Three recent movies end with the same shot construction.

The final images of Nightbitch, Here, and Presence start by zooming out on a melodramatically domestic, living-room tableau. The camera pulls back out the front door, rises over the neighborhood and then up into the clouds. 

Roll credits. 

But Steven, you might snip, isn’t that a common formula?

Sure, my loudmouth reader. But what if I told you that it’s the first time the camera leaves the house in Here AND Presence, two movies with enough parallels to warrant a double feature. 

Meanwhile, Presence’s cinematography also parallels Nickel Boys, as experiments in feature-length narratives from first-person perspectives.

And speaking of Nickel Boys and cameras…

In Oh, Canada, Richard Gere plays a documentary filmmaker famous for having his interviewees answer his questions by staring straight down the lens, a repositioning-of-the-intermediary that he’s convinced alters the fundamental relationship between subject and art.

Which is basically the visual MO of Nickel Boys.