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      ‘While We Watched’ Review: India on the Brink

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      This documentary about the veteran broadcast journalist Ravish Kumar is less an inspiring tale than a wake-up call for India.In the opening moments of Vinay Shukla’s documentary “While We Watched,” its subject, the veteran Indian news anchor Ravish Kumar, stands in a partly demolished building and wonders, “When you find yourself all alone, whom do you listen to?”For one of the few high-profile journalists in India who has dared to speak truth to power — undeterred by falling ratings, death threats and a government increasingly hostile to a free press — this is nothing less than an existential crisis. What, indeed, does a journalist committed to being the voice of the people do when it seems he might be talking just to himself?“While We Watched” follows Kumar at his job at NDTV, an influential cable TV station, from 2018 to 2021 (a year before it was acquired in a hostile takeover by a billionaire). The documentary is less an inspiring tale than a sobering wake-up call. The camera stays close to Kumar’s face, which wears a crumpled look of resignation as he and his underfunded team strive to reaffirm democratic ideals amid a storm of rabble-rousing rhetoric from competing media outlets that demonize dissent and stoke Islamophobia. The movie unfolds like an episode of Aaron Sorkin’s “The Newsroom,” with brisk edits immersing us in the high-stakes, fast-paced and low-reward realm of independent news.Kumar is the voice of reason to many Indians; to see him so vulnerable is unsettling, though it makes his persistence all the more impressive. Shukla is a little too enamored of his subject, so that political and bureaucratic details fade into a somewhat monotonous, stylized tale of man against world. Yet Kumar’s humility and eloquence ensure that the film never slips into hagiography — instead, it lingers as a lament and a battle cry.While We WatchedNot rated. In English and Hindi, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Venture Bros.: Radiant Is the Blood of the Baboon Heart’ Review: Return of the Glorious Weirdos

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      A beloved Adult Swim cartoon comes back to tie up some loose ends.Over seven seasons on Adult Swim, the Cartoon Network’s nighttime programming block, “The Venture Bros.” brought to the small screen a fantastical world steeped in absurdist humor, rooted in pop culture and presented in the style of old-time cartoon adventures. Within this exemplar of animated brain candy dwelled a host of glorious weirdos: chief among them, Dr. Thaddeus Venture (voiced by James Urbaniak), a man-child flailing in his superscientist father’s shadow; his goofy, fatality-prone sons, Hank (Chris McCulloch, a.k.a. Jackson Publick) and Dean (Michael Sinterniklaas), whose demises were easily remedied by a basement full of clones; their sex-and-death-machine bodyguard, Brock Samson (Patrick Warburton); and Dr. Venture’s equally petulant frenemesis, the Monarch (Publick), and his gravelly-voiced bombshell wife, Dr. Mrs. the Monarch (Doc Hammer).When the series was unexpectedly canceled in 2020, its creators, Hammer and Publick, told NPR they hoped to bring the gang back to the screen at least one more time, a wish fulfilled by “Radiant Is the Blood of the Baboon Heart.” The film, directed by Publick, picks up where the show left off: with Hank embarking on a dissociative cross-country trip in search of himself and his mother; the Monarch chafing at the Guild of Calamitous Intent’s continual constraints on his mischief; Dr. Venture facing financial catastrophe yet again; and a new villain, Mantilla (Nina Arianda), making her presence known.Hammer and Publick give fans countless Easter eggs to feast on (though the uninitiated and less-avid admirers might benefit from a recap before viewing). More important, the film sticks the landing metaphorically and literally: Toward the conclusion, the Ventures’ skyscraper is brought back to Earth after being sent moonward — a bit of madcap hilarity nicely scored by the composer JG Thirlwell. If we were never to see the Ventures again, “Radiant” lets us part with them on a high note, but hopefully this end is just the beginning.The Venture Bros.: Radiant Is the Blood of the Baboon HeartRated R for potty-mouthed heroes and villains, full-frontal pantsing and threatened kicks to the throat meat. Running time: 1 hour 23 minutes. Buy on most major platforms. More

