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      ‘Bawaal’ Review: Getting Some Perspective

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      In this Bollywood production, a narcissistic history teacher reconnects with his wife on a trip through Europe.“Bawaal” is a sensationally absurd Bollywood production that tells a simple moral story about what it means to be a Real Man. Directed by Nitesh Tiwari (“Dangal”), this globe-trotting romance is, like many Bollywood movies, willfully over the top. But this one’s not very fun.Ajay (Varun Dhawan), a grade-school history teacher, is only interested in one thing: looking good. Impeccably groomed and chiseled, he doesn’t seem to care that his students aren’t learning, nor that his wife, Nisha (Janhvi Kapoor), is desperately unhappy.Ajay keeps Nisha out of sight and at home with his parents — she has epilepsy, and he fears tarnishing his image should she have a seizure in public. When Ajay is suspended from work for slapping a student, he cooks up a scheme to prove his pedagogical worth. He heads to Europe, where he delivers video lectures from various historical sites to his students back home in small-town India.Nisha tags along, despite Ajay’s protests, and proves herself, too. In Europe, she’s much more capable — and, of course, more beautiful — than Ajay had cared to realize, while he, in sleepy comic-relief segments, suffers through travel’s minor hardships: lost luggage, pickpockets and a dastardly exchange rate.Ajay becomes more compassionate with each leg of the trip. Monochrome fantasy sequences plunge him and Nisha into battle on the shores of Normandy; in another, they’re victims inside an Auschwitz gas chamber. It’s an egregious metaphor for the dire state of their relationship, and one of the film’s many unearned pivots to high drama.Dhawan (too convincing a narcissist to pull off a change of heart) and Kapoor (devoid of charisma) don’t have chemistry, and you’re never truly rooting for Ajay so much as you’re hoping Nisha makes a run for it. The film’s macho, save-the-marriage traditionalism will seem icky to some viewers — especially because, absent genuine laughs or stakes, there’s little else to take in.BawaalNot rated. Running time: 2 hours 17 minutes. Watch on Prime Video. More

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      ‘Fear the Night’ Review: Party Raid

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      Neil LaBute’s new thriller, starring Maggie Q, feels stapled together from a pile of threadbare tropes.One rarely roots for the bad guys in a home-invasion shocker, but, as the majority of the victims in Neil LaBute’s “Fear the Night” are either insufferably stupid or gratingly snippy, their survival is perhaps not the priority it ought to be.In any event, most of them will be slaughtered before we can tell them apart in a movie that appears not so much written by LaBute as stapled together from a pile of threadbare thriller tropes. The plot could fit on a pistol barrel (or, in this case, an arrowhead): Eight women descend on a remote farmhouse for a bachelorette party, only to find their stripper-and-sex-toy revelries interrupted by leering louts who favor artisanal over mechanical weaponry. Bloody chaos ensues as the ladies bemoan their inability to sprint in high heels and struggle to memorize a three-count knock signal that differentiates friend from foe.“What is happening to us?” one distraught partygoer inquires, echoing my bewilderment. Like her cohort, she will turn hopefully — and, in the case of Mia (Gia Crovatin), longingly — to the one guest that no one else seems to like: Tess (a valiant Maggie Q), a super-serious military veteran and recovering addict. Tess has suffered. Tess has seen things. Tess will use her very particular skills to rally these nitwits or die trying.Pausing mid-murders to allow for a touching reconciliation and a romantic confession (not the time, Mia!), the back-of-napkin script stumbles forward. As for LaBute, a once incisive chronicler of male cruelty and ineptitude, his continued dabblings in genre are lamentable. Perhaps the kindest thing to do is pretend this dud never happened; it certainly worked for the Farrelly brothers’ “Dumb and Dumber To.”Fear the NightNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on most major platforms. More

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      ‘The Deepest Breath’ Review: A Perilous Drop Into the Ocean

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      Astonishing underwater footage elevates this documentary about two people drawn to the extreme sport of free diving.While watching “The Deepest Breath,” a documentary that palpably conjures the mystery and menace of the deep sea, I found it difficult not to think of the Titan submersible disaster last month. But this film, on Netflix, invites viewers to submerge alongside thrill-seekers unconfined by a vessel: Its subject is the extreme sport of free diving, in which competitors plunge into the depths for minutes at a time without scuba gear.The story centers on the Italian champion Alessia Zecchini and the Irish diver Stephen Keenan, who met at a 2017 competition in the Bahamas, began training together and engaged in a brief romance. Using astonishing underwater footage and videos from their travels, the film profiles the two adventurers before looking at a cataclysmic tragedy that rocked the free diving community.As the film’s director, Laura McGann, relays these stories, she deliberately withholds certain material to keep audiences in suspense about whether a death occurred. Extreme risks attend free diving; during their training, Zecchini and Keenan grew accustomed to experiencing blackouts. The film opens with alarming footage of one such incident, using the life-threatening scenario for narrative tension.This approach might have passed muster had the film matched its apprehensive mood with an equally compelling, clearer window into Zecchini and Keenan’s psychology. But despite hearing from their fathers and friends, we learn precious little about the personal lives of these impressive individuals. When it comes to what drove them, how they associated with others or how they dealt with danger, “The Deepest Breath” offers only surface-level observations.The Deepest BreathRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 48 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘How to Dance in Ohio,’ a Musical, Plans a Fall Broadway Opening

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      A teenage ritual takes on deeper significance as a setting where autistic young people can blossom — and exercise their social skills along the way.“How to Dance in Ohio,” a poignant new musical about a group of young autistic adults gearing up for a spring dance, will open on Broadway late this year, with a cast of seven autistic performers playing the central roles.The musical is based on a 2015 documentary from the filmmaker Alexandra Shiva that followed participants in a social skills therapy program for people on the autism spectrum; the musical is also set at a therapy program, and it tells the story of young adults preparing for a dance that they hope could help them confront some of the challenges they face in navigating social interactions.The musical had a previous run last year at Syracuse Stage in central New York; the production schedule was cut short when Covid cases arose among the cast and crew. The review of the show in The Post-Standard, a Syracuse newspaper, was headlined “The musical you’ll talk about for the rest of your life” and called it “exhilarating, groundbreaking, celebratory.”Casting is not yet complete, but will include several actors making their Broadway debuts: Desmond Edwards, Amelia Fei, Madison Kopec, Liam Pearce, Imani Russell, Conor Tague and Ashley Wool. Among the others on the bill so far are Haven Burton and Darlesia Cearcy.“How to Dance in Ohio” features a book and lyrics by Rebekah Greer Melocik and music by Jacob Yandura; it is directed by Sammi Cannold and choreographed by Mayte Natalio. The famed director and producer Hal Prince was initially attached to the project; he died in 2019.The musical is being produced by a company called P3 Productions, which is led by Ben Holtzman, Sammy Lopez and Fiona Howe Rudin, along with Level Forward, the production company co-founded by Abigail Disney. It is being capitalized for up to $15.5 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.The show is to begin previews Nov. 15 and to open Dec. 10 at the Belasco Theater. More

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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