1 of 5 | Stephan James stars in “Ricky,” which premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Photo courtesy of Sundance Institute
PARK CITY, UTAH Jan. 26 (UPI) — Ricky, which screened at the Sundance Film Festival, is a moving drama about the difficulties for a parolee and his family. It is subtle about the characters’ circumstances and even subtler with its message.
Ricardo Smith (Stephan James) is on parole after serving 15 years for robbery and attempted murder, in prison since he was just 15. He’s a good barber but struggles to find clients or a regular job, and confronts others involved with his crime.
The film parses out information about what led to Ricky’s arrest. Characters reference past events vaguely because they are all familiar with it, as opposed to pointed exposition for the audience.
This not only keeps the audience curious to find out more about the Smith family, but makes the drama more natural. Scenes don’t feel constructed just for a movie.
For Ricky, the demands on parolees, though justified, are so high they create a precarious situation that could collapse at any time. He needs to keep appointments with his parole officer (Sheryl Lee Ralph), find a regular job, attend parolee support meetings, and avoid any felons or drugs, which present themselves around every corner.
Ricky can’t do this alone. He doesn’t have a driver’s license yet and relies on his brother, James (Maliq Johnson) for rides.
It only takes one time for his brother to forget, or love interest Cheryl (Andrene Ward-Hammond) to escalate into a volatile scenario, and Ricky has inadvertently violated his parole.
In many ways, Ricky is still emotionally 15. He’s trying to cope with having missed out on many formative socializing years.
He might take a joke from James personally. He might trigger Cheryl and provoke an even more volatile fight.
The film continues to share more about the Smith family, the neighborhood and even the parole officer late into the film. In the script co-written by director Rashad Frett and Lin Que Ayoung, these are characters with history that only becomes clear when relevant to the current situation.
Ricky’s progress may feel like he takes one step forward and two steps back. However, there is gradual headway.
It takes patience and compassion, powerful emotions with which any piece of art can deal. Ricky embodies that without shying away from the harsh realities of the situation.
Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.
Jodie Foster plays a self-assured psychoanalyst whose composure unravels after a patient unexpectedly dies in the genre-bending French film “A Private Life.”
Rebecca Zlotowski’s latest, in theaters Friday, is part noir, part comedy of remarriage, and part Freudian fever dream about past lives.
This is a film that does not abide by rules or play into any easy expectations about what it should be, resulting in big swings, tonal shifts and even a lurking Holocaust through-line. Also, oddly enough considering such grave themes and subjects, it’s all done with a relatively light touch set, in part, by the cheeky needle drop at its opening: the Talking Heads song “Psycho Killer.” Some parts work better than others, but you can’t help but admire the go-for-broke originality and unabashed femininity of it all. And anchoring it all is Foster, using the full force of her star power and impeccable French to make “A Private Life,” unwieldy and complex as it is, go down as easy as a glass of gamay.
Foster’s character, Dr. Lilian Steiner, is an American expat living and working in France. She’s an accomplished, sophisticated woman who believes she has a grasp on people and the world around her, recording and cataloging all her private sessions with clients on meticulously organized CDs. This act in and of itself is a little odd — her son wonders why she doesn’t just use a more modern method, for instance. But it also kind of gets to the heart of why, perhaps, despite her evident intelligence, there’s a cold disconnect between analyst and subject. Is she even listening to them?
Lilian starts to wonder this herself after she receives a call that her client Paula ( Virginie Efira ) has died by suicide. Paula was not someone she believed was capable of this. Instead of looking inward, she goes back to the tapes to begin an amateur investigation to find some other explanation: It must be murder, she concludes. Suspects include Paula’s daughter Valérie (Luàna Bajrami) and husband Simon (Mathieu Amalric).
She also enlists a sidekick in her sleuthing, her ex-husband Gabriel (a delightful Daniel Auteuil ) who is more than happy to go along for the ride, to listen to her conspiracy theories over several bottles of wine, to be a decoy distraction so that she can snoop through Simon’s house, and, ultimately, to just be there for her, no matter how unhinged she’s becoming. You can just see the love and admiration in his attentiveness. He’s not off put by the crazy; it’s just part of what makes her, well, her. Their rekindled relationship, so effortlessly lived in, so mature, so fun, is by far the highlight of “A Private Life.”