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      ‘Glitch: The Rise & Fall of HQ Trivia’ Review

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      The fraught behind-the-scenes drama of the short-lived quiz game app is chronicled in this smart, briskly funny documentary.“Glitch: The Rise & Fall of HQ Trivia,” by the director Salima Koroma, seems at first glance like many other recent rise-and-fall narratives, which usually describe, in sensational terms, the hubristic ascent and Icarian plunge of Silicon Valley start-ups, social media platforms, cellphone manufacturers and even video game developers.The story of HQ Trivia, the short-lived smartphone quiz game that captured the popular imagination for about six months starting in the winter of 2017, does share a few superficial similarities with “The Social Network” and this year’s superb “Blackberry,” namely the interpersonal friction that arose between HQ’s co-founders — Rus Yusupov and Colin Kroll, who died of a drug overdose in December 2018 — along with the usual corporate infighting, financial drama and callow jockeying for power that have become hallmarks of the genre. Big egos clashed; fortunes swelled and vanished. And all of it, to an outside observer, has the lurid thrill of a real-life “Game of Thrones.”But the documentary “Glitch” is slyer and smarter than some of its paint-by-numbers dramatized contemporaries, and the story it prefers to tell is more interesting and complex than the battle of two domineering egoists who came up with a novelty app. Koroma shrewdly situates HQ in several interlocking contexts, from the history of the television game show to the long-evolving landscape of social media and mobile video streaming. She understands that this live trivia app aspired to nothing less than a revolution in broadcasting, and she makes a compelling case for seeing its achievements (and its potential) in that light.She also gets a lot of intellectual mileage out of a bevy of insightful and entertaining talking heads, particularly the journalist Taylor Lorenz, a former New York Times reporter who relates the bizarre controversy surrounding the publication of an HQ-related puff piece with mordant glee, and the former HQ host Scott Rogowsky, whose off-kilter charisma and almost old-fashioned showman’s patter are as enjoyable here as they were when he was the app’s beloved star. In the end, the documentary strikes a bemused tone that fits its strange and oddly delightful subject, perfectly encapsulated by Rogowsky’s cutting last remarks: “Oh — that all actually happened.”Glitch: The Rise & Fall of HQ TriviaNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 29 minutes. Watch on Max. More

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      ‘They Cloned Tyrone’ Review: There’s Only One John Boyega

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      In Juel Taylor’s imaginative sci-fi movie, Boyega teams up with Jamie Foxx and Teyonah Parris to find the forces undermining their community.“They Cloned Tyrone,” an ambitious, nightmarish tale about unsettled identity, opens with an image of two blue eyes, strained at the corners. The camera pulls back, revealing the owner of those peepers to be a grinning white man on a billboard with the tagline “Keep em’ smiling.” In front of the advertisement, Black people debate possible sightings of Tupac Shakur and Michael Jackson, now allegedly disguising himself with new Black skin. The food mart, with the billboard prominently displayed by its door, is where these gossiping Black folk hold court, and is one of the many institutions that dot the neglected, fictional urban landscape its residents refer to as the Glen.The director, Juel Taylor, sees the Glen as a self-contained world where conspiracy theories are the news section and the neighborhood drunk (Leon Lamar) is a prophet. At the center of it is Fontaine (John Boyega), a multifaceted drug dealer. Whenever he buys a 40-ounce bottle of malt liquor from the food mart, he never hesitates to pour a cup for Lamar. He’ll also mercilessly ram an unsuspecting rival dealer with his car, and then later care for that enemy’s invalid mother.Fontaine’s moral compass is survival. The same can be said of the shifty pimp, Slick Charles (Jamie Foxx), who dispenses women like Yo-Yo (Teyonah Parris) with the assurance they’ll always come back. While collecting a debt from Slick Charles, Fontaine is savagely gunned down by the dealer he hit earlier. Despite the shooting, Fontaine awakes the next morning unscathed. Was it a dream or something more nefarious?The first hour of “They Cloned Tyrone” is surprisingly talkative. Fontaine, Slick Charles, and Yo-Yo — shady neighborhood acquaintances — team up to investigate Fontaine’s brush with death, sharing extraneous banter that often crowds the narrative and slows the reveal. The three eventually discover a series of elevators in familiar haunts that lead to a subterranean laboratory. Taylor positions these sites as places where an outside force can easily undermine the Black community, rendering it pliant through food, religion and beauty products. You wonder, however, whether the film is portraying these spaces as necessary sites for escapist joy or scrutinizing them as crutches.Another fascinating proposition arises when a Black character utters the phrase “assimilation is better than annihilation.” The film covers issues of upward mobility, respectability politics, racial passing, and the distrust some African Americans have of institutional professionals such as the police, doctors and scientists. Taylor portrays Black self-hatred as a danger equal to these extensions of white contempt.A play on “The Truman Show” by way of “Undercover Brother,” “They Cloned Tyrone” also stands firmly on its glossy style — the evocatively smoky John Carpenter-esque cinematography and the Blaxploitation-inspired costumes — and its spirited performances. Even when the dialogue runs long and the film’s frights offer less terror than you’d want in a sci-fi-mystery flick, an inspired Foxx, a subversive Parris, and a ruthless yet melancholic Boyega, who shoulders the bulk of the dramatic weight, retrofit common stereotypes of urban Black life into the rich, dynamic humanism of its reality.They Cloned TyroneRated R for profanity and nude body doubles. Running time: 2 hours, 2 minutes. Watch on Netflix or in theaters. More

