Danusha_Goska

It's a cliche to say, about a movie, "I'll never get those two hours of my life back." I don't think I've ever said those exact words about a movie but boy oh boy do they apply here.

One gets the sense that Celine Song feels that she is saying something profound about relationships. I mean, she even works in some Buddhist folklore!

In fact, though, Song says absolutely nothing

Two twelve-year -old kids play with each other. We've all been twelve years old and we've all probably played with other kids. After that kid leaves for another country, do we somehow decide that that kid was the love of our life? Based on sliding down a slide with each other?

If you decide that, you are, simply, stupid.

The guy and the gal reconnect years later, chat via the internet, as all of us have done, stop chatting, as we all have also done, and go on to other partners.

Years later, they meet in New York, and visit the Statue of Liberty.

None of these scenes contain any magic or depth or poetry or insight.

Some movie goers are convinced that if a movie is low budget and painfully slow that something fabulous is going on.

Nothing fabulous is going on here.

Usually I reserve my hatred for movies that are sick or twisted or especially ugly "Past Lives" is not sick, not twisted, not especially ugly. Bur yeah I hated it. I hated it because, frankly, movies should simply be better than this, and if you've made a movie this bad, this empty, this cold, this boring, this pretentious, shelve it.

"Mountainhead" is dark, funny, timely, necessary, and unflinching. Four tech bros who share a lot of history as a group retreat to a spectacular but also absurdly grandiose Utah mountaintop mansion. Most of the film consists of them talking to each other. There's not much action, except toward the end, and that action is dark, ugly, and, again, absurd.

Ven (Cory Michael Smith) is the dynamo and "the richest man in the world." He has unleashed an AI app. Around the world, people are using it to create fake videos that are indistinguishable from something real. People believe videos of dark crimes committed by members of warring ethnic groups, including Turks and Armenians, Israelis and Palestinians, and Hindus and Muslims in India. There are riots, arson, assassinations, and countries fall apart. The tech bros learn of this by watching it all transpire on their phones.

Ven doesn't care. He doesn't believe that other people really exist. All that matters to him are his own loved ones, and maybe not even them. He is a nihilist. He is reminiscent of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sam Altman.

Randall (Steve Carell) is the oldest of the quartet. He is a father figure. He has terminal cancer and he is ready to use computers to achieve eternal life. He believes that Ven offers him that choice. Randall reminds viewers of real life characters Mark Andreesen, Curtis Yarvin, Sam Bankman Fried, and Peter Theil.

Soup (Jason Schwartzman) is called "Soup" because he is the "soup kitchen" of the group, because he is worth only hundreds of millions, not billions. He has developed a meditation app called Slowzo

Jeff (Ramy Youssef) has an app that can detect AI, but he won't share it with Ven, to Ven's consternation. Some of his actions are reminiscent of Demis Hassabis and Dario Amodei.

The bros hang out, taunt each other, occasionally hug, and decide that they need to take over the world, and to do something even more drastic than that.

The movie is beautifully produced. The mansion is appropriately ostentatious and the surrounding woods are gorgeous. Cory Michael Smith is utterly believable as an amoral lunatic with too much power. Steve Carell is arrogant and conveys the desperate sadness of a man who can't accept his own mortality. Jason Schwartzman is funny and pathetic and Ramy Youssef expertly occupies his ambiguous position in the quartet.

The script invites thoughtful viewers to think hard about morality in a post-Christian, post-democratic America where money and power are all and the humans rich men don't care about don't really exist. Randall's blowhard philosophizing, and his references to Ancient Rome, are annoying and all too believable. He can justify any crime he commits with a reference to The Catiline Conspiracy or Kant. All of the tech bros have invented their own moral code and are quite comfortable facilitating genocide, destroying the earth, or murdering a pleading person standing in front of them. The plot twists are funny, horrifying, and depressing.

"Presence" is NOT a horror film. It is an intimate family drama, a meditation on life and death, and an exploration of purpose.

The folks who are trashing it wanted it to be a horror film, and it's not.

Yes, it's slow and talky. But there's a lot going for those who think and listen.

I believed this family, I believed their issues, and I was moved by the ending.

The ending is a surprise, but I knew from reading about the film o the internet what the ending was. And even so the ending moved me.

Go see it. It's a quiet, thoughtful film a bout love, about family, and about life's purpose and the necessity of self sacrifice.