The story kicks off with a mysterious clock being shipped to the Diehl residence. Without much pause, it’s thrown into the basement to rot away. Taylor (Easton Rocket Sweda), a mute boy who speaks through various AI voices on his iPad, fixes the clock and discovers he can turn back time just by changing the hour hand. At the same time, his parents (Greg Kinnear, “Phil” and Isla Fisher, “Blithe Spirit”) have warned the kids of an important meeting that will be happening later that night, everyone knows it’s a talk about a trial separation for the two of them. Taylor, alongside his two other siblings (Shay Rudolph, “I Wish You All the Best” and Mason Shea Joyce, “Hotel Artemis”), devises a plan to bring their family back together.

The familiar “Groundhog Day” trope is far from new, but it works best when it’s combined with new genres — movies like “Timecrimes,” or “Palm Springs” are great examples. The Present does a good job of combining comedy and romance into this looping day — we not only see the same day from many different angles, but also from many different perspectives in the family.

The problems with this film arise when the focus is placed on the adult relationships, specifically the core relationship with Greg Kinnear and Isla Fisher’s characters. Their emotions and motives are so volatile towards one another that it is amazing that the relationship has even lasted as long as it has. It feels like one slight misstep and the marriage is over, no matter the interjections. While there are some definite sweet moments between the couple, I can recall one where Kinnear’s character reluctantly gets a makeover and shows up to therapy looking as dashing as ever, it never breaks into the level of maturity we should expect from these role types. Despite commanding around the kids, the adults often act just as childlike as their younger counterparts, creating eye-rolls for much of the 86-minute runtime.

It’s a good thing then that a majority of the screen time is given to the kids in the family who abuse their time travel powers in many fun and exciting ways. Many scenes are shown multiple times from multiple angles giving the audiences that “Ah-ha!” moment time and time again as we watch the kids scheme up a master plan to bring their parents back together. There is an excellent montage sequence late in the film that I wish all time-shift movies had. The kids try everything under the sun to get the parents together whether it’s manipulating the stock market to one of them even faking their own death. Great stuff.

For a majority of The Present, the kids are tweaking and mastering this single grand plan until nothing could possibly go wrong, oddly though this plan is abandoned late in the third act and rather we get a generic and head-scratching ending to it all. Despite the lackluster conclusion, the movie features enough quaint jokes and silly time travel hi-jinks that it will definitely be fun for a whole family viewing.

A road trip that builds on Abbas Kiarostami’s “A Taste of Cherry” and Jafar Panahi’s “Taxi,” Jafar’s son Panah has built on his father’s legacy in Hit the Road, a mixture of laugh out loud comedy, sadness, family drama, and serious social/political issues. While the film succeeds in bringing the meaning of the genre “comedy/drama,” into sharp focus, its protest against the repressive regime in Tehran is clear. From the opening scene, however, it is difficult to discern in which direction the film will go and the feeling is that the director may be limited by the authorities as to what he can or cannot say.

As the film opens, an SUV is seen crossing the dry and dusty Iranian landscape somewhere in the Northwestern portion of the country close to the Turkish border. “Where are we?” the mother (Pantea Panahiha, “Exodus”) asks, “We’re dead,” says the youngest of her two sons (Rayan Sarlak, “Gol be Khodi”) from the back seat. The occupants in the car do not seem to be engaged in a death rattle, however, and Khosro, the bearded father (Mohammad Hassan Madjooni, “Latyan”) with his leg in a plaster cast has to continually fend off the rascally intrusions of his six-year-old son. The movie primarily confines itself to the inside of a car and unfortunately our first experience is one of family dysfunction and insults.

The rambunctious, but adorable, boy is described by his father as the “little fart,” the “little monkey,” and a “pest,” but you pays your money and you take your choice. When the boy gets out of the car, he kisses the ground to his father’s protestations and the disapproval of his mother, beautifully played by Panahiha, and the indifference of their sick dog Jessy. While these shenanigans dominate the opening scene, the melancholy sound of Schubert A-minor sonata D. 784 playing in the background suggests that all is not fun and games as does the silence of the older brother, 20-year-old Farid (Amin Simiar). Though exquisite, the Schubert Sonata (used to greater advantage in Robert Bresson’s sublime, “Au hasard Batlhazar”) lends the first touch of sadness to what seems to be a joyous if obscure occasion.

The family does not tell the boy the real reason for the trip, hiding under the pretense that his older brother will be gone for a short time in order to get married. It is clear, however, that the child can sense this is a lie which may be part of the reason for his over-the-top behavior. The mother is also unnerved when she feels that someone is following their car but it is only someone trying to tell them that their coolant is leaking. When the car does make several stops, cinematographer Amin Jafari raises the film’s aesthetic level with engaging scenes depicting the beauty of the Iranian hills and landscapes.

