Commentary Track

by MIKE MACCOLLUM

And a few more films that opened around the country over the last couple of weeks…

Amaravathi – This Indian film is a Telugu-language thriller; it started last week at several theaters in the Phoenix Adlabs chain, and continues at two of those theaters this week.  The film begins in 1995, when the drunken father of a young girl, Ammu, seriously injures – and apparently kills – Ammu’s young male friend.  Years later, Ammu is married and pregnant – and the police suspect that her one-time friend is still alive, and on a killing spree.  This is yet another title for which I could not find an official site, but this trailer (without dialogue, so not subtitled – and with all of the text in English) is on youtube, and the film does have a wikipedia page.  (The latter has a fairly extensive plot summary, which looks like it might have a spoiler or two.)

Everything Strange and New – This award-winning drama is about a carpenter who faces mounting bills, marital woes, unruly kids – and a newly-divorced friend with problems of his own.  The man struggles to find a balance between home and his needy friend – and that only adds to his problems.  Everything Strange and New played last week at the Roxie Cinema in San Francisco.

45365 – Brothers Turner and Bill Ross co-directed this documentary about the inhabitants of – and daily life in – their home town of Sidney, OH (which has the zip code 45365).  45365 – which has won a number of prizes at film festivals – had two shows per day at the Salem Cinema near Boston on Wednesday and Thursday of last week; I didn’t find out about the movie until last Wednesday, but I am assuming that it had a full week’s run at the Salem last week (although there is no confirmation of this on the film’s official site, facebook page or myspace page, as far as I can tell).

No puedo vivir sin ti – With a title like this, you might expect a Spanish-language film – but this is actually Taiwan’s candidate for a 2010 Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award; it started last week at the Kahala 8 in Honolulu.  The film – which was inspired by a true story – is about an impoverished single father who doesn’t have a steady job, and lives in a fishing village with his young daughter.  When he attempts to enroll his daughter in school, several bureaucrats decide that his daughter would be better off elsewhere, and the father begins a quest to retain custody – a quest which may lead him to take desperate measures.  No puedo vivir sin ti won several prizes (best picture, best director, and best screenplay) at the 2009 Taiwanese equivalent of the Oscars.  (I couldn’t find a site for this film in English, by the way, but I did find this Chinese-language site for the film, and the English-language trailer is on youtube.)

Pravarakyudu – A Telugu-language film from India, Pravarakyudu is a romantic drama about a young couple, Sasi and Sailaja, who fall in love – and then have a bitter break-up – while both are college students.  Ten years later, both are still single and pursuing careers; he is a professor at Harvard, while she heads a college in India.  When Sasi visits India, he learns about Sailaja’s job, and decides to seek her out; will the two former lovers rekindle their romance, or continue with their separate lives?  Pravarakyudu – which started at several theaters in the Phoenix Adlabs chain last week, and continues in two of them this week – has a not-very-helpful page on its production company’s site.  That was the closest thing I could find to an official site for the film, but a music-video-like trailer is up on Youtube.

Robinhood – This modern-day Malayalam film from India is about a young man who robs ATMs from a bank with a number of branches in the Kochi region.  Two other men are appointed by the bank to look into the robberies; they unwittingly become friends with the robber while carrying on their investigation into both the crime and the motive behind it.  Robinhood apparently opened in the US back in October, but I managed to overlook it at the time; it is playing at the Phoenix Adlabs’ Big Cinema 8 in Norwalk, CA, this week.  If the film has an official site, I couldn’t find it – but its wikipedia page is here, and the trailer is here.

Secret – Taiwanese musician and actor Jay Chou (Curse of the Golden Flower; The Green Hornet) made his directorial debut with this 2007 romantic fantasy drama, which is playing this week at two theaters in Hawaii.  (I think it opened in Hawaii last Friday, but I haven’t found any confirmation of this.)  Chou plays Le, a new student at Tamkang Secondary School who gets involved in a love triangle with two women – one of them a mysterious young woman who turns out to have a very unusual secret.  I thought I found an official site for this one, but when I clicked on the link, all I got was what looked like one of those “404″ error messages with Chinese characters.  Youtube does have a fan-subtitled trailer, however, and the film’s Wikipedia page has images of two different posters, for all who are interested.