Faraz Fesharaki/DFFB
MOVIE REVIEW
What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (2021)
“What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?” is a modern fable set in the nation of Georgia. There’s allegedly magic in the air per the voiceover narrator, though it’s his narration that does the heavy lifting. We don’t get to witness much of the miraculous the way we do, say, in a Jacques Tati film.
Eigakobo Harugumi
MOVIE REVIEW
A Balance (2021)
“A Balance” centers on Yuko Kinoshita (Kumi Takiuchi), a sensationalist TV journalist investigating the deaths of teacher Mr. Yano and his 16-year-old student Hiromi. The two allegedly engaged in lascivious behavior on school grounds, which apparently led to their dismissals and suicides. Meanwhile, at the cram school operated by Yuko’s father, Masashi (Ken Mitsuishi), she catches a pupil named Mei (Yuumi Kawai) cheating.
Burn the Film
MOVIE REVIEW
A River Runs, Turns, Erases, Replaces (2021)
There have been film festivals and reviewers characterizing “A River Runs, Turns, Erases, Replaces” as a documentary. We are not going to do that, as such would be factually inaccurate. The film was shown in the Forum section of Berlinale, which “focuses on contemporary international cinema productions and eschews conventional distinctions, such as that between fiction film and documentary” – a category truly befitting it.
Courtesy photo
MOVIE REVIEW
Tunka Tunka (2021)
The inspirational sports movie “Tunka Tunka” revolves around the wholly fictional competitive cyclist Fateh Singh Sidhu, as an adult played by the singer Hardeep Grewal in his big-screen debut – who also serves as the screenwriter. Despite the dearth of song and dance numbers, the film is not entirely devoid of conventions and clichés. Nevertheless, Mr. Grewal leaves no doubt that he understands the assignment and has done his homework.
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MOVIE REVIEW
Chinese Doctors (2021)
From Andrew Lau, co-director and co-cinematographer of “Infernal Affairs,” “Chinese Doctors” is perhaps a prime example of a respected filmmaker directing with one hand tied behind his back.
The story opens on Dec. 30, 2019, with deadly cases of pneumonia reported around Wuhan, China. Right off the bat, Mr. Lau is employing rapid successions of film speed changes often seen in the introductory segments of reality TV shows. We’re quickly introduced to Director Zhang (Zhang Hanyu), head of a local hospital, as some of his staff quit en masse amid traffic closures and emptied store shelves. It’s the perfect overture for a “Contagion,” “Outbreak” or zombie movie, but that is not what follows.
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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.
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MOVIE REVIEW
Mad God (2021)
Humanity is moldy on the inside and ugly on the outside, which isn’t news to anyone. Phil Tippett’s “Mad God” has plenty of both mold and ugliness, plus blood and viscera and the contents of the digestive tract, lovingly rendered through the full resources of the animator’s craft. Mr. Tippett’s Stygian odyssey, a film that has been in the works for decades, employs models and some C.G.I. and a smattering of live action; but mainly tells its story through stop-motion animation, the venerable field in which Mr. Tippett’s skills are nonpareil in Hollywood. Propelled by unseen hands, a cast of critters long of fang and foul of breath prowl the circles of “Mad God’s” post-human hell in that slightly jerky over-cranked gait that always conveys the infinite patience of the animator and the fragile mortality of the puppet character, stop-motion’s mix of divinity and disgust. And drollery, since the heavyweight visuals and colossal suffering don’t stop the film cracking a few sprightly jokes from the pit, a distinctly American rather than European damnation.
Magnet Releasing
MOVIE REVIEW
Mandibles (2021)
When Quentin Dupieux pitches a film, the producers get what they were promised. “Mandibles,” as the people who paid for it were no doubt happy to find, really is about two amiable French layabouts who discover a genuine giant red-eyed fly the size of a 10-year-old child in the trunk of a stolen car and who immediately consider training it to go and fetch things from the shops, rather than asking why the fabric of reality has sustained major damage. But reality is always a bit threadbare in Mr. Dupieux's tales, with their bleached daylight and vivid nonsense. His last film, “Deerskin,” steered the director's absurdist style into a darker lane, as a psychotic Jean Dujardin discovered his life's purpose in basic narcissism. The two guileless goons in “Mandibles” don't have a narcissistic thought in their heads, or indeed much else. They’re a blithe underclass, abandoned by the materialist world before and after something amazing happens. They're dumb and dumbeur.
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MOVIE REVIEW
Bellbottom (2021)
Is there anything Akshay Kumar can’t do? Over the course of “Bellbottom” he does a lot of manful striding, filmed from a low angle, so we can best appreciate his magnificence. He rides a motorbike with sunglasses but without a helmet. He has a training montage in the woods involving a lot of chin-ups and exercises with tires. He is invited to sing at a wedding reception, which then involves a montage of him and Vaani Kapoor (badly underused as his clever and perky wife Radhika) having a much better time on a train in Scotland than usual. And as a spy/analyst specializing in airplane hijacks – which were an unfortunately regular occurrence in India in the mid-’80s – he is able to boss around senior politicians of several different countries, up to and including Indira Gandhi (Lara Dutta) herself. And while this adoration is a little silly, it’s not remotely ridiculous. Somehow in the context of the plot, Mr. Kumar's star wattage is justified.
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.