There is one beautiful sequence where the boy lays on top of his father and they are both transported high above the earth into a wondrous panoply of stars. The focus of Hit the Road turns darker, however, as we begin to understand that the mother’s cries suggest that wherever they are headed she will not see Farid again. The film becomes even more enigmatic when the talk centers about bail and a quarantine period and clandestine meetings take place between the car’s occupants, merchants of sheep, and shadowy characters giving directions about where to go to meet up with some other shadowy people.

As he journey progresses, the viewer has an odd feeling of danger, also sensed by the occupants of the car. To cover their feelings, they listen to a popular Iranian song on the radio as if to cover their fear. Although the pop music seems incongruous given the circumstances, it seems to lighten the mood. Later, the little boy asks his dad if they’re cockroaches. “We are now,” Khosro replies, “Whenever you see a cockroach,” he says, “remember that his parents sent him out into the world with lots of hope.” And with that, the director balances humor and serious drama and, in the process, honors the legacy of his father, Jafar Panahi, now forbidden to make movies, while carving out a niche for himself as a young director from whom we might expect great things.

This advice was learned early by seven-year-old Nora in a remarkable first performance by Maya Vanderbeque, a shy and sensitive young girl struggling to fit into a rejecting environment in this deeply disturbing look at power relationships at a French grade school. Focusing on the environment where only the strongest or the most manipulative survive, Nora, who is fearfully left by her father (Karim Leklou, “The Stronghold”) on her first day, has to navigate strict rules that one dares not break, rules where everyone has a place in the hierarchy and, if you don’t know it, you will soon find out.

The film is subtitled “Un monde” which translates into “the world,” a reference to the fact that the playground is the only world that the viewer knows. Though it is a work of fiction, it feels like a documentary and may hit a responsive chord with those who have pushed away disturbing memories of their childhood. In this constraining environment, Nora’s older brother Abel (Günter Duret, “Working Girls”) is the subject of continuous bullying by other boys and who, because of his size and the number of aggressive bullies he has to deal with, is unable to defend himself from the relentless attacks and is too embarrassed to tell his father about the beatings.

Cinematographer Frédéric Noirhomme (“A Good Doctor”) shoots everything from the vantage point of the young children and we only see the adults as disembodied arms and legs when they stoop to speak to a child. Shot mostly in close-ups, the expressions on Nora’s face reveal more than could ever be spoken: Her fear, hurt, longing for friendship, and the slow loss of her innocence. There is no narrative flow, merely a collection of episodes that repeat themselves but with increasing urgency. Unable to get through to school officials who show little personal interest, Nora, unable to continue to bear the secret of her brother’s suffering, turns to her father who complains to school officials but achieves little beyond confronting the perpetrators obvious stonewalling.

Abel now feels that his sister has committed an act of betrayal and their relationship suffers, Nora receiving the worst of it as the school bullies turn on her. In this dog-eat-dog world, it becomes apparent that the bullied ultimately becomes the bully to achieve some imagined payback. Reminiscent of Kazakhstan director Emir Baigazin’s unforgettable “Harmony Lessons” in which a bullied student plots revenge on his tormentors, Playground is not an easy watch, yet it is a haunting and lyrical film that, even in its bleakest moments, conveys an unmistakable experience of light, a film that, while it mirrors an increasing cycle of violence in a society governed by the false notion of survival of the fittest, love remains present, buried but always ready to emerge.

Projections of the future in cinema have mainly foreseen a world where war, disease, and pervasive alienation are the norm. Korean-born writer/director Kogonada’s vision of the future, however, is not a dystopian world where only stragglers from a war or natural disaster remain, or a utopia where problems of climate, medicine, and crime have disappeared. In his remarkable science-fiction film After Yang, his second feature after the masterful “Columbus,” Kogonada sees a world where science is working to enhance the lives of people rather than to develop new tools of destruction.

Based on the short story by Alexander Weinstein, “Saying Goodbye to Yang,” robotics has developed to the point where families can select an android to help with specific challenges of family upbringing such as teaching children about their heritage (a cultural “techno-sapien,”) or a clone to assist in taking routine care of family members or household chores. While the stories that mark Kogonada’s first two films are vastly dissimilar, both films have the same sense of connection, intimacy, and empathy that makes them relevant and deeply affecting.

