Aurelia Butler

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    ‘We Grown Now’ Review: A Child’s Eye View

    Minhal Baig’s third feature follows two boys living in a public housing complex in Chicago as they cope by building their own dream worlds.The two boys in the gauzy nostalgia piece “We Grown Now” are total charmers. They’re also worryingly vulnerable, something you clock soon after the movie opens. Set in 1992, it takes place primarily in Cabrini-Green, at the time a public housing development in Chicago. There, the boys frolic and dream amid cinder block walls. Every so often, they wander outside to the concrete playground and to a jumble of old mattresses that the local kids use as cushioning. One boy likes to vault through the air and onto the mattresses; he likes to fly.The two boys are around 10 years old, and the closest of friends. They live in the same broken-down tower building, one of several in the complex, where sometimes they hang out in an abandoned apartment. There, they like to talk and stare at the stained and cracked ceiling, conjuring up visions from it the way they might do under the sheltering dome of the sky. Malik (Blake Cameron James) turns out to be an especially dreamy child, a pint-size philosopher who lives with his loving mother (Jurnee Smollett), doting grandma (S. Epatha Merkerson) and sister (Madisyn Barnes), a typical if benign sibling thorn in his side.For his part, Malik’s best friend, the more prosaically drawn Eric (Gian Knight Ramirez), lives with his older sister (Avery Holliday) and their father (Lil Rel Howery), a kindly fount of praise and disappointment. The friendship between Eric and Malik — the child performers are dear — is one of the truest parts of the movie, and it’s easy to fall quickly into step with them as they wander Cabrini, head to school and one day briefly escape from their routine. Bored one day while in class, the boys jump on a train and eventually make it to the Art Institute of Chicago, where they roam its galleries, at one point pausing before Walter Ellison’s striking painting “Train Station,” a 1935 canvas that depicts a segregated terminal.Their interest in the painting is easy to believe: It’s beautiful, arresting and at once familiar and mysterious (as the child of a former museum guard, I can relate). At the same time, like so much of this movie, the scene also feels forced, partly because the writer-director Minhal Baig’s expressionistic reveries don’t always fit with the issues she recurrently invokes. When the boys run through the museum, the other patrons remain frozen in place, as if they were in a different dimension. Yet when Malik connects the painting to his grandmother’s home in Mississippi, he opens a window onto a profound history that’s too heavy for this otherwise fanciful scene. He also sounds more like a filmmaking conceit than a child, however wise.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘Egoist’ Review: A Romance With a Twist

    In this ultimately sentimental drama, a lonely fashion magazine editor in Tokyo meets a personal trainer with a secret.Kosuke (Ryohei Suzuki), the protagonist of Daishi Matsunaga’s “Egoist,” is a lonely fashion magazine editor in Tokyo, with high cheekbones and deep pockets. When he meets and falls for Ryuta (Hio Miyazawa), a fresh-faced personal trainer, it all seems like a dream — until Ryuta reveals that he moonlights as a prostitute to make ends meet, and that their romance complicates his livelihood. Kosuke makes a proposition: He’ll give Ryuta a monthly stipend to cover his expenses.It’s the perfect set up for a juicy erotic thriller. But “Egoist,” adapted from the novel of the same name by Makoto Takayama, has many surprises in store, not all of them pleasant. Halfway through the movie, a tragic twist turns what seems like a sexy romance full of intrigue into a sentimental (albeit handsomely performed) drama about loss.Suzuki and Miyazawa have crackling chemistry, and they turn in delicate, finely tuned performances that are sometimes undercut by the script’s broad strokes and unsubtle flourishes. When we first meet Kosuke, his designer outfits, puffed chest and sad eyes show all we need to know; his voice-over, which tells us that clothes are his “armor,” is redundant. So are the film’s many montages underlining Ryuta’s plight — he toils at multiple jobs to care for his sick mother — that reduce the character to something of a sob story.Class is the central theme in “Egoist”: Kosuke and Ryuta’s star-crossed romance shows us how money, and the struggle to make ends meet, can complicate even the most genuine love. But as the film leans into melodrama, it loses both its friction and frisson, and a steaming-hot premise turns into something cold to the touch.EgoistNot Rated. In Japanese, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours. In theaters. More

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    St. Vincent Dives Headfirst Into the Darkness

