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Review: Fernanda Torres pulls off a miracle of maternal courage in 'I'm Still Here'

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Review: Fernanda Torres pulls off a miracle of maternal courage in 'I'm Still Here'

Soufflé is almost ready at the Paiva household just across the street from the beach in sultry Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. From the unmistakably festive atmosphere within the home’s airy rooms, one wouldn’t guess the country is under a ferocious military dictatorship.

That Walter Salles, the acclaimed director of “Central Station” and “The Motorcycle Diaries,” first depicts the tight-knit family of “I’m Still Here” at their most ebullient, before tragedy strikes, pays off dramatic dividends in this remarkably life-affirming drama largely set in 1971 and based on the 2015 memoir by Marcelo Paiva (the Paivas’ only son). A contender for the upcoming international feature Oscar, “I’m Still Here” brilliantly distills an agonizing chapter of a nation’s recent past into a sophisticated portrait of communal endurance.

Already lauded for her quietly shattering performance with a surprise Golden Globes win (the first Brazilian actress to ever receive the prize), Fernanda Torres portrays Eunice Paiva, a mother of five who is married to former Congressman Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello). We see the pent-up worry on her face signaling incipient danger: Helicopters roam the city while news of kidnapped ambassadors pours from the radio.

Within the walls of the Paiva residence, Salles and his cast of both seasoned and fresh-faced actors create a vibrant, lived-in dynamic radiating with affection and carefree liberty. And because we’ve been so wonderfully immersed in the exuberance they are all about to lose, when the darkness reaches their doorstep, in the form of henchmen who take Rubens in for questioning, the contrast between who they were and who they become feels stark.

By that point, Mello has potently established the fatherly warmth his family will sorely miss. In that absence, memory becomes central to “I’m Still Here.” The narrative is interspersed with home movies shot on a 8 mm camera, immortalizing candid instances of leisure and love, the ones that truly matter. Not only are they indelible in the minds of the Paivas, but they are forever preserved in still photos, in Marcelo Paiva’s writing and now onscreen through Salles’ filmic rendition.

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The director and cinematographer Adrian Teijido also make the home a shifting co-star and a physical metaphor for Brazil as a whole. Once a place where friends and family entered through perpetually open doors, the space becomes hermetic and airless when curtains are drawn to hide the men who have come to disrupt this idyllic refuge. Through them, the dictatorship instills fear and distrust to maintain power. Salles communicates the state-sanctioned distress by focusing on the family’s upended quotidian rituals.

Eunice responds by offering these goons lunch — maybe in the hope that their ordeal will end sooner, but also as a statement of the type of person she is even to those who might hurt her. (Eventually, she and one of her daughters are detained and interrogated, then released.) Those seemingly muted details about her rich personality come from Marcelo Paiva’s intimate reminiscences about his mother and the Paivas’ collective experience in the aftermath of Rubens’ disappearance, expertly adapted by screenwriters Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega.

Torres exudes the unflashy fortitude of a woman unable and unwilling to surrender to despair as the days and weeks go by. How can she when she must raise her children and seek justice for her husband, who may still be alive? Imparting masterful restraint, Torres makes Eunice’s few outbursts feel believably contained. As distanced from melodrama as possible, her performance is one of internalized grief.

And yet, in the midst of her hidden mourning, Eunice treats those around her with loving understanding, empathetic to their respective fears and the limitations of what they can do for her. She moves through the world with a humble resolve, unafraid of doing what needs to be done, never dwelling on what could or should have been done. At every turn, we recognize her desire to spare her kids from the sorrow she carries. A guardian of their tender hearts, she can only hide so much in an authoritarian reality.

Even mere moments after receiving crushing news, Eunice musters up a smile for her youngest daughter and the energy to take the whole gang out for ice cream, seeking to regain a semblance of what they used to have. That amalgamation of a graceful pride during a crisis and superhuman determination is crucial to Torres’ embodiment of Eunice’s inner force. And because she’s perceived as nearly unbreakable, when sorrow does slip through her eyes in a lost stare or a weighted silence, Torres’ expression is beautifully gutting.

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Acting of this subtle caliber is rarely celebrated, but Torres unassuming turn has proved undeniable to anyone who watches it. For a film like “I’m Still Here” to emerge on the other side of the repressive Jair Bolsonaro presidency and be embraced at home and abroad so earnestly (it’s Brazil’s highest grosser since the pandemic) is testament to Salles’ assured directorial hand that treats the delicate subject matter with the seriousness it merits while highlighting humanity rather than brutality. There’s a striking elegance to his images in how they bring us closer to the people, not the horrors.

