Presence: Insubstantial

Presence (2024) • View trailer

Two stars (out of five). Rated R, for violence, sexuality, drug use and relentless profanity

Available via: Amazon Prime and other VOD services

By Derrick Bang

This movie is extremely exasperating.

 

During a long and (mostly) illustrious career, director Steven Soderberg has come in two flavors:

 

Realtor Cece (Julia Fox, far right) shows off the house to its soon-to-be new owners:
from left, Chloe (Callina Liang), Chris (Chris Sullivan), Tyler (Eddy Maday) and
Rebekah (Lucy Liu). Trouble is, the house already has a resident tenant...

• the crowd-pleasing maker of star-driven vehicles such as Out of Sight, Erin Brockovich, Traffic and the Oceans Eleven series; and, alternatively,

• the occasional cinematic experimenter who stretches the medium, starting with 1989’s Sex, Lies and Videotape, and continuing with 2002’s utterly unwatchable Full Frontal, and now this deliberately challenging take on the classic haunted house story.

 

The “gimmick” here is that the entire story emerges from the point of view of the ghost trapped within its lavish suburban home. The film never leaves the house, because the ghost cannot.

 

Okay, potentially clever in concept ... but the execution is an assault on the senses. The house is empty as scripter David Koepp’s narrative begins, and this entity initially swoops from room to room with supernatural speed, spinning and gyrating in a manner certain to induce vertigo and even nausea in viewers prone to motion sickness.

 

As usual, Soderberg is responsible for his own cinematography — “concealed” behind his familiar pseudonym, as Peter Andrews — so he’s wholly responsible for this dizzying assault on the senses. And although this spectral entity soon settles down a bit, its occasional whip-fast plunges — from one room to another — remain jarring.

 

The house soon is purchased and tastefully furnished by the not-so-typical American family of Rebekah (Lucy Liu), Chris (Chris Sullivan) and their two high school-age children, Tyler (Eddy Maday) and Chloe (Callina Liang).

 

We learn more about this family as the ghost eavesdrops on them, individually and collectively. Each revelatory session is a single tracking shot — some fleeting, some impressively long — which then cuts to a brief black screen, as the ghost slides through a wall to go elsewhere (at least, that’s what it feels like).

 

It soon becomes clear that Rebekah is clandestinely up to something shady, likely a sort of financial swindling, which worries Chris enough to think about separating. But he can’t, because he needs to be around for their fragile daughter, still deeply traumatized by the recent drug overdose of two friends, one her former bestie.

 

The unpleasantly arrogant Tyler, a bullying jock who swears constantly and believes that he walks on water, enjoys playing cruel pranks on vulnerable classmates; he also has no patience with his sister’s fragility. To make matters worse, Rebekah’s unwholesome fondness for him — at the expense of practically ignoring Chloe — borders on a Jocasta complex.

 

Red One: Too much naughty, not enough nice

Red One (2024) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, and rather generously, for scary violence, profanity and unnecessary earthiness

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

This movie is a mess.

 

For awhile, it’s an entertaining mess. Scripters Chris Morgan and Hiram Garcia have fun blending numerous Christmas/Santa Claus myths, and their concept of the high-tech North Pole operation is a golly-gee-willikers smile. Production designer Bill Brzeski clearly went to town, and the visual effects folks do marvelous things with elves and Santa’s awesomely huge reindeer.

 

Having successfully filled in as a mall Santa for a day, the actual Mr. Claus (J.K. Simmons,
right) is escorted back to his reindeer-drivn sleigh by security chief Callum Drift
(Dwayne Johnson).

I’m also charmed by the notion that the actual Santa Claus, code-named “Red One” (J.K. Simmons, at his fatherly best) occasionally fills in for shopping mall duties, because he enjoys “mingling with the people.” This notion cheekily adds weight to a parent’s insistence, to a doubtful child, that yes; that fellow in the chair could be the actual Santa.

I also was willing to roll with a plot line that involves Santa being kidnapped by the evil Christmas Witch, aka Gryla (Kiernan Shipka), to prevent him from making the rounds on the all-important night, while replacing his gift-giving with her own nefarious scheme.

 

But by about this point, the script’s disparate elements begin to burst at the seams.

 

Backing up a bit, the first act establishes the longstanding bond between Santa and his head of security: Callum Drift (Dwayne Johnson), commander of the North Pole’s E.L.F. team (Enforcement, Logistics and Fortification). After centuries of faithful service, Callum has grown disenchanted with humanity’s rising willingness to behave badly — without concern — thus winding up on the Naughty List.

 

Santa, being Santa, has faith.

 

“Every decision,” he insists, in Simmons’ best, wise-guidance tone, “is an opportunity to do the right thing.”

 

Elsewhere, chronic gambler and expert “fixer” Jack O’Malley (Chris Evans) has helped an unknown party track an unusual seismic disturbance ... not realizing that it’s Santa’s reindeer taking off, after his shopping mall gig. Said unknown party turns out to be Gryla; Jack has unwittingly given her the means to find the concealed North Pole, and orchestrate the aforementioned kidnapping.