Utilizing the gorgeous cinematography of Benjamin Loeb (“Pieces of a Woman”) and Alexandra Schaller’s (“Little Voice” TV series) production design, we sense that in Yang’s world, life appears to be comfortable; the city air is clean and a sense of optimism prevails. Yang, a refurbished techno-sapien purchased from a shop that has gone out of business, has been brought into the household of Jake (Colin Farrell, “The Batman”), a tea shop owner, his wife Kyra (Jodie Turner-Smith, “Without Remorse”), and their adopted Chinese daughter Mika (Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja, “iCarly” TV series) to school Mika about her Asian heritage. At the beginning, Yang is like a useful piece of machinery that is valuable as long as it is functioning then discarded and replaced by a new model.

Kyra is pleased that Yang is helpful in adapting Mika to her new cultural environment but that’s as far as it seems to go. Mika, however, has developed a personal bond with Yang and treats him like the brother she always wanted and feels it deeply when he suddenly ceases to function, even though she is comforted by the goldfish her father bought for her. The main focus of the film is on the attempt to repair the malfunctioning robot and the realization of the impact he had on the family. A visit to the repair shop underscores the complexity of Yang’s operating technology and the difficulty of restoring him to his former self.

With the help of Cleo (Sarita Choudhury, “And Just Like That” TV series) who works at a technology museum, a chip containing snippets of Yang’s memories is uncovered. Visualized through virtual reality glasses and displayed like a field of brightly lit pulsating stars in the heavens, the family connects with people in Yang’s previous interactions, even a possible romantic liaison with Ada, (Haley Lu Richardson, “Support the Girls”). Through these memories, the film brings us closer to what truly matters in life, but each discovery and playback of past relationships makes Yang’s absence harder to accept.

In a poignant flashback, Yang asks Jake how he got into the business of selling tea and what about tea is most important to him. Jake says it is not about the flavor but the process, the smell, the texture, and describes the feeling that tea gives him: a connection to a place and the sensation of walking in the forest after a rain. Yang knows about tea’s origins in China but wishes that this knowledge came with real memories of a time and place. In another memory, when Mika tells Yang that she was bullied in school because she was adopted, he shows her that, like the parts of two trees in an apple orchard that become one, her heritage is an important part of who she is.

Immeasurably strengthened by Aska Matsumiya’s score, an original theme by Ryuichi Sakamoto, and a lovely performance of “Glide,” from the Japanese film “All About Lily Chou-Chou,” After Yang is an Ozu-like meditation on our ability to connect with others. A work of empathy and compassion, Kogonada allows us to recognize that technology need not be a barrier to intimacy and that, despite the inevitability of having to deal with loss, joy is never far away.

Trained cave divers were recruited as well as Thai Navy Seals, U.S. Special Forces, Australian medical experts, a Thai nurse named “Amp” Bangngoen who helped as a translator, and thousands of volunteers to undertake the rescue in the cave’s claustrophobic, winding underground passageways. The challenge became even more real when divers discovered four pump workers trapped not far from the cave entrance and had to undertake a dangerous rescue that became a trial run for the later attempt to free the boys. With the cave rapidly filling with water, the conditions became so daunting that one volunteer — a former Thai Navy Seal, died from a lack of oxygen.

When members of the Seals concluded that they did not have the diving skill required for the rescue attempt, Rick Stanton and John Volanthen, two highly experienced British divers were called to Thailand. The inspiration of people of many backgrounds and training coming together from all over the world — including the U.S. and China — to engage in a joint undertaking captured the world’s attention. Paraphrasing the late poet George Eliot, “What greater thing is there for human souls than to feel that they are joined for life, to strengthen each other, to be at one with each other in silent, unspeakable memories?”

The documentary not only depicts the bravery and determination of the divers, but offers a look into their personalities and goals, each with a compelling story. In one interview, one of the divers says that his dangerous hobby is “two parts ego, one part curiosity and one part a need to prove yourself.” The divers talk about how they had been “outsiders” all of their lives, always regarded as misfits and “nerds.” Fittingly, it was Stanton and Volanthen who first discovered the lost boys and their coach on a ledge two miles into the cave, where they had taken refuge after heavy rain submerged the route they had followed.

Finding the boys was only the beginning of the ordeal, however. How to get them out seemed an impossible task given the monsoon threat and the rapidly filling cave. Though thousands of gallons of water were drained from the cave, it was only after a daring proposal to bring the boys out (rejected as “insane” by Australian Doctor Richard Harris) was finally approved that a way forward could be seen. The result is a deeply moving experience that should be seen on the big screen to experience its full impact. Even a cliché-ridden closing song, dreamed up by well-meaning Oscar-baiters, cannot ruin the experience that is The Rescue.

