Editor’s Note: Freeline Media’s movie critic, Mike Fried, has some thoughts on movies about women — but not about simple chick flicks! These are about women in charge! Read on!
By MIKE FRIED
THE HOUSEMAID (2025)
*** 1/2
When unemployed Millie accepts a position as a housemaid for the rich Winchester family, she gets more than she bargained for. While she got along with Nina, the mom, so well in the interview, Nina is a totally different person than the one Millie interviewed with. And the rest of the family is not far behind.
I didn’t think I’d like this movie and only went to see it because I hadn’t been to any movies this month and I have to justify my Regal Unlimited subscription, don’t I?
But I did like it, because as good looking as the movie is, it unabashedly leans into its B- Movie roots. Sydney Sweeney is excellent as the constantly belittled and befuddled Millie, who has secrets, and Amanda Seyfried gives her most (only?!?) over the top performance as Nina, who constantly makes promises and then breaks them. She has some closely guarded secrets as well. And she is nuts.
Brandon Sklenar as Nina’s roaming eyes husband, Andrew, is excellent — he owns everything and Nina is at his beck and call. Indiana Elle is positively creepy as their daughter CeCe.
The movie also takes glee in making fun of rich suburbanites and their cattiness and has a nice time speaking to class divide. The movie drags when it slides into the obligatory sex subplot, but redeems itself with a nice twisty finish.
It could have been total trash but it is so expertly directed by Paul Feig who makes the movie rise above the script. And under his hand the revelations just keep getting weirder and weirder. And the movie has such a great sense of humor and I’m guessing that is due to Feig.
My biggest overall complaint is that at 131 minutes it’s overlong for its potboiler ambitions.
WATCH IT!
COMPANION (2025)
****
Girl meets boy, boy meets girl. They start a relationship, but she’s a robot. When they are invited to a friend’s cabin for the weekend things go wrong – as they say in Westworld.
The premise is nothing that we haven’t seen before in any “robots who kill” movies; however, writer/director Drew Hancock takes it in a new direction as a screed against toxic masculinity. And by doing so, he brings us one of the year’s most original films.
Sophie Thatcher is absolutely terrific as Iris, the robot girl; Iris is an anagram of Siri, by the way. She loves her boyfriend, Josh, and will do anything to please him. As the movie progresses, Thatcher really shows her stuff and makes the film a very fun watch.
Jack Quaid is also terrific. At the beginning of the film he’s essentially playing his dad 30 years ago — charming and goofy. But as the movie proceeds, he starts playing dad as he is now all bug eyed, crazy and shouting. The movie throws a lot of curveballs, but when you examine them, they fit in with the plot very organically.
There’s nothing new here but the ingredients are so well mixed that it’s hard to complain about the finished product
This is a well done, enjoyable film.
WATCH IT!
BRING HER BACK (2025)
**** 1/2
Step-siblings Andy and Piper find their widowed father dead and are placed in the home of foster mom Laura, who is either ebullient or creepy — or both — depending upon your point of view. There is also Laura’s son Oliver, who is decidedly creepy. Laura’s daughter, Cathy, previously passed away. While there, Andy and Piper discover things are not what they seem.
This is one of the most interesting yet disturbing horror films I have seen in recent years. Every frame of the movie burns with horror.
The core four cast is uniformly terrific. Jonah Phillips brings in the creep as Oliver and Billy Barratt is terrrific as older brother Andy, who knows something is wrong but he can’t figure out what it is. It’s Sora Wong who in her first acting role that really wows as Piper. She brings an unusually innate talent for someone who has never acted before.
But it’s the great actress Sally Hawkins who gives one of her most visceral, disturbing and greatest performances that should be recognized at Oscar season but which won’t because, after all, this is a horror film.
And while it is a film about loss and loneliness, it is also a riveting, disturbing horror film as well, proving that Danny and Michael Philippou’s first feature, Talk to Me, was no fluke.
“Would you like a table for lunch?”
PS – I have to say I was even more terrified the second time, watching this on HBO.
Holy shit!
Sally Hawkins- just give her the fucking Oscar now (they didn’t).
Adding half a star.
WATCH IT!
Michael Fried has no formal training in movies, except having watched over 26,000+ movies — if not more — in his 60-plus years on this planet, starting with Goldfinger as his first cinema experience. He knows what he likes and he knows what he doesn’t like, and it’s quite often different from the conventional wisdom. He knows that the best franchise is Godzilla and he loves action movies and comedies. He has not been nominated for any awards except some boring insurance awards which has no applicability to movies (with the possible exceptions of Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity and John Cassavettes’ Big Trouble). He is part of a team that won the 1980 SUNY Albany Trivia content by correctly guessing the question, “Who played the president of Klopstockia in Million Dollar Legs?” So he has that going for him, which is nice.
Contact Mike at moviemike3@yahoo.com and mike.fried@yahoo.com.
