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Decided to bust out my old-school, classic Film Critics pants to review four new movies in this week's capsule (short) movie reviews for Friday, January 24, 2025.
1) PRESENCE
Steven Soderbergh is an Academy Award-winning director who has been making films for over 35 years, and most of them are actually quite good. Watching his labyrinthian career unfold has been a fun, fascinating, and undeniably entertaining ride.
Over the years, he has been known to switch back and forth between big Hollywood projects like "Out of Sight," "Erin Brockovich," and the "Magic Mike" and "Ocean's" series and smaller, weirder, and/or experimental work like "Kimi," "The Girlfriend Experience," "Bubble," and the brilliant and underrated "Unsane."
His latest movie, "Presence," clearly falls into the latter category, and it is also his real first crack at straight-up horror - even though "Contagion," "Side Effects," "Kafka" and especially the terrifying "Unsane," were all pretty scary and had elements of the genre throughout.
At its core, "Presence" is an old-fashioned ghost/haunted house movie about a family that moves into a house occupied by a spirit and how that spirit disrupts the family's lives and challenges their beliefs.
So yeah, it's been done a million times before, but in the hands of the endlessly creative Soderbergh—who shoots the film himself with a single, constantly moving camera, only from the point of view of the ghost—the material becomes fresh, unique, and thrilling.
The single-camera, POV shooting style seemed like a pointless, irritating gimmick when it was used in the serious drama Nickel Boys, but it works brilliantly here simply because the material is much more appropriate for tricks, and it is executed beautifully.
Although it may, on the surface, remind viewers of something like the "Paranormal Activity" films, there is much more going on here than jump scares, creepy sounds, and shadows. This film is about deeply significant issues like guilt, loss, trauma, and the disintegration of the family unit brought on by secrets, alcohol, and child favoritism.
The movie is not only a creepy and scary ghost story, but it is also a heartbreaking and devastating drama about the damage of a disconnected couple, Rebekah (Lucy Liu) and Chris (an exceptional Chris Sullivan), and their teenage children Chloe (Callina Liang) and Tyler (Eddy Maday).
Something is amiss between the parents, although it's never fully clear what, and Tyler, desperate to be accepted at school, bullies his sister Chloe, who is grieving the death of her best friend - who is possibly the spirit that is haunting the house.
The film's final third becomes more revealing and standard in terms of plot points and secrets, and questions are answered in obvious but satisfying ways. It all builds to a terrifying climax and a final scene of heartbreaking intensity that emotionally floored me.
The performances are all absolutely stellar, and David Koepp's script, which is prolific and talented, is clever, profound, and surprisingly fresh. Combined with Soderbergh's brilliant direction, floating camerawork, and a terrific score by Zack Ryan, this is a true winner.
On the tech side, the film was shot in New Jersey in a tight 11 days, as chronologically as possible, during September 2023. Soderbergh and a small crew were inside the house, all of whom had to stay hidden since he was constantly moving through the rooms. He used a Sony A7 camera supported by a Ronin stabilizer, which he estimates weighs about 12 pounds.
All of this smart, efficient work adds up to one of the best films I've seen in 2025 so far (I know, we are only three weeks into the year, but still). Even though it's a creepy ghost-in-the-house movie, the real companion piece to this film—both thematically and stylistically—is Robert Zemeckis' masterwork from 2024, "Here." This is especially obvious in the film's final shot.
"Presence" and "Here" would make a great, deeply satisfying, and potent double feature, and they stand as two examples of incredible work from two of the best American filmmakers working today. - ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
If you had no idea who Fernanda Torres was or what the film "I'm Still Here" was while you watched her accept the Best Actress in a Drama award at the Golden Globes a few weeks ago, here's your answer as the movie finally opens in Chicago this weekend.
The very talented Brazilian director Walter Salles ("On the Road," "Dark Water," "The Motorcycle Diaries," and the extraordinary "Central Station") returns to his homeland for this deeply poignant and personal film based on Marcelo Rubens Paiva's bestselling true-life memoir.
The story, which takes place in 1970 Brazil, under the tightening military dictatorship that suffocated the country for decades, is about a family that is shattered by the disappearance of their patriarch and how the mother must reinvent herself and hold her family together.
Intense, horrific sequences of prisons, abductions, and military threats are counterbalanced with joyous, colorful scenes of familial bliss and happiness to punch home the message of survival while dealing with loss, pain, and unthinkable hardships.
Salles knew the Paiva family back in Brazil and clearly has a profound and personal connection to the material, making the movie even more immediate and powerful.
This film unfolds in meticulous detail, offering illuminating insight into a time and place that many Americans might not be familiar with. The result is, for the most part, a successful trip into the past and a commanding lesson of oppression and survival.
The film's second half wavers a bit and loses focus with distracting subplots and repetitively presented themes. This leads to not one but two completely unnecessary denouements that jump ahead in time to tie up loose ends.
