Him (2025)

Everyone knows that sport is a serious business. People get so passionate about it that it's quite scary. There are a number of sports that could take top priority in your life, and many Americans absolutely love their American Football, whether they're supporting a team or spending some of their youth risking injury and pain for the sake of becoming a decent player. Him is a film about someone who could be more than a decent player. That person could be a new GOAT, but it's going to require a fair amount of sacrifice, of course.

Tyriq Withers plays Cam, a young football player who looks to have a bright future ahead of him. Then he's suddenly attacked, which leads to him requiring some rehabilitation and a reconsideration of his options. He still wants to play football though, and he wants to be the best. That's how he ends up being given the opportunity to be mentored by the great Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans), a quarterback who is due to retire from his team, the San Antonio Saviors. Has Cam got what it takes to make it? And will he want everything that comes with his potential superstardom?

If I told you that I'd already heard some mixed opinions on this film then I'd be lying. Most people I know disliked it. Some hated it. I couldn't help being intrigued though, especially with the cast including Wayans in that main role, and support from Julia Fox, Tim Heidecker, and Jim Jefferies. I also enjoyed the fact that I both knew the kind of film that I was getting, yet also wasn't sure exactly where it was going to go before the end credits rolled. 

Directed by Justin Tipping, who also co-wrote it with Skip Bronkie and Zack Akers, Him is an enjoyable trip into some truly bonkers horror territory. Things start off strange, and it only gets weirder and weirder with each subsequent sequence, but it's easy to believe that Cam would tolerate almost anything as he stretches further out over the abyss while ready to grab his golden prize. It feels very much like a case of someone being bemused, but also thinking "okay, this is how things happen when you can just do anything you want". 

There's a great soundtrack and score accompanying the impressive visuals, with everything designed to be impressively cool and unsettling, and the lead performances are good enough to sell the main storyline. Withers is decent, although he's the least interesting character until allowed to have some fun in the third act. Wayans is superb, almost giving us two very different characters in one, a man who has given his all to something that has also given him everything in return, for better or worse. Heidecker is cast well, Jefferies equally so, and Fox seems to have been asked to play her character as a cross between a business manager and Lady Gaga. Which, to be clear, I am not complaining about. 

While it may not work for those wanting something comfortably familiar, and less darkly comedic, Him absolutely hit the spot for me. It looks at pain, at sacrifice, at being pushed along a certain path through life that was plotted for you by others, and it felt like a genre-shaded mockery of the lengths that people and clubs will go to in order to tie a potentially great player into a contract. And it does it all in a decent 96-minute runtime. It may not be a complete blowout, but it's a convincing victory.

7/10

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Presence (2024)

While he has tried his hand at a wide variety of movies throughout his career, there was something that made me roll my eyes and say “of course he would do that” when I heard that Steven Soderbergh was directing a haunted house movie that was apparently presented from the POV of the spirit.

A family move in to a house. Some things start to move around, and some sensations are felt by the new occupants. Other things start to happen, complications in their lives and moments that create more danger for people, which makes it only a matter of time until we find out whether the presence is a friend or foe.

There is a screenplay here, and it’s one written by David Koepp, but you could be forgiven that this was an improv exercise used by Soderbergh to firm up an idea that would later be more fully developed. The biggest problem here is that it feels incomplete, it’s a schematic drawing that needs detail and colour added. None of the characters are interesting enough, the plotting is too little stretched too far, and it all leads to a finale that feels like some kind of parody of the genre. Maybe it is, and maybe that is what drew Soderbergh to the project, but it feels like a bit of a slap in the face to those not looking for the filmic equivalent of a shaggy dog story with a weak punchline.

Callina Liang and Eddy Maday are the teens at the heart of the story, Lucy Liu and Chris Sullivan are the parents, and there are roles for West Mulholland, Julia Fox, and Natalie Woolams-Torres, but they’re all asked to do little more than wander around the scenery until the gimmick is focused on them. There is no way to properly judge the performances that seem designed to simply fill the time in between specific camera moves.