When a photographer suggests that the family pose with a somber demeanor for a shot that will be featured in an article about Rubens’ disappearance, Eunice refuses, instructing her children to smile broadly. Joy proves defiant to the shadowy oppressors who wish to see their “enemies” suffer. Eunice’s victory, as witnessed by Marcelo Paiva and resurrected by Torres (and, briefly, by Brazilian legend Fernanda Montenegro, Torres’ Oscar-nominated mother), is not just about survival but fostering a family united in adversity.

Resistance takes the form of lives well lived. In every laugh shared, in every new memory made and family photo taken, this clan honors those no longer physically present.

‘I’m Still Here’

In Portuguese with English subtitles

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Rated: PG-13, for thematic content, some strong language, drug use, smoking and brief nudity

Running time: 2 hours, 17 minutes

Playing: Opens Friday, Jan. 17, AMC The Grove 14, Laemmle Royal

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Movie Review – SHAKA: A STORY OF ALOHA

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Movie Review – SHAKA: A STORY OF ALOHA
SHAKA: A STORY OF ALOHA is shared with the audience by investigator Steve Sue in a calm and charming manner, but this documentary tells a powerful, positive and fascinating story. The “hang loose” thumb, pinky sign that originated in Hawaii and carries many meanings is the focus of this film. I just learned this gesture is called a “Shaka” and has a worldwide impact.  And, there are Shaka Contests.  Who knew? And how do you throw a Shaka? For me, […]
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Tommy Lee Jones’ daughter reportedly found dead at San Francisco hotel on New Year’s Day

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Tommy Lee Jones’ daughter reportedly found dead at San Francisco hotel on New Year’s Day

Victoria Jones, the daughter of Academy Award-winning actor Tommy Lee Jones, was reportedly found dead at a hotel in San Francisco on New Year’s Day. She was 34.

According to TMZ, the San Francisco Fire Department responded to a medical emergency call at the Fairmont San Francisco early Thursday morning. The paramedics pronounced Victoria dead at the scene before turning it over to the San Francisco Police Department for further investigation, the outlet said.

An SFPD representative confirmed to The Times that officers responded to a call at approximately 3:14 a.m. Thursday regarding a report of a deceased person at the hotel and that they met with medics at the scene who declared an unnamed adult female dead.

Citing law enforcement sources, NBC Bay Area also reported that the deceased woman found in a hallway of the hotel was believed to be Jones and that police did not suspect foul play.

“We are deeply saddened by an incident that occurred at the hotel on January 1, 2026,” the Fairmont told NBC Bay Area in a statement. “Our heartfelt condolences are with the family and loved ones during this very difficult time. The hotel team is actively cooperating and supporting police authorities within the framework of the ongoing investigation.”

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The medical examiner conducted an investigation at the scene, but Jones’ cause of death remains undetermined. Dispatch audio obtained by TMZ and People indicated that the 911 emergency call was for a suspected drug overdose.

Jones was the daughter of Tommy Lee and ex-wife Kimberlea Cloughley. Her brief acting career included roles on films such as “Men in Black II” (2002), which starred her father, and “The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada” (2005), which was directed by her father. She also appeared in a 2005 episode of “One Tree Hill.”

Page Six reported that Jones had been arrested at least twice in 2025 in Napa County, including an arrest on suspicion of being under the influence of a controlled substance and drug possession.

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Movie Review: “I Was a Stranger” and You Welcomed Me

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Movie Review: “I Was a Stranger” and You Welcomed Me

Just when you think that you’ve seen and heard all sides of the human migration debate, and long after you fear that the cruel, the ignorant and the scapegoaters have won that shouting match, a film comes along and defies ignorance and prejudice by both embracing and upending the conventional “immigrant” narrative.

“I Was a Strranger” is the first great film of 2026. It’s cleverly written, carefully crafted and beautifully-acted with characters who humanize many facets of the “migration” and “illegal immigration” debate. The debut feature of writer-director Brandt Andersen, “Stranger” is emotional and logical, blunt and heroic. It challenges viewers to rethink their preconceptions and prejudices and the very definition of “heroic.”

