I'm Still Here: A formidable tribute to one woman's courage

I'm Still Here (2024) • View trailer

Five stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity, drug use, fleeting nudity and occasional profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

Political statements don’t come much stronger than this one.

 

Nor as authentic.

 

Rubens (Selton Mello) and his wife Eunice (Fernanda Torres) enjoy a playful moment
with their two youngest children, Marcelo (Guilherme Silveira) and Maria (Cora Mora),
on the beach in front of their home.

Brazilian director Walter Salles’ quietly chilling docu-drama is based faithfully on Marcelo Rubens Paiva’s Ainda Estou Aqui, a 2015 biography of his mother, Eunice, and what she and her family endured in the early 1970s.

The setting is Rio de Janeiro, six years into the 21-year military dictatorship that overthrew the democratically elected president in 1964. Eunice (Fernanda Torres), her husband Rubens (Selton Mello) and their five children — Vera (Valentina Herszage), Eliana (Luiza Kosovski), Nalu (Barbara Luz), Marcelo (Guilherme Silveira) and Maria (Cora Mora) — live comfortably in a welcoming beachside home. Their doors and windows are always open, beckoning friends and neighbors.

 

Beloved live-in housekeeper Zeze (Pri Helena) may as well be a family member.

 

Salles spends considerable time on this idyllic introduction. The family often is at the beach, Marcelo kicking a soccer ball with friends, while his sisters play volleyball. Eunice floats contentedly in the calm ocean waters. Meals are cheerfully boisterous, often with visitors. Marcelo finds an adorable stray dog on the beach; Rubens hasn’t the heart to refuse his son’s entreaty to adopt it.

 

The warmth, tenderness and conviviality displayed in these early scenes is the best argument I’ve yet seen for establishing an Academy Awards category for casting directors. In this case, Leticia Naveira has assembled an amazing ensemble of actors; the children, in particular, display the closely knit camaraderie and love we’d expect from an actual family. Interactions with their parents, and peers and other adults, are equally persuasive.

 

These establishing scenes are an intoxicating blend of Adrian Teijido’s gorgeous 35mm cinematography — as luxurious as the beachside setting — and amateur footage shot by Vera, with her new Super 8 camera

 

If all of this looks and feels unexpectedly intimate, it arrives honestly. Salles has long known the Paiva family; he spent part of his adolescence in the house that becomes central to this film. Directors often regard certain projects as a “labor of love,” and that’s absolutely, clearly the case here.

Love Hurts: A painful outcome

Love Hurts (2025) • View trailer

2 stars (out of five). Rated R, for strong bloody violence, gore and relentless profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

Ke Huy Quan, still fresh from his Oscar win for Everything Everywhere All at Once, can’t be blamed for capitalizing on his renewed 15 minutes of fame.

 

But one could wish he chose his projects more carefully.

 

When Rose (Ariana DeBose) rashly decides to come out of hiding, she hopes to enlist
Marvin (Ke Huy Quan) in her scheme to seek revenge for past events. Alas, Marvin
doesn't wish to wreck the comfortable life he has build ... but will he have a choice?

At its best — and I use that term very loosely — this fitfully amusing guilty pleasure can be regarded as a more vicious nod to Jackie Chan’s chaotic, exploit-the-surroundings martial arts style.

Quan has serious taekwondo chops, having spent his 20-year acting hiatus working as an action/stunt consultant under the tutelage of Hong Kong director/choreographer Corey Yuen. Quan displays all the right moves here, employing everything from office furniture to laptops while handling everything (literally) thrown at him by stunt coordinator Can Aydin.

 

This film’s wafer-thin plot — cobbled together by scripters Matthew Murray, Josh Stoddard and Luke Passmore — also gets points for its mordant humor. One baddie fancies himself a poet; a second one can’t figure out how to patch things up with his wife; the Valentine’s Day setting repeatedly comes into play.

 

But stunt coordinator-turned-first-time-director Jonathan Eusebio and his writers break the cardinal rule of such films: Killing innocents isn’t kosher ... and it’s a particularly egregious sin when their demise is accompanied by a slice of gratuitously tasteless gore.

 

Eusebio’s film lurches to an abrupt stop when he so indulges ... and, in the blink of an eye, the fun drains away.

 

Never to return.

 

(The endless F-bombs also don’t help.)

 

Marvin Gable (Quan), a realtor heading his own Milwaukee firm, has achieved considerable success thanks to the savvy care and charm with which he matches prospective buyers with their imagined dream homes. Alas, a crimson envelope shatters his routine on this particular February 14; it’s from Rose (Ariana DeBose), a former partner-in-crime whom he long ago left for dead.

 

But before he can consider the implications of her reappearance, Marvin is attacked by the hulking Raven (Mustafa Shakir); the subsequent skirmish destroys Marvin’s office, the cacophony somehow failing to be noticed by the rest of his staff.

 

Even executive assistant Ashley (Lio Tipton) regards the noise behind her boss’ closed door with little more than mild curiosity, but she has an excuse: cynicism and disillusionment with life, exacerbated by the hearts-and-flowers trappings of this contrived “day of love.”