No scares, no tension, not even any drama to feel invested in, Presence is a big bundle of nothing. It’s the kind of thing I would expect to come from a first-time director with misplaced confidence in his own skillset. The fact that it is helmed by Soderbergh is astonishing. He has made other movies that I haven’t liked, but I have always been able to appreciate his intentions. Not this time though. This time around it feels as if he has tried his hand at something he views as being a bit beneath him.

3/10

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Netflix And Chill: Uncut Gems (2019)

Written and directed by the Safdie brothers (Benny and Josh, with Ronald Bronstein once again collaborating with them on the writing of the script), Uncut Gems is another superb film for those who have already warmed to their particular style, a kind of paradoxically slick and polished roam through some grimy environments alongside down-on-their-luck characters the brothers seem to find fascinating. It's also, as I'm sure you're already aware, the best that Adam Sandler has been in years.

Sandler plays a jeweler named Howard Ratner. He's in an unhappy marriage to Dinah (Idina Menzel) that they're close to bringing to an end, he has an apartment that he uses to spend a lot of time with his girlfriend, Julia (Julia Fox), and he owes money to various people, not least Arno (Eric Bogosian), who keeps using some tough guys to hopefully scare Howard into paying up. But Howard knows his time is about to come. He's ordered a stone that contains some valuable uncut gems, he's developing a rapport with Kevin Garnett (played by, well, himself), and he's just one audacious bet away from a big payday. But nobody will really support you waiting for that big payday if you're gambling away all of their money to try and get it. And Howard is certainly happy to bet big.

Uncut Gems is a tough movie to watch. There's no major respite from the tension as events conspire against Howard, whether it be in the shape of a lower-than-expected auction valuation for an item he wants to sell, a number of arguments with an associate named Demany (LaKeith Stanfield) who is also the go-between for Garnett, or his continued attempts to delay paying back money to people who want to physically harm him. Whether it is Howard himself or the camerawork, it feels like a constant bob and weave from one desperate moment to the next, all accompanied by a fantastic score from Daniel Lopatin.

You can choose to like or dislike the movies that the Safdie brothers make, they're definitely happy to stay in a certain wheelhouse at the moment and not everyone will enjoy spending time there, but you can't deny that they bring characters and situations to life with a magic combination of realism and cinematic finesse. They sugar-coat the pill, but only to allow themselves to make the core even more bitter.

Sandler has received a lot of praise for his performance here. It's good. Very good indeed. All I will say, to temper some of the hyperbole that has inevitably appeared in the praise for him, is that his banter and constant need to talk over people, hoping to keep himself in the right by simply repeating whatever point he thinks will help him at a higher volume, is not a million miles away from many of his other performances. It's just that this one is within the context of a drama. I am surprised that I haven't seen more praised aimed at Fox, making her feature acting debut with a pitch-perfect performance, and portraying a character who could easily have unbalanced the tone of the film on a number of different occasions. Menzel does very well here, in a live-action and non-singing role that I hope she does more of in the near future, and both Stanfield and Garnett are good additions to the heart of the film. Keith Williams Richards and Tommy Kominik are believable heavies, Bogosian steals a couple of scenes with the kind of turn that immediately makes you wish he picked more movies to star in, and the few minutes of screentime that Judd Hirsch has helps with that sugar-coating I mentioned.

As a stupid child, I would often raid the tubs of chocolate that we would get in our household for Christmas. My mother would remind me to just have one or two a day, I would always have way more, and I would place the empty wrappers back in the tub as a decoy, somehow thinking that I would use my pocket money to buy a smaller packet and refill the tub. That never happened. My mother eventually opened the tub to have a sweetie, immediately seeing red when she picked up a handful of empty wrappers. The game was up. If you ever tried the same thing then you'll know what I mean when I say that watching Uncut Gems will give you a sensation akin to watching that tub, counting down to the time when you can either refill it or you get busted. If you haven't tried that same thing then just know that Howard is the child who has filled the tub with sweetie wrappers, and the runtime of this movie is spent seeing if he can replenish the container before other people put their hands in.

8/10

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