‘Him’ Attempts to Turn Football Into a Waking Nightmare

September 18, 2025

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HIM… and Him, too (CREDIT: Universal Pictures)

Starring: Tyriq Withers, Marlon Wayans, Julia Fox, Tim Heidecker, Jim Jefferies, Naomi Grossman, GiGi Erneta, Norman Towns, Maurice Greene, Guapdad 4000, Tierra Whack, Don Benjamin

Director: Justin Tipping

Running Time: 96 Minutes

Rating: R for Odd and Grotesque Behavior, Athletic Nudity, and Questionable Performance Enhancement

Release Date: September 19, 2025 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans) is indisputably the greatest quarterback of his generation and possibly all time. But rumor has it that he’s retiring soon. That’s where Cam Cade (Tyriq Withers) comes in: he’s been worshipping Isaiah his entire life, and everyone around has been pretty much grooming him to be the next GOAT. He lives up to that promise in college, and he’s all set to fulfill his destiny in the pros, but then a mysterious masked figure whacks him on the head. His draft stuck plummets as he recovers from this traumatic injury, but then he’s given a second chance when he’s invited to train at Isaiah’s private desert facility. However, that’s when it becomes inescapably clear that football stardom is a lot weirder, freakier, and more cultish than he bargained for.

What Made an Impression?: Would Roger Goodell Like This?: I’m pretty sure the National Football League wants absolutely nothing to do with Him. Or at the very least, they want it to be clear that this is NOT set in the NFL. Or the makers of Him assumed that’s how they would feel. Which means that instead of playing for the Patriots or the Cowboys or the Chiefs, Isaiah White is instead the QB for the San Antonio Saviors of the (kind of hilariously) fictional United States Football Federation. Ergo, we’ve got an alternate universe where the NFL is replaced by the USFF, but just as obsessively beloved. So if you follow the gridiron religiously in real life, you’ll find Him to be an uncanny mix of deeply familiar and outright foreign.
That’s the Way It Goes…Or Is It?: Let’s go ahead and identify the central metaphor: it’s all about how becoming the Football GOAT (or a sports superstar in general) is about fully sacrificing your sense of self. You may seem like one of the most powerful people on the planet, but truthfully it’s the hangers-on and team ownership and all of society that have a piece of you and won’t let go. But director Justin Tipping doesn’t always emphasize this point as clearly as he could. He’s made the sort of movie that’s more likely to make you go “What the hell’s going on?” rather than “Oh, I get it.” That’s not necessarily a bad thing, especially when you’re working in the horror milieu, but I would’ve recommended a more cohesive vision.
Never a Boring Day: But let’s talk about some of those more bizarre flourishes. A man decked out in body paint screams “Baa!” A superfan of Isaiah’s spits in Cam’s general direction. Major collisions give way to X-ray style views of the player’s skeletons. Plus, the supporting cast is delightfully demented, especially Tim Heidecker as Cam’s deceptively presentable agent and Julia Fox as Isaiah’s erotic stone-hawking influencer wife. The point is, Him doesn’t lack for memorable details or visual flourishes. It probably won’t make you re-evaluate everything about a particular sports league, but it could stick with you here and there.

Him is Recommended If You Like: Comedians Going Dramatic in a Cuckoo Way, Bloody Smiles, Pagan-Style Cosplay

Grade: 3 out of 5 Head Injuries

‘Presence’ Review: It’s Time for the Ghost’s Perspective

January 22, 2025

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Yay, Presence! (CREDIT: NEON, Courtesy of Sundance Institute)

Starring: Lucy Liu, Chris Sullivan, Callina Liang, Eddy Maday, West Mulholland, Julia Fox, Natalie Woolams-Torres, Lucas Papaelias

Director: Steven Soderbergh

Running Time: 85 Minutes

Rating: R for At-Home Profanity and Malicious Drugging

Release Date: January 24, 2025 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: Rebecca (Lucy Liu) and Chris (Chris Sullivan) are in the market for a fresh start, so they settle into a charming three-bedroom suburban house along with their teenage kids Chloe (Callina Liang) and Tyler (Eddy Maday). Tyler’s trying to focus on the swimming team, while Chloe is reeling from the recent death of a friend. Their parents are also going through a rocky period, with the implication that Rebecca has recently done something illegal, possibly to protect Tyler. Meanwhile, Chloe suspects that there may be a supernatural entity lurking within their walls. And chances are that hunch is very correct, considering that this movie is in fact shot from the POV of the titular presence.