It’s a shame that their romance is basically a side show to the more convoluted rest, which involves a hypnotist and a revelation of a past life in which Lilian and Paula were members of the same WWII-era orchestra and lovers torn apart by jealous exes and Nazis. One of those Nazis is Lilian’s son (Vincent Lacoste), which she awkwardly, drunkenly tells him at his birthday dinner to try to explain why they’ve never been that close. She’s also completely disinterested in her grandchild, which might be one “let’s unpack that” too many in this film. In other words, there’s a lot going on in “A Private Life,” which Zlotowski co-wrote with Anne Berest.
This image released by Sony Pictures Classics shows Jodie Foster, left, and Virginie Efira in a scene from “A Private Life.” Credit: AP/Jérôme Prébois
One thing there’s not enough of is Efira. She gets some moments in flashback, but most of them teeter on the “dead wife montage” cliche. It’s not that Zlotowski wasn’t aware of what she had in Efira (case in point, their poignant, tender work together in “Other People’s Children”), but perhaps she was counting on our familiarity to fill in the gaps.
“A Private Life” is ultimately Foster’s show anyway and she seems to relish the tricky assignment. The tone around her might be on the lighter side, but for Lilian, the stakes are grave with the very essence of her self-worth and life’s work on the line. It’s a fascinating portrait of a woman essentially forced to rethink and revise all of the rules she’d lived by, the facts that she made sense of the world with and submit herself to the idea that some things might just be unknowable — even for a know-it-all psychoanalyst.
“A Private Life,” a Sony Pictures Classics release in theaters Friday, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for “language, graphic nudity, brief violence, some sexual content.” Running time: 105 minutes. Three stars out of four.
Vaa Vaathiyaar Movie Synopsis: Even as he keeps up an appearance of following in the footsteps MGR in front of his grandfather, a die-hard fan of the legend, Ramu is actually a corrupt cop, who’s helping in a mission to nab activists exposing the government. What happens when an incident triggers the Vaathiyaar in him? Vaa Vaathiyaar Movie Review: In his interviews about the film, director Nalan Kumarasamy repeatedly stressed on the fact that he planned Vaa Vaathiyaar as an attempt at recreating the old-school masala film in his own style. And that’s exactly what he delivers with his film. The simplicity of the MGR film formula meets the new-age-y plot device of Maaveeran in this fond, fun, funky throwback to the masala films of an earlier era. The film does take a while to get going with the beats of the initial set-up coming across as little too familiar. The narrative rhythm, too, is slightly off, with far too many songs popping up at frequent intervals. Though, it helps that Santhosh Narayanan’s songs are short and groovy. And the composer delivers a score that superbly elevates the emotional moments. But once we get into the main conflict, things perk up. An anonymous group of hacker-activists exposes a shootout plot by power broker Periasamy (Sathyaraj) and the chief minister (Nizhalgal Ravi) at a Sterlite-like protest. The government decides to nab them before they can cause further damage to a 142 million euro business deal. How does Ramu – a corrupt cop, who is keeping up a facade of being a do-gooder for the sake of his grandfather (Rajkiran, who has become the default casting choice for such well-meaning boomer roles), a die-hard MGR fan – gets involved in this and where does the OG Vaathiyaar figures in this scheme of things?Vaa Vaathiyaar shows that in this age of hyper-masculine action – and even romantic – films, it’s still possible to make a rousing commercial entertainer with a star without relying on guns and gratuitous bloodshed. The film’s action set-pieces have the hero taking on dozens of henchmen (and cops, too!), but it’s all done in swashbuckling MGR style. And in Karthi, it has an actor who is brave enough to take on a risky role, given the stature in which MGR is held by the Tamil people. Rather than merely mimicking him, which would have ended up as a spoof, the actor wonderfully captures the spirit of the legend’s onscreen image and creates moments that are genuinely heartfelt. Credit should also go to Nalan for finding the right pitch at which the actor should play these portions. While there are quite a few throwbacks to iconic MGR scenes, the filmmaker even succeeds in his modern take on the iconic song, Raajavin Paarvai Raaniyin Pakkam.The film would have been even better with a stronger villain. The film initially builds up Periyasamy to be ruthless and powerful, and with someone of Sathyaraj’s calibre playing this role, we expect more only to be deceived in the end. There’s also some build up to Nivas, a rival cop, who’s keen on nailing Ramu, but this arc, which could have added tension, is left incomplete after a while.That said, Nalan’s bold move to call back to MGR’s real-life hospitalisation and resurgence in the climax leaves the film on an emotional high.
