to mind when watching Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance,” a body-horror film that manages to be both primal and compassionate, bludgeoning and insightful.

On the con side of the balance sheet are two understandable sops to modern moviemaking: the flatness of digital cinematography and transparent artificiality of CGI bloodletting, neither of which can compare to the earlier films’ epic squib work and what real celluloid can do for the heightened drama of slo-mo craziness.

Singer demonstrates himself to be a mad scientist of celluloid sensation, creating a hybridized monster of influences, images, sounds and emotions that you won’t soon forget.

Nor will films where the acceptance of queer people is premised on “the notion that they are just like everyone else,” as Vito Russo put it in his 1987 book “The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies.”