British Poet Percy Bysse Shelley said, “Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.” This sense of seeing the world newly permeates Georgian director Aleksandre Koberidze’s (“Let the Summer Never Come Again”) What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (Ras vkhedavt, rodesac cas vukurebt?), a lovely cinematic tone poem that bounces between playful fantasy and documentary-like realism. Winner of the FIPRESCI prize at the recent Berlinale, in its two and a half-hour run time, Koberidze celebrates the country of Georgia and the city of Kutaisi including extended montages showing joy on the faces of small children, slow-motion choreographed rhythm of a soccer game, and the eternal power of two human beings to find magic in each other’s presence.

In a seemingly chance encounter, a young man, Giorgi (Giorgi Ambroladze), a local football star, and a young woman, Lisa (Oliko Barbakadze), a pharmacist, while walking in opposite directions, meet awkwardly when she drops her book and he bends to pick it up for her. The sequence is shot only from the knees down so their faces and its expressions are left to our imagination. Constantly retracing their steps and repeatedly bumping into each other, they discover they have chemistry together and agree to meet the next day for lunch at a café (though thoughtlessly neglecting to find out the other person’s name). On Lisa’s walk home, however, the force is with her, changing the trajectory of her life as well as that of her new friend.

Ordinary objects such as a traffic light, a drainpipe, and the wind, become transmitters of the force, what the narrator (voiced by the director) describes as the “evil eye.” Only the loud motor of a passing car prevents her from hearing the most important detail. Not only will their physical appearance drastically change by the next morning, they will also lose the skills they had worked their whole lives to attain. Lisa, now played by another first-time actress Ani Karseladze, is no longer able to remember her medical school education and Giorgi (Giorgi Bochorishvili, “Adam & Eve”) is unable to even kick a soccer ball over a short fence.

Koberidze calls our attention to their transformation not by employing technological wizardry, but by inviting the viewer to become a participant, beginning with the command “Attention!” prominently displayed on the screen. This is followed by the instruction to look away on the first sound and look back only on the second, engaging the viewer in the mystery of how the real nature of our world is always invisible. Koberidze said that he was “looking to mess with the viewer’s perception,” and that “sometimes you are required to be active and sometimes you can relax — almost like a child hearing a bedtime story.”

The main focus of the film is the effect that sudden change has on Lisa and Giorgi. Author and essayist Rebecca Solnit said, “To be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty and mystery,” and that is where Lisa and Giorgi find themselves. Sadly, when they meet at the café at the agreed-upon time, neither recognizes the other. As she takes a job at the café and he directs a strongman challenge on the bridge opposite the café, the Soccer World Cup begins and we find out the different viewing points in the city where locals (including the dogs with their intriguingly provided names) gather to watch the matches.

While What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? moves slowly, it does not drag but, like mindfulness meditation, allows us to be present to the things of beauty we see each day but never recognize. Koberidze has said that “I think one of the purposes of cinema is to help bring us closer to a hidden rhythm, to the flow of time. One — but not the only — way to achieve this is to observe your surroundings while hearing music.” The director’s brother (also Giorgi) score brings us closer to this rhythm, adding even more playfulness and enchantment to each scene: The faces of children coming home from school, celebrating the start of the World Cup by painting the name of Argentine soccer star Messi on their backs in yellow, and the sight of a soccer ball bouncing merrily, merrily down a swiftly flowing river telling us that life is but a dream.

Mundane events call our attention to the things in our life we usually take for granted. Thoreau said, “Not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.” Lisa visits the music school looking for one of the teachers that can lift her curse; they go to the house in the countryside where she and Giorgi pick up a birthday cake. There is an entrancing slow motion montage of children practicing the game of soccer to the sounds of the 1990 World Cup song, “Notti Magiche,” a magical interlude that tells us all we need to know about the natural state of being without the layers that have been added to it, things that Rilke declared “have by daily parrying been so crowded out of life that the senses with which we could have grasped them are atrophied.”

What Do We See When We Look at the Sky can be classified (by those determined to classify everything) as fantasy or magic realism, in its essence, it defies categorization. While some of the depictions in the film flirt with the pretentious or even nonsensical, in Koberidze’s world, everything becomes real and truly alive. While most of us see ourselves as an identity defined by what we look like, what we may do for a living, and our relations with each other, it is only when Lisa and Giorgi wake up the next morning without their football uniform and laboratory coat and with completely changed physical features do they begin to understand that identity is more a function of a deeper sense of who we really are beyond our present physical form. As Koberidze asserts, “Then happened, what had to happen.” If we open our eyes, this is what we will see when we look at the sky.