 

This absolutely horrifies Zoe (Lucy Liu), head of the Mythological Oversight and Restoration Authority (M.O.R.A.), an umbrella organization charged with protecting and defending the mythological world, from Bigfoot to the Easter Bunny. Santa’s absence, with only one day before Christmas, is a crisis of the highest magnitude.

 

Callum and his team quickly locate and enlist Jack, to help them recover Santa: a mission initially pooh-poohed by the skeptical mortal. (We briefly see his kid version in this film’s prologue, played by Wyatt Hunt, as a precocious disbeliever in Santa.) A brief encounter with Cal’s second-in-command, Garcia — a massive talking polar bear — soon sets that straight.

 

Strange World: Very strange film

Strange World (2022) • View trailer

Two stars (out of five). Rated PG, and too generously, for dramatic intensity and relentless peril

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

This film’s title couldn’t be more apt.

 

Writer/co-director Qui Nguyen must’ve been smoking the good stuff when he concocted this psychedelic fever dream of an animated fantasy, and I’m amazed Disney was willing to release it. The chaotic, so-called story is a random mess that demands far too much patience from viewers, before finally sorta-kinda delivering a mildly clever ecological message.

 

Jaeger (far left), his son Searcher (center) and grandson Ethan, attempt to bond over
an elaborate card game, while faithful pooch Legend and the blobby blue Splat
participate in their own way.

Getting there, however, is a tedious assault on the senses.

One must be careful, particularly with fantasy, to establish a firm set of rules … and then follow them. If reality — as we know it — is to be warped, events must emerge in a manner that remains comprehensible.

 

But Nguyen and co-director Don Hall throw far too much stuff on the screen, and their core character story element — the often fractious relationship that results, when fathers expect too much of their sons — gets lost in this cacophonous assault on the senses.

 

We get tired of all the stuff and nonsense, long before the (supposedly) happy ending.

 

In an effort to make sense of the senseless…

 

Brawny, laugh-in-the-face-of-danger Jaeger Clade (voiced by Dennis Quaid) has long been an exploratory hero in the hamlet of Avalonia, a pre-industrial community surrounded on all sides by an extremely tall mountain range. His previous exploits notwithstanding, Jaeger is determined to discover what’s beyond those mountains.

 

All of his death-defying expeditions have been made alongside his son Searcher (Jake Gyllenhaal), a teenager when we first meet him. Alas, Jaeger is blind to the fact that Searcher is a reluctant companion at best. The story begins with Jaeger’s latest effort to summit the mountains, which goes awry when Searcher is distracted by an odd, lime-green plant with small spherical “fruit pods” that give off an electric charge when touched.

 

Searcher wants to return to Avalonia with this plant, believing it could become an important power source. Jaeger stubbornly insists on pushing ahead … by himself.

 

Flash-forward 25 years.

 

Searcher has become a successful farmer of pando, the name he has given to the plant that now covers massive acres of his land. He has a wife, Meridian (Gabrielle Union); they have a 16-year-old son, Ethan (Jaboukie Young-White).

 

Jaeger has been missing the entire time: presumed dead, and honored with a statue in the town square.

 

Kung Fu Panda 3: Still kicking up lots of fun

Kung Fu Panda 3 (2016) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG, and needlessly, for mild rude humor
By Derrick Bang

For a franchise that began with a one-joke premise — a roly-poly panda, as a kung fu master? — this series has shown remarkable resilience.

Once Po, left, meets his equally mischievous biological father, the two pandas embark on
a spirited "play date" that almost destroys the venerable jade palace.

Considerable credit obviously goes to scripters Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger, who’ve been on board since 2008’s first film. They’ve nailed just the right blend of goofy physical comedy and witty dialog (gotta keep the adults entertained!) while including a virtuous moral or two.

The voice talent also is first-rate, starting with the always amusing Jack Black, as the frequently flustered title character; ample assistance comes from supporting players performed by Dustin Hoffman, Jackie Chan, Seth Rogen and particularly James Hong. They and others have remained involved from the beginning, and such continuity definitely helps the franchise.

Mostly, though, these films are fun, in the silly, good-natured manner that also has kept the Ice Age series running strong for so long.

As Kung Fu Panda 3 opens, our hero Po’s beloved teacher, Shifu (Hoffman), decides to step down as the local kung fu master. On his way out, Shifu assigns Po the next challenge in his evolution as the local Dragon Warrior: to become the instructor of his warrior colleagues, the Furious Five: Tigress (Angelina Jolie), Monkey (Chan), Mantis (Rogen), Viper (Lucy Liu) and Crane (David Cross).

The first training session ... leaves much to be desired.

Recriminations and self-doubt are cut short, however, by the arrival of an unexpected visitor: another dumpling-devouring panda, named Li (Bryan Cranston), who bears a striking resemblance to Po ... and claims to be our hero’s actual father. This doesn’t sit well with Mr. Ping (Hong), the goose who runs the village noodle shop and has been Po’s adoptive father, lo these many years.