by Mattie Lucas
Cinema from a Decidedly Queer Perspective
Presence | 2025
A ghostly presence haunts a family's new home in Steven Soderbergh's Presence - but this is in no way a typical haunted house movie. Soderbergh puts the audience directly in the spirit's point of view, drifting in and out of rooms and observing the new family's unfolding conflicts.
There's something agreeably no-nonsense about Alex Parkinson's Last Breath, a straight-down-the-middle, meat-and-potatoes true-life rescue thriller we rarely see anymore. Perhaps I'm looking at the past through rose-colored glasses, but there once was a time when mid-budget actioners like this were multiplex staples. Nowadays, you're more likely to see movies like this relegated to streaming rather than playing on a big screen.