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      ‘Streetwise’ Review: A Bleak Upbringing in a Brutal Town

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      In Na Jiazuo’s striking directorial debut, young people inhabit a place seemingly made up of those who owe money and the thugs who try to beat it out of them.This consistently striking and deeply sad picture is the directorial feature debut of Na Jiazuo, who executes it with an assurance that makes him more than merely promising. The story is set in 2004, in a town within China’s Sichuan Province where not much is going on, it seems, besides criminality and tattooing. Oh, yes, the local hospital is pretty busy, too.Li Jiuxiao plays Dongzi, a fresh-faced young man who’s busting his hump trying to pay off his ailing father’s medical bills — that is, engaging in illegal debt collection for a local boss. His buddy Jiu (Yu Ailei), who limps around with a wannabe movie star swagger, instructs Dongzi on how to slap around those who won’t cough up money: Don’t hit them in the face; strike in a way that won’t let them strike back, like on the knee. When Dongzi gets a bloody nose in a dust-up, Jiu plugs up his pal’s nostril with a cigarette butt.The tough but tender tattoo-shop manager Jiu’er (Huang Miyi) is a source of solace for Dongzi, but strictly platonic — she’s the boss’s ex, for one thing. Dongzi’s father is a piece of work who storms into gambling dens while he’s still in hospital pajamas. After knocking his son down, he’ll kick him for good measure.It’s a bleak life. Jiazuo depicts it with a steady camera that sometimes breaks from the action to show quietly startling sights: a close-up of a pale snail crawling on a greenish-blue railing of high-rise balcony; a palm plant swaying in the orange evening light, then looking ready to wilt in the gray morning; Jiu’er as seen in Dongzi’s mind’s eye (we presume), placid and beautiful. The perspectives here put this picture in a different dimension from the average coming-of-age-in-crime movie.StreetwiseNot rated. In Mandarin, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Stephen Curry: Underrated’ Review: Court Transcript

