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Home > Celestial Blood > Weekend film reviews: ‘Freakier Friday,’ ‘Souleymane’s Story’
Podcast: Celestial Blood
Episode:

Weekend film reviews: ‘Freakier Friday,’ ‘Souleymane’s Story’
Category: Arts
Duration: 00:00:00
Publish Date: 2025-08-07 19:00:00
Description: The latest film releases include Freakier Friday; It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley; Weapons; and Souleymane’s Story. Weighing in are Witney Seibold, senior writer at SlashFilm and co-host of the podcast Critically Acclaimed Network, and Alison Willmore, critic for NY Magazine and Vulture. Freakier Friday Years have passed since mother-daughter duo Tess (Jamie Lee Curtis) and Anna (Lindsay Lohan) swapped bodies in the original Freaky Friday (2003). This time, Tess, Anna, and Anna’s daughter and step-daughter are pulled into a four-way body swap. Willmore: “Lindsay Lohan's character has a teenage daughter played by Julia Butters, and then she falls in love with a dashing single dad that she meets during a school incident played by Manny Jacinto, whose daughter is played by Sophia Hammons. They're ramping up towards becoming a blended family with this marriage, and so of course, that is when the body swap shenanigans happen. … If you've seen the 2003 film, then it really leans on a lot of similar beats, a lot of similar jokes. One of the things that's funny about it … it actually has more trouble thinking about the teenage perspective. … I feel like the moral of the story is much more like, ‘Oh, these teenagers, they're being so selfish.’” Seibold: “Jamie Lee Curtis especially is really, really bringing it, playing a teenage girl again. She's 66 years old, and she has just as much spunk and humor and energy as she always has. It's fantastic. And Lindsay Lohan, who we've all heard about her turbulent past through Hollywood and … dipping out of the public eye and then returning, never lost her movie star qualities. She's just as present and just as funny and just as dazzling as she always has been. So it's just refreshing to see those two again just be movie stars. … All of the comedic beats are very predictable, all of the comedic setups are all very contrived, but it's strangely enjoyable.” It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley Directed by Amy Berg, this documentary focuses on musician Jeff Buckley, who was raised by a single mom, released one record, and died at age 30 in a drowning accident. Seibold: “There's nothing really poetic about his death. There's nothing really dramatic about his death. It just was a dumb accident. … This documentary film is trying to add a little bit more myth to Jeff Buckley, the film is very straightforward. It just goes through his life chronologically, doesn't really come up with any new insights that somebody who's not already a Jeff Buckley fan would know. But it is an interesting way of looking at this really stirring, important artist. He was poised on the brink of greatness, and then he was cut off just too soon.” Willmore: “I do feel like the challenge of of making a film about someone like Jeff Buckley, whose life was cut so short, is that you want the film to almost deal a bit more with that context, with the mythologizing, with the ways in which that promise cut short becomes part of this person's legacy. And I feel like the film doesn't quite get there.” Weapons Students — except one — from a classroom suddenly disappear one night, and the community tries figuring out what happened. Seibold: “[Director Zach Cregger] likes the idea of looking at this horror story from the perspective of each character in turn. So we get to see the Josh Brolin character’s chapter where he's the father of one of the children, and he's trying to solve the mystery. We see Julia Garner's perspective, she was the teacher in this classroom where all of the kids vanished, and how she has a messy life behind the scenes. She's an alcoholic and is having an affair with a cop. And we do eventually learn where the children went and why they disappeared. … I do commend this film for keeping the story and the tension high. … Once we learn those things, there's actually a lot of film after the big revelation, and it makes the story, just like that, much more complicated. But I can't tell where this film is going beyond telling us a spooky little fairy tale.” Willmore: “I thought this one was great. … It's really, I think, artfully made without falling under … elevated horror, art house horror. It has more intent on being fun on its mind. … I didn't feel like it was empty. Honestly, I think that one of the problems with a lot of horror recently is that there's this real pressure to put this labored allegory to everything. … There was a world in which this film could have been a really awkward allegory for a school shooting or something like that. And it isn't. It is, at best … a movie about how we struggle to put meaning on loss or on a disaster, and we want an explanation. We want a solution that creates some sense of closure, and about how that can lead people to do some destructive things. But I think it's also … a really creepy story about suburbia and … the isolation of living in the suburbs. Everyone in their own house can enable really dark things.” Souleymane’s Story A Paris food delivery cyclist, who is seeking asylum, has two days to prepare his story for a vital interview to secure his legal residency. Willmore: “It's a slice-of-life movie about a character who is in this legal gray area of waiting to apply for asylum, and at the same time, he's not supposed to work, and at the same time, he has to live. He's renting someone else's food delivery account, basically, and struggling and getting taken advantage of by so many people.” Seibold: “This is a fantastic movie. This might be one of my favorites of the year. … This character has to work pretty much 24/7, and everything is a struggle. He has to have his bus pass in the right place. He has to be on top of everything and constantly be hustling, and all of this just so he can barely squeak by, and stay in a homeless shelter, and try to keep his life together. And we start to see that the system is not designed to help people or give them the things they need to survive. It's simply about keeping them busy. The title refers to this fake story that this character has to give to the immigration office. If his story is sympathetic enough, then he will be granted a work visa. The people who are all going through this immigration process have learned that if they tell a sympathetic enough story, then they get their stamp. And the film climaxes with him telling this story. … All of the emotions just come pouring out in this climactic monologue. … It's really heartbreaking, and we get to see just all of the honesty and the struggle. I appreciate that the character is not reduced to this beatific sufferer. This is not like poverty porn or pity porn. This is actually a little bit more of a humane, grounded story.”
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