Buzz Blog

All We Imagine As Light ***1/2
There’s a satisfying inversion at the core of Payal Kapadia’s character study, one that challenges the idea of how much more liberating it must inevitably be to live in a big, metropolitan area than out in the boonies. The narrative primarily follows two roommates-of-convenience who are also nurses working at the same hospital in Mumbai: Prabha (Kani Kusruti), long-separated from her husband who went to work at a factory in Germany; and Anu (Divya Prabha), who is carrying on a secretive romance with a Muslim man (Hridhu Haroon). Kapadia clearly wants to focus on the status of women in Indian society—through the practice of arranged marriages, as well as through the lack of legal rights for Prabha and Anu’s widowed friend Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam)—and occasionally gets a bit didactic, while leaning into cutaways to the Mumbai cityscape and voiceovers from people who have relocated to Mumbai from rural areas to emphasize urban isolation. Yet there are also wonderful observational moments, like Prabha embracing a gift from her absent husband as though it were a stand-in for him, or Anu ironically needing to wear a burqa in order to have the freedom to meet up with her boyfriend. Things get most interesting when the setting shifts to Parvaty’s coastal home village, and all three women start considering a different sense for what is possible. It’s a gentle, quiet way of examining a society in transition, and how to find elusive happiness. Available Jan. 24 at Broadway Centre Cinemas. (NR)

Brave the Dark **
It wouldn’t be accurate to describe this fact-based drama as an “inspirational teacher” movie, since it really doesn’t traffic in the most familiar tropes of that specific genre. Yet it still feels like something that’s going through the motions of inspiration rather than aiming for real emotional impact. It opens in 1986 Pennsylvania, where 17-year-old Nate Williams (Nicholas Hamilton) is living out of his car and facing jail time for burglary. To the rescue comes high-school drama teacher Stan Deen (Jared Harris), who becomes determined to give Nate a home and hope after a lifetime of tragedy. That tragedy gets trickled out until the very end of the movie, including an unnecessary double-dip of showing us the crucial traumatizing event and then having Nate describe it, apparently so Hamilton can get a showy monologue. Director Damian Harris (Jared’s big brother) does allow the relationship between Nate and Stan to emerge naturally, with both central performances providing a solid anchor, and an interesting character study of Stan simply as the kind of generous soul who connects with everyone. It’s just too bad that it often feels like a feel-good machine delivering a lesson about no one ever being a lost cause—a perfectly wonderful idea in principle, but one that’s about good intentions more than it is about good filmmaking. Available Jan. 24 in theaters. (PG-13)

The Colors Within ***
One of the fascinating things about anime features is discovering how many different kinds of stories can be told through the medium of animation, ones that American filmmakers almost never bother to try. This coming-of-age tale from director Naoko Yamada and writer Reiko Yoshida follows Totsuko (Sayu Suzukawa/Libby Rue in the English dub), a student at a Catholic boarding school with a unique ability to see what amounts to the “color” of someone’s soul. That vaguely supernatural component plays only a tiny part in what follows, however, as Totsuko comes to form a band with Kimi (Akari Takaishi/Kylie McNeill), a former classmate who has dropped out, and Rui (Taisei Kido/Eddy Lee), a boy living on a nearby island. Yamada and the animation team craft delicately beautiful images, ranging from the almost watercolor perspective of how Totsuko sees the world, to reflections in a Newton’s cradle Kimi uses as a metronome. Most significantly, this isn’t some rollicking fantasy adventure, but simply a narrative about young people wrestling with what it feels like when the person you want to be might disappoint those closest to you—and that’s even if you don’t happen to agree that Totsuko’s fascination with Kimi is gay-coded. The result is slow, patient storytelling—perhaps occasionally to a fault—about fundamental life journeys, where the characters are beautifully drawn in both senses of the word. Available Jan. 24 in theaters. (NR)

Presence **1/2
Director Steven Soderbergh and screenwriter David Koepp concoct a pretty solid gimmick for their supernatural thriller—a ghost story designed entirely from the POV of the ghost—but at a certain point the “story” has to be as important as the “ghost,” and that story is … just not very good. It opens with a suburban couple (Lucy Liu and Chris Sullivan) moving with their teenagers Chloe (Callina Liang) and Ty (Eddy Maday) into a new house, with only Chloe initially seeming to sense that it may already have an unseen occupant. Soderbergh makes great use of his prowling camera movements, using every trick in his book to convey when the silent, observing entity feels curiosity, anxiety or anger while rarely feeling obliged to indulge the audience with jump-scares. That places a burden on the narrative—which hints from the outset at a tragedy Chloe has experienced that might maker her more receptive to the presence—to provide some actual stakes, and it becomes a pretty clunky journey. Vague references to some criminal activity Liu’s character might have engaged in alternate with the introduction of Ty’s new friend (West Mulholland) without ever providing enough substance for the family’s growing tension and dysfunction to matter as anything but distractions on the way to whatever payoff is down the road. The result is a pretty solid exercise in style where the substance is as ephemeral and unknowable as the character through whose eyes we’ve been watching. Available Jan. 24 in theaters. (R)

Star Trek: Section 31 **
I will confess to not being particularly up-to-date with the many Star Trek-adjacent series that emerged in the 21st century, but if this feature is any evidence, I have to wonder: What is it that defines something as “Star Trek” anymore? Spinning off the character of alternate-universe emperor Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh) from the Star Trek: Discovery series, it teams the exiled despot with a team of off-the-books operatives—Starfleet liaison Lt. Rachel Garrett (Kacey Rohl), shape-shifter Quasi (Sam Richardson), microscopic symbiotic being Fuzz (Sven Ruygrok) and more—on a mission to prevent an apocalyptic bioweapon from getting into the wrong hands. Georgiou’s own dark history plays a role, and Yeoh does her best at wrangling drama from the tale. But it’s a frustrating one, both from a visual standpoint as director Olatunde Osunsanmi keeps playing with zoom tricks, and narratively as the bickering character dynamics never succeed at making any of those characters interesting. Most frustratingly, it feels incredibly generic, and out of synch with Star Trek’s essential optimism about the potential for an intergalactic peace-keeping entity to do good. If this franchise is going to suggest that what’s really needed to deal with a threat is the Starfleet equivalent of the C.I.A., it feels like it’s exhausted its usefulness. Available Jan. 24 via Paramount+. (NR)