In spite of the missteps in storytelling and exposition, the central performance by Torres is genuinely remarkable and ultimately holds the film together. She navigates every challenge the script presents with skill and emotion and gives a performance of astonishing talent that resonates profoundly and almost single-handedly makes the movie worth seeing. - ⭐️⭐️⭐️
3) INHERITANCE
In Neil Burger's latest film, The Illusionist ("Limitless," "Divergent"), Phoebe Dynevor stars as a turbulently emotional woman dealing with her mother's death. When she learns that her father was once a spy, she soon becomes embroiled in an international conspiracy.
"Inheritance" is a very entertaining spy thriller that tackles the espionage subgenre with a clever screenplay (by Burger and Olen Steinhauer), a fresh cinematic approach (it was shot entirely with iPhones), and a really great central performance from Dynevor, who almost single-handedly makes the movie worth seeing.
The terrific Dynevor broke through with the Netflix series "Bridgerton," and went on to burn up the screen in the excellent thriller about sexual politics, "Fair Play." She's really great in this and will also appear in the hurricane/shark nail-biter "Beneath the Storm" later this year.
Shooting the film on an iPhone (which, coincidentally, the aforementioned Steven Soderbergh did with "Unsane") means that the crowd scenes and action pieces are truly authentic since you can walk through a crowded Cairo market, for instance, with no boom mics, lighting rigs, or distractions.
It is very much guerrilla filmmaking in every way. It adds to the film's effectiveness and complements what Dynevor's character is going through. This is a solid little thriller that is definitely worth a look. - ⭐️⭐️⭐️
4) FLIGHT RISK
Mel Gibson directed this new thriller about a U.S. Marshal (Michelle Dockery) who is accompanying a government witness/fugitive (Topher Grace) to New York for a trial but soon discovers that the pilot on the small plane (Mark Wahlberg) is not who he appears to be.
I find it very interesting that Mel Gibson's name does not appear anywhere in the trailers, previews, and advertisements for this film. Now, it does say things like "from the acclaimed director of Braveheart," "Apocalypto," and "Hacksaw Ridge," but Gibson's name never ever appears. It's weird, right?
Not as weird as this batshit crazy movie, though.
We all know that Mel Gibson is nuts, even before the reports of the private dramas and issues with alcohol, even before the many public meltdowns and the increasingly strange behavior in interviews. Even before a string of unbelievably bizarre, often awful straight-to-VOD movies that he has starred in...we all knew he was nuts.
Crazy people have been making movies for years; that's just something we have to contend with. Sometimes, those crazy bastards are pretty talented, which is actually the case with Gibson. Mel Gibson is a good actor and has given some great performances over the years.
He is also a really talented filmmaker who has an Oscar for his work on "Braveheart" and has directed some polished, beautifully crafted, and, in some cases, great movies over the last thirty years, and we all know he is crazy.
This one, his latest, is easily the nuttiest movie he has ever directed. The tone is over-the-top in every aspect, from the look to the sets to the slam-bang direction. Everything plays like it's from another planet, a scarier, more hyper, and much stupider planet than Earth.
This is especially true of the performances of the three leads, which are incredibly inconsistent, wildly inappropriate, and simultaneously unintentionally and intentionally hilarious.
Dockery is simply bad. She seems to be in an entirely different movie than her two co-stars, playing it uncomfortably straight and stiff, resulting in a hypnotically terrible performance.
Grace (who is absolutely the best and most entertaining thing about this movie) clearly decided to play this crap for laughs. Watching him see how far he could go in his efforts to openly mock this ridiculous material is a real subversive thrill.
Then there's Wahlberg, who is obviously no stranger to terrible performances, having given them in movies like "Me Time," "Father Stu," "Uncharted," "The Happening," "Rock Star," and many others. But he may have topped himself with the unbelievably awful but undeniably entertaining work he does here.
From the ridiculous bald head to the accent, to the subtle-as-a-sledgehammer mannerisms, to the uncharted heights of which his maniacal screaming and laughing reach, this is a biblically dreadful performance. Still, I won't say I wasn't completely entertained because I was.
Behind the camera, Gibson still displays a sharp talent for constructing surprisingly effective action sequences (here on a limited budget with tacky CGI effects). He knows how to cut a movie, and he tells the absurd, stupid, and predictable story confidently and effectively in a short 90 minutes.
This movie feels like someone at the mental institute gave a few inmates a bunch of equipment and a film crew as an experiment. The experiment was to see exactly what would happen if they let some maniacs make a Hollywood movie during their breaks between therapy sessions and shock treatments.
So, is this movie bad? Hell yes... it's terrible.
But is this movie entertaining? Hell yes... it's terrible.
Oh, and in case you were wondering....yes, it is better than "The Brutalist." - As entertaining trash - ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2 - As a serious film - ⭐️
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