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      Initially considered too short and too scrawny, Curry went on to be an N.B.A. superstar. But there’s little that feels fresh or spontaneous in this earnest portrait.Toggling between time frames, the earnest documentary “Stephen Curry: Underrated” portrays Stephen Curry, the Golden State Warrior routinely described as the greatest shooter in the history of the N.B.A., as an underdog during at least two crucial points in his career.It tells the story of Curry the high school and college athlete who was, initially and repeatedly, seen as too short and too scrawny — but who went on to take Davidson College, a liberal arts school in North Carolina, to 25 consecutive wins in 2008. It also trails Curry at the start of this decade: The movie begins in December 2021, when Curry broke Ray Allen’s career record for 3-pointers, and then follows him through a period of relative doldrums when commentators are heard speculating about whether he’s still at the top of his game. (He went on to be named the 2022 N.B.A. finals M.V.P. after Golden State, the Bay Area’s team, won its fourth championship in eight years.)Off the court, Curry is shown raising a family and working to complete his unfinished degree at Davidson. His college career is recapped in detail, with his undergraduate years depicted as a string of second chances and triumphs through perseverance. One interviewee notes that when Curry began playing, Davidson games weren’t generally broadcast. Seeing these early highlights is part of the movie’s appeal.The director, Peter Nicks, previously specialized in fly-on-the-wall portraits of Bay Area institutions (the Oakland police documentary “The Force”). But there’s little in “Underrated” that comes across as spontaneous. That may be because Nicks didn’t discover much that feels fresh. Or it may be that the project, like Curry today, doesn’t have anything to prove.Stephen Curry: UnderratedRated PG-13 for language. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes. Watch on Apple TV+. More

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      ‘Return to Dust’ Review: Grit Against All Odds

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      Li Ruijun’s newest feature is a touching portrait of love and resiliency that doubles as a critique of China’s ruling class.According to reliable news reports, the Chinese government never confirmed having banned Li Ruijun’s quietly heartbreaking feature “Return to Dust,” a touching portrait of love and resiliency in a collapsing rural community of Gansu Province.Still, the film was pulled last fall from all Chinese movie theaters and streaming services two weeks after a successful domestic debut. It isn’t hard to see why. China’s leadership has a history of suppressing art that spotlights the failings of its ruling class and ideology, which is exactly what Li’s film does, with a script that feels only occasionally overwritten. That he succeeds without making it feel like homework — which is to say beautifully, humanely — is presumably what made the film so threatening.With superb performances by Wu Renlin and Hai Qing, “Dust” tells the story of Youtie and Guiying, middle-aged strangers pushed into an arranged marriage by families looking mostly to offload them. Youtie is a dirt-poor farmer living in a crumbling mud-brick home on the cold, arid hem of the Gobi Desert, effectively indentured to his brother and a local merchant. Guiying has a chronic illness. Her hands tremble, and she can’t control her bladder; whether her problems or her family’s abuse came first is unclear.As their awkward union evolves into one of genuine trust and affection, their fortunes, if not their long-suffering donkey’s, improve. Their methods are backbreaking, ancient and dusty but also dignified — rendered with golden, poetic sensitivity by the cinematographer Wang Weihua.Unfortunately, we’ve seen enough movies to know what that worsening tremble bodes and what kind of story that donkey is there to observe. Unless he’s friends with Shrek, it probably isn’t comedy.Return to DustNot rated. In Mandarin, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 11 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Steve Pieters, Pastor Who Spoke of AIDS in Famed Interview, Dies at 70