The fact that this film — which takes its title from the Book of Matthew, chapter 25, verse 35 — is from the same faith-based film distributor that made millions by feeding the discredited human trafficking wish fulfillment fantasy “Sound of Freedom” to an eager conservative Christian audience makes this film something of a minor miracle in its own right.

But as Angel Studios has also urged churchgoers not just to animated Nativity stories (“The King of Kings”) and “David” musicals, but Christian resistence to fascism (“Truth & Treason” and “Bonheoffer”) , their atonement is almost complete.

Andersen deftly weaves five compact but saga-sized stories about immigrants escaping from civil-war-torn Syria into a sort of interwoven, overlapping “Babel” or “Crash” about migration.

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“The Doctor” is about a Chicago hospital employee (Yasmine Al Massri of “Palestine 36” and TV’s “Quantico”) whose flashback takes us to the hospital in Aleppo, Syria, bombed and terrorized by the Assad regime’s forces, and what she and her tween daughter (Massa Daoud) went through to escape — from literally crawling out of a bombed building to dodging death at the border to the harrowing small boat voyage from Turkey to Greece.

“The Soldier” follows loyal Assad trooper Mustafa (Yahya Mahayni was John the Baptist in Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints”) through his murderous work in Aleppo, and the crisis of conscience that finally hits him as he sees the cruel and repressive regime he works for at its most desperate.

“The Smuggler” is Marwan, a refugee-camp savvy African — played by the terrific French actor Omar Sy of “The Intouchables” and “The Book of Clarence” — who cynically makes his money buying disposable inflatable boats, disposable outboards and not-enough-life-jackets in Turkey to smuggle refugees to Greece.

“The Poet” (Ziad Bakri of “Screwdriver”) just wants to get his Syrian family of five out of Turkey and into Europe on Marwan’s boat.

And “The Captain” (Constantine Markoulakis of “The Telemachy”) commands a Hellenic Coast Guard vessel, a man haunted by the harrowing rescues he must carry out daily and visions of the bodies of those he doesn’t.

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Andersen, a Tampa native who made his mark producing Tom Cruise spectacles (“American Made”), Mel Gibson B-movies (“Panama”) and the occasional “Everest” blockbuster, expands his short film “Refugee” to feature length for “I Was a Stranger.” He doesn’t so much alter the formula or reinvent this genre of film as find points of view that we seldom see that force us to reconsider what we believe through their eyes.

Sy’s Smuggler has a sickly little boy that he longs to take to Chicago. He runs his ill-gotten-gains operation, profiting off human misery, to realize that dream. We see glimpses of what might be compassion, but also bullying “customers” and his new North African assistant (Ayman Samman). Keeping up the hard front he shows one and all, we see him callously buy life jackets in the bazaar — never enough for every customer to have one in any given voyage.

The Captain sits for dinner with family and friends and has to listen to Greek prejudices and complaints about this human life and human rights crisis, which is how the worlds sees Greece reacting to this “invasion.” But as he and his first mate recount lives saved and the horrors of lives lost, that quibbling is silenced.

Here and there we see and hear (in Arabic and Greek with subtitles, and English) little moments of “rising above” human pettiness and cruelty and the simple blessings of kindness.

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“I Was a Stranger” was finished in 2024 and arrives in cinemas at one of the bleakest moments in recent history. Cruelty is running amok, unchecked and unpunished. Countries are being destabilized, with the fans of alleged “strong man” rule cheering it on.

Andersen carefully avoids politics — Middle Eastern, Israeli, European and American — save for the opening scene’s zoom in on that Chicago hospital, passing a gaudily named “Trump” hotel in the process, and a general condemnation of Syria’s Assad mob family regime.

But Andersen’s bold movie, with its message so against the grain of current events, compromised media coverage and the mostly conservative audience that has become this film distributor’s base, plays like a wet slap back to reality.

And as any revival preacher will tell you, putting a positive message out there in front of millions is the only way to convert hundreds among the millions who have lost their way.

star

Rating: PG-13, violence, smoking, racial slurs

Cast: Yasmine Al Massri, Yahya Mahayni, Ziad Bakri, Omar Sy, Ayman Samman, Massa Daoud, Jason Beghe and Constantine Markoulakis

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Credits: Scripted and directed by Brandt Andersen. An Angel Studios release.

Running time: 1:43

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About Roger Moore

Movie Critic, formerly with McClatchy-Tribune News Service, Orlando Sentinel, published in Spin Magazine, The World and now published here, Orlando Magazine, Autoweek Magazine

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