Release Date : Jan 13, 2026
123telugu.com Rating : 2.75/5
Starring : Ravi Teja, Ashika Ranganath, Dimple Hayathi, Sunil, Satya, Vennala Kishore, Tarak Ponnappa, Muralidhar and Others
Director : Kishore Tirumala
Producer : Sudhakar Cherukuri
Music Director : Bheems Cecireleo
Cinematographers : Prasad Murella
Editor : A Sreekar Prasad
Related Links : Trailer
Mass Maharaja Ravi Teja returns to the big screen with Bhartha Mahasayulaku Wignyapthi, which has released today as a Sankranthi special. Ashika Ranganath and Dimple Hayathi play the female leads. Read on to know how the film fares.
Ram Satyanarayana (Ravi Teja), who manufactures the alcohol brand Anarkalee, travels to Spain after it is rejected by a wine company owned by Manasa Shetty (Ashika Ranganath). The trip leads to a romance, but Ram returns to India to his possessive wife, Balamani (Dimple Hayathi). Problems begin when Manasa arrives in India, leaving Ram Satyanarayana caught between the two women, and the film follows how he navigates the situation and brings it to a resolution.
Ravi Teja steps away from his usual mass persona and opts for a calm, restrained role laced with style and situational comedy. While this is familiar territory for him, his effortless screen presence and comic timing make the character work once again.
Ashika Ranganath looks appealing and gets a role with a fair emotional arc. Her scenes with Ravi Teja are pleasant and register well. Dimple Hayathi, cast as the possessive wife, does an average job and fits the requirement of the role.
Comedy is largely driven by Satya in the opening portions, and his track works effectively. After his exit, Sunil takes charge and delivers humour in his trademark style. Together, their portions ensure a fairly engaging first half. Vennela Kishore also contributes with his reliable comic timing.
The biggest drawback is the story itself. The core conflict of a man trapped between his wife and girlfriend has been explored countless times, and this film offers little novelty beyond fresh casting. The narrative, humour, and emotional beats follow a predictable pattern. The second half, in particular, had ample scope to deepen the conflict between Ravi Teja, Ashika, and Dimple Hayathi, but the writing fails to capitalise on it.
Director Kishore Tirumala manages the first half competently, but the film loses momentum after the interval. The drama feels artificial, and the comedy turns ineffective. Predictability becomes a major issue as the film progresses.
While the humour is reasonably engaging in the first half, it falls flat in the latter portions. The second half struggles to generate laughs, and the climax is simplistic with minimal emotional payoff. A stronger blend of comedy and drama could have at least elevated the film to a passable level.
Tarak Ponnappa’s track brings nothing new and feels like a filler in the narrative. The Vammo Vayyo song and the remix of the Karthika Deepam and Pinni serial tracks are aimed at mass audiences but appear suddenly and do not flow well with the story.
Kishore Tirumala attempts to package a routine storyline with humour and emotion, but the execution remains inconsistent. While a few moments click, the overall impact, especially in the second half, is underwhelming.
Prasad Murella’s cinematography is serviceable. Sreekar Prasad’s editing needed to be sharper, as trimming several redundant scenes would have improved the film’s pace. Bheems Ceciroleo’s music is passable, though the background score fails to leave a strong impression. Production values are adequate.
On the whole, Bhartha Mahasayulaku Wignyapthi ends up as a familiar drama with sporadic moments of entertainment. Ravi Teja delivers a composed performance, Ashika Ranganath looks good, and Satya, Sunil, and Vennela Kishore provide some relief. However, the predictable narrative, forced drama, and weak second half significantly dilute the impact. With tempered expectations, the film can be watched for its performances and humour.
123telugu.com Rating: 2.75/5
Reviewed by 123telugu Team
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