Courtesy photo
MOVIE REVIEW
Puaada (2021)
An intoxicating mix of rom-com and thriller, “Puaada” gets more hilarious the more dire the situation its characters face. It starts out pretty ordinary – Jaggi (Ammy Virk), a humble milkman from the countryside, only has eyes for Raunak (Sonam Bajwa), an educated daughter of snobbish Air Force officer Mr. Dhillon (Hardeep Gill). Despite her façade of playing hard to get, they’ve been an item for two years. He unexpectedly shows up and sabotages her first meeting with a suitor arranged by her parents, yet his own haphazard efforts to impress them have been laughable, to say the least.
Continue reading “A Very Long Entanglement” »
Wiesner Distribution
MOVIE REVIEW
El cuartito (2021)
Set in a San Juan, Puerto Rico, airport (presumably, Luis Muñoz Marín International) during the Trump presidency, “El cuartito” revolves around travelers flagged by customs officers for “additional processing.” Among them: Toti (Mario de la Rosa), a washed-up Spaniard rocker scheduled to perform a Thanksgiving concert without a work visa; Lina (Claribel Medina), a melodramatic former actress lugging an entire medicine cabinet worth of pills en route to meet her sister on a cruise ship; Mariel (Isel Rodriguez), traveling with an expired U.S. passport after falling for an Argentinian and leaving the U.S. in her teens; Jesús (Ianis Guerrero), attempting to reunite with his family after their botched border-crossing attempt; and Santo (Fausto Mata), a delusional preacher with a forged missionary visa.
Continue reading “Dread on Arrival” »
Adam Jandrup/Sony Pictures Classics
MOVIE REVIEW
The Lost Leonardo (2021)
The documentary “The Lost Leonardo” tracks a Salvator Mundi painting billed as “After Leonardo” by a New Orleans auction house and bought in 2005 for a song ($10,000, so relatively speaking). The purchasers were a group of art dealers that included Alexander Parish, a professional “sleeper hunter” in the business of finding works of art that are more valuable than auctioneers perceive, and Robert Simon. In 2017, Christie’s auctioned the painting, now dubbed “the male Mona Lisa,” for a record $450.3 million.
Continue reading “The Da Vinci Code” »
Tribeca Film Festival
MOVIE REVIEW
The God Committee (2021)
Based on a Mark St. Germain play, “The God Committee” centers on a panel at the fictional St. Augustine Hospital in New York City that periodically makes the call on who receives an organ transplant from a waiting list of candidates. Each member of the panel is a caricature placed there to deliberate toward a “12 Angry Men”-type verdict: a star surgeon with a conflict of interest (Kelsey Grammer), an idealistic young doctor (Julia Stiles), a bureaucratic administrator (Janeane Garofalo), a no-nonsense old-timer (Patricia R. Floyd), a grief-stricken psychiatrist (Peter Kim) and a utilitarian disbarred lawyer/hospital board member/priest (Colman Domingo).
Continue reading “Change of Heart” »
Amazon Studios
MOVIE REVIEW
Mary J. Blige’s My Life (2021)
The first two credits that appear in the “Mary J. Blige’s My Life” documentary belong to the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul herself and producer Sean “Diddy” Combs, one of the masterminds behind the seminal album referenced in the title. Those are a bit concerning given how Prime Video’s other recent music documentary “Pink: All I Know So Far” has turned out. Thankfully, Ms. Blige isn’t interested in a glowing profile of herself. During the film, she revisits an old TV interview during which she appeared evasive and seemed to be lashing out. This movie affords an opportunity to set the record straight and finally answer those invasive and uncomfortable questions with her guard down and the wisdom and introspection that only come with age and experience.
Continue reading “Searching for the Real Love” »
Hulu
MOVIE REVIEW
False Positive (2021)
“False Positive” is not body horror in the conventional sense, as the terrors visited on our protagonist, Lucy (Ilana Glazer), are from clinical procedures performed by fertility specialist Dr. Hindle (Pierce Brosnan) with a hospital gown obscuring her view. Much like “Here Before,” “False Positive” casts its protagonist as an unreliable narrator suffering mental breakdown, only to reveal its own plot twist as she’s gaslit the whole time.
Continue reading “Giving Pregnant Pause” »
Alejandro Lopez Pineda/Sony Pictures Classics
MOVIE REVIEW
I Carry You With Me (Te Llevo Conmigo) (2021)
Though based on a true story, the synopsis of “I Carry You With Me” nevertheless reads like a liberal guilt bingo card: It’s the story of gay undocumented immigrants from Mexico. To escape poverty, lack of opportunity and a straight family, aspiring chef Iván (Armando Espitia) illegally crosses the border. His well-to-do lover, Gerardo (Christian Vázquez), fails to obtain a visa and forfeits his university teaching job and generational wealth in order to join Iván in New York. Even as they work their way up, the lack of a path to citizenship necessarily means that they will never again visit their loved ones back home.
Continue reading “Over the Borderline” »
China Lion Film
MOVIE REVIEW
Never Stop (2021)
China’s box office champion over the dragon boat festival long weekend, “Never Stop” seems to be emblematic of that nation’s contemporary cinema. Its plot revolves around two track stars, both with corny, clichéd names. Hao Chaoyue (Ryan Zheng), which means “surpass” in English, is a washed-up medalist who finds himself in financial ruins for peddling counterfeit sneakers. Wu Tianyi (Li Yunrui), which literally translates to “adding wings,” is a current titleholder and qualifying for the Olympics. In a desperate bid to salvage his business, Chaoyue reaches out to Tianyi, his former underling, in hopes of securing an endorsement deal. Meanwhile, Tianyi’s A.D.H.D. symptoms spiral into a full-fledged mental breakdown.
Continue reading “Running Into the Ground” »
Ray Bengston/Gravitas Ventures
MOVIE REVIEW
Queen Bees (2021)
The “Queen Bees” trailer pitches the film as “Mean Girls” for the geriatric set, but in actuality it’s a feature-length infomercial singing the virtues of the nursing home and brought to you by the AARP (which, incidentally, was the actual sponsor of the virtual preview this critic attended).
Continue reading “Golden Mean Girls” »
David Appleby/Lionsgate
MOVIE REVIEW
The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard (2021)
“The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard” finds Ryan Reynolds reprising the role of dimwitted Michael Bryce, who suffers an identity crisis due to his professional license being revoked and goes on a sabbatical in Italy per the suggestion of his therapist (Rebecca Front). However, the serenity is short lived as Sonia Kincaid (Salma Hayek) from the 2017 original rudely disrupts to summon his help rescuing his former client and her husband, Darius Kincaid (Samuel L. Jackson).
Continue reading “Unlicensed to Kill” »