Streaming: Steven Soderbergh’s Presence and the best haunted house films

The director’s witty supernatural thriller joins Psycho, Hereditary, The Brutalist and more – films in which buildings are characters in their own right The first more-or-less horror movie in the lengthy, genre-skimming career of director Steven Soderbergh , Presence is a film about grief, trauma, familial dysfunction and abusive masculinity. But it’s also, to a significant and compelling extent, about property. Beginning with a family’s first viewing of a handsome Victorian home in an unidentified stretch of suburbia, the film never ventures outside its walls for the next 85 minutes, as the ensuing chills make us consider the merits of that purchase. Wittily and unnervingly shot from the perspective of the restless spirit roaming its halls, it’s a haunted house film in which much of the tension feels determined by the shape and flow and light and shade of the house itself. It’s a while since I’ve seen a film where I could quite so exactly draw the floor plan of its primary location,...

‘We didn’t see who she is’: Anora missed chance to spark real change, say sex workers

Sean Baker’s film accused of lacking representation, as some say he and Mikey Madison could have used speeches to call for policy reform

As well as winning five Oscars and catapulting its lead actor, Mikey Madison, into true stardom, the film Anora has been mooted as a signifier of society taking another step towards sex work being normalised as an occupation.

The film is a dark love story about a stripper who marries the feckless son of a Russian oligarch and slowly watches her vision of a fairytale ending disappear before her eyes. But real-life sex workers have said the film portrays an optimistic view of the industry.

Continue reading...

from Film | The Guardian https://ift.tt/zA4T2jm
via IFTTT

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

‘I lied to get the part’: Melvyn Hayes on his ‘angry young man’ beginnings – and It Ain’t Half Hot Mum

The Human Surge 3 review – hopeful odyssey of globe-trotting twentysomethings

Oscar-winners Hans Zimmer, AR Rahman to team up for Nitesh Tiwari's Ramayana: Report