What Made an Impression?: Feels Like Home: As the spectral camera walked along every floorboard and peeked out of every window, I found myself thinking, “This looks so much like my grandparents’ house in southeastern Pennsylvania,” and also, “This reminds me quite a bit of my brother’s house in Westchester County.” Which is to say: it’s a lot like my own childhood home, but not quite. It’s the sort of suburban house right off a busy main road whose origins probably date back a few hundred years, back when the area was all farmland. This is exactly the sort of abode where you’d expect ghosts to be lurking .I imagine I’m not the only one who will find Presence giving them a sense of uncanny familiarity.
Friendly and Curious: If the spirit in Presence operates according to one overriding mission, it is to find the answer to the question “What am I doing here?” Perhaps the most common trope of ghost stories is that the undead have some unfinished business they must take care of before they can fully cross over to the afterlife. That certainly appears to be true of this particular ghost, but it’s taking some effort to figure out exactly what that unfinished business is, beyond the inkling that it has something to do with Chloe. So that results in plenty of aimless activity like just wandering around and moving objects from one spot to another (with the exception of a thrillingly revelatory climax). This existential ghost story requires a fair amount of patience, but it also offers sufficient rewards if you’re willing to stick with it.

Presence is Recommended If You Like: Paranormal Activity, Unsane, Casper

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Gasps

Adam Sandler is Unbound in the Almost Unbearably Intense ‘Uncut Gems’

December 12, 2019

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CREDIT: A24

Starring: Adam Sandler, Kevin Garnett, Julia Fox, Lakeith Stanfield, Idina Menzel, Eric Bogosian, Abel Tesfaye, Judd Hirsch, Mike Francesa

Director: Ben and Josh Safdie

Running Time: 134 Minutes

Rating: R for Shouted Overlapping Profanity, the Violence of High-Stakes Gambling, and a Few Sexy Times

Release Date: December 13, 2019 (Limited)

I know some people who don’t love sports but are able to appreciate athletics when it’s in a movie because you really get to see the emotions and stories behind the games. That has perhaps never been more viscerally true than it is in the climax of Uncut Gems, which hinges on a specific stat line in the deciding game in the 2012 NBA Eastern Conference semifinals between the Boston Celtics and Philadelphia 76ers. There are millions of dollars at stake in high-profile events like these, and writing-directing brother Josh and Benny Safdie were astute enough to realize that they could craft a particularly gripping narrative out of one story behind those millions. To wit: New York City diamond district jeweler Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler) has placed a bet on the performance of Boston’s star baller Kevin Garnett, and it is no exaggeration to say that it is probably the most significant bet he has ever placed in his life.

The thrill of Sandler working with auteurist directors is that they don’t ask him to change his persona. Rather, they push him to be the most fascinating version of himself. As is the case with Barry Egan in Punch-Drunk Love or Danny Meyerowitz in The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected), Howard fits squarely within the classic Sandler mold. He’s an unapologetically shouty, emotionally sloppy man-child, but with a dash more (or rather, a hundred dashes more) of recklessness than usual. He’s got hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt all around town, particularly with his brother-in-law (Eric Bogosian), who’s hired a couple of heavies to hound him. But he’s recently come into possession of an extremely valuable precious stone from Ethiopia that could be worth millions. His mixture of predicament and great fortune leads him to broker a potential deal with a precious metal-hungry Garnett, while also dealing with a malfunctioning door buzzer, getting locked while naked in his car trunk, and a wife (Idina Menzel) who can barely stand him. He does also have a much younger girlfriend (Julia Fox) who’s crazy about him, but not in a way that’s particularly healthy for either of them. Anyway, even with all that boiling in the stew, Howard actually has a few opportunities to clear his debt, but he just can’t help himself as he keeps doubling down and going for an even bigger score.

Uncut Gems is a natural companion piece with the Safdies’ last film, 2017’s Good Time, which starred Robert Pattinson and Ben Safdie as a couple of low-level bank-robbing brothers. Uncut Gems matches Good Time for claustrophobia and raises the stakes in terms of catastrophic decision-making, but it allows for the possibility of hope that a happy ending is somehow possible. A lot of that is thanks to Sandler, who when he is actually invested in a performance is so immensely likeable (and is still fairly likeable even when he’s being lazy). It’s not hard to root for Howard. That of course leads to the question, should we really be rooting for him? If all his high-risk decisions work out (and logic dictates that they certainly can), then he’ll never learn to live more reasonably. But at a certain point, with the whirlwind that his life causes everyone around him, I just want it to end. If it all goes wrong for Howard, it also goes wrong for so many people who don’t deserve it. There a few possibilities for how this can all end, all of which are guaranteed to leave you with a ton of adrenaline pumping.

Uncut Gems is Recommended If You Like: Good Time, the NBA playoffs, Colonoscopies set to synth music

Grade: 4.5 out of 5 African Jews