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      He had the disease and was interviewed on the PTL network in 1985 by Tammy Faye Bakker, a broadcast that was said to have changed minds and hearts.In 1985, when fear and homophobia were still driving much of the conversation surrounding AIDS, the Rev. A. Stephen Pieters, a gay pastor who had the disease, was a decidedly different voice.That May, at the St. Augustine by-the-Sea Episcopal Church in Santa Monica, Calif., presiding at a mass for people with AIDS attended by hundreds, he declared: “Rather than feel deserted by God, I have never been more sure of God’s love for me. God did not give me this disease. God is with me in this disease.”That September, he spoke to The Los Angeles Times about the ostracism people with AIDS were encountering.“Some people ask, ‘How is it different from cancer?’” he said. “Well, most people with cancer aren’t asked not to use the bathroom in a friend’s house or served dinner on paper plates. I’ve had more meals on paper plates in the last year than I’ve had in my whole life.”One appearance he made that year had a particularly profound impact: In November 1985 he was interviewed by Tammy Faye Bakker on the PTL (Praise the Lord) television network, which reached millions of Christian viewers, most of them conservative.It was a sympathetic interview in which Mr. Pieters spoke forthrightly about being gay and about his illness, and Ms. Bakker (who was then married to the televangelist Jim Bakker) urged her audience to be governed by compassion rather than intolerance and fear.“How sad,” she said, “that we as Christians, who are to be the salt of the earth, and we who are supposed to be able to love everyone, are afraid so badly of an AIDS patient that we will not go up and put our arm around them and tell them that we care.”The PTL network had an audience of millions, and in the years since, that interview has been credited with helping to change at least some viewers’ perceptions of gay people, AIDS and faith. Some televangelists had been implying or stating outright that AIDS was divine retribution for homosexuality. Ms. Bakker (who after a divorce and remarriage was later known as Tammy Faye Messner) called on Christians to instead show empathy.Among those impressed with her stand, many years later, was the actress Jessica Chastain, who won an Oscar last year for her role as Ms. Bakker in “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” in which the interview with Mr. Pieters, portrayed by Randy Havens, was a pivotal scene. (A stage musical, “Tammy Faye,” which opened last year in London, also incorporated the 1985 interview.)“That interview was why I needed to make the movie,” Ms. Chastain told Variety at the movie’s New York premiere in 2021. “It was rebellious and brave and courageous and badass. I’m 100 percent convinced that there were people — conservative Christians watching at home — who realized that they had judged their family members unlovingly. I’m convinced that that interview saved families and saved lives.”If Ms. Bakker defied expectations with that interview, Mr. Pieters long defied AIDS, surviving for decades despite repeated health struggles. He died on July 8 at a hospital in Glendale, Calif., near Los Angeles. He was 70.His spokesman, Harlan Boll, said the cause was a sepsis infection.Mr. Pieters, who had continued his ministry and since 1994 had performed with the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles, was looking forward to the publication next year of his book, “Love Is Greater Than AIDS: A Memoir of Survival, Healing, and Hope.” In it, he said he was often asked why he thought he survived AIDS when so many others didn’t.“Whatever the reason,” he wrote, “I feel deeply grateful to be alive. So many gay men of my generation did not get to grow old. What a privilege to have reached the age of 70, still dancing with joy.”Albert Stephen Pieters was born on Aug. 2, 1952, in Lawrence, Mass. His father, Richard, was a mathematics teacher and wrestling coach at Phillips Academy, and his mother, Norma (Kenfield) Pieters, was a tax accountant and homemaker.“I knew that I was different from the time that I was about 3,” Mr. Pieters told Ms. Bakker in the 1985 interview, “and I grew up feeling like I didn’t quite fit in.”When he was a teenager, he said, he recognized that he was gay and talked to his pastor at a Congregational church about it.“He was freaked out,” he said. “He told me, ‘Don’t tell anybody; never say anything to anybody about it.’”He said that after graduating from Northwestern University in 1974 with a bachelor’s degree in speech, he joined the Metropolitan Community Church in Chicago and felt called to a ministry focused on gay people, that church’s main audience. He earned a master of divinity degree at McCormick Theological Seminary in 1979, then became pastor of the Metropolitan Community Church of Hartford, Conn., before moving to Los Angeles in the early 1980s. There he took a post at the Metropolitan Community Church of North Hollywood and, in 1984, received a diagnosis of AIDS, although he had been showing symptoms as early as 1982.He faced numerous health problems over the years, but just being around to face them was something of a victory: He said he’d been told in 1984 that he wouldn’t live out that year. The next year he spoke before a task force on AIDS in Los Angeles convened by Mayor Tom Bradley and Ed Edelman, a county supervisor, urging officials not to write off those who had already been diagnosed.“If I had succumbed to the hopelessness I constantly hear about AIDS,” he said, “I might have given up and not lived to see 1985.”Mr. Pieters is survived by a brother.At the 2021 opening of “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” Mr. Pieters commented on the impact of his 1985 interview.“I’ve had so many people over the years come up to me and say, ‘I saw your interview live, because my mother always had PTL on, and it changed my life because I realized I could be gay and Christian at the same time,’” he said. “Or, ‘It changed my life because I realized that AIDS was a reality, and I had to start taking care of myself.’”Kirsten Noyes contributed research. More