    On a recent Tuesday night in a dressing room of the Brooklyn Paramount Theater, Annie Clark, the 41-year-old musician who records as St. Vincent, thumbed through a shelf of secondhand records and sipped a glass of pink champagne. Clark, invited to D.J. the venue’s grand reopening party, was the room’s first inhabitant since a major renovation restored the former movie palace; a pristine, new-car smell lingered.Holding court among a few members of her team and her 23-year-old sister, Clark was an attentive host in this antiseptic space, ready with a witty remark (the carefully curated LPs were probably “someone’s deceased grandma’s record collection”) or a topped-off beverage. She wore a cream-colored silk blouse, black kitten-heeled shoes and a gauzy black bow tied artfully around her neck.Even in a moment of relative repose, Clark possessed a feline hyper-awareness of her surroundings. Dave Grohl, who plays drums on two tracks off St. Vincent’s blistering new album “All Born Screaming,” later told me in a phone interview, “When you’re talking to her and you’re looking in those eyes, you can only wonder what reels are whirring in her brain, every second.” He added, amused, “I’ve never seen her with her eyelids half closed.”Clark is a gifted and nimble guitarist with a dexterously spiky playing style that contrasts with the moony smoothness of her voice. She is also known for the absolute commitment of her live performances. “What she does is so transformative,” said the musician Cate Le Bon, Clark’s close friend of over a decade, in a video interview. “When I see her play, it freaks me out sometimes. I can be even helping her get ready for a show, and it’s like I know nothing of the woman who’s onstage.”“All Born Screaming” began with a sonic puzzle: “How do I render the sound inside my head?”Raphael Dias/Getty ImagesSeven albums and 17 years into an acclaimed solo career, Clark has eked out a singular space in music, occasionally intersecting with the mainstream but for the most part staying uncompromisingly countercultural. She has collaborated with both David Byrne and Dua Lipa; the riot grrrl pioneers Sleater-Kinney and the post-post-riot-grrrl pop star Olivia Rodrigo. She was one of four female musicians asked to front Nirvana for a night in 2014 when the band was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. “She’s obviously outrageously talented,” Grohl said. “For her to play a Nirvana song was, maybe, a lot less complicated than her own music.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Vampire Weekend’s New Album Goes Underground and All Over

    Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicVampire Weekend recently released its fifth album, “Only God Was Above Us.” From the band that got started nearly two decades ago at Columbia University but now resides in Los Angeles, it’s an LP that ponders hitting 40, the lessons of history, generational legacies, myths and memories of New York City and Vampire Weekend’s own peculiar status as both an indie-rock success story and an arty pop outlier. It’s also the band’s noisiest album — and perhaps its kindliest.On this week’s Popcast with the guest host Jon Pareles, three critics discuss Vampire Weekend’s latest conundrums, counterpoint, sonic extremes and hidden jam-band core — and its fascination with tunnels.Guests:Amanda Petrusich, staff writer at The New YorkerMatthew Strauss, deputy managing editor of PitchforkConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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    It’s Drake vs. Everybody … Who’s Winning?

    Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTubeThis week’s episode of Popcast (Deluxe), the weekly culture roundup show on YouTube hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli, includes segments on:The tensions brewing among hip-hop’s biggest stars, beginning with Kendrick Lamar’s sideways lyrics about Drake, which have led to a full-scale recalibration of genre alliancesDrake’s leaked response to LamarHow other artists like Future, the Weeknd and Rick Ross have jumped in the fray, all lining up against DrakeHow hip-hop’s recent squabbles are a life raft for late-career artistsWhether the “Big 3” — how people once referred to the grouping of top hip-hop stars Drake, Lamar and J. Cole — was ever really as stable as advertisedSongs of the week from Peso Pluma featuring Arcángel, Sky Ferreira and NLE ChoppaSnack of the weekConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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    Sons of Paul McCartney and John Lennon Release New Song

    James McCartney teamed with Sean Ono Lennon for “Primrose Hill,” a ballad with echoes of the Beatles aesthetic.For six decades, the partnership summarized by the songwriting credit “Lennon-McCartney” has been pop music’s gold standard. So there was some surprise last week when fans woke up to a brand-new track from McCartney and Lennon — if not the same duo.James McCartney, the son of Linda McCartney and the Beatles’ Paul McCartney, released the song, “Primrose Hill,” last Thursday. He co-wrote it with Sean Ono Lennon, the son of Yoko Ono and the Beatles’ John Lennon.James, 46, announced the single — a dreamy ballad with echoes of the Beatles’ style — on social media the day after its release. Its B-side, “Beautiful,” came out in February.“With the release of this song it feels like we’re really getting the ball rolling and I am so excited to continue to share music with you,” he wrote.James began releasing his own music with a 2010 EP titled “Available Light,” which he recorded partly at Abbey Road. His first full album, “Me” from 2013, was produced by David Kahne, a former record executive who has worked with the Strokes, Linkin Park, Lana Del Rey and yes, Paul McCartney. (The album featured vocals, guitar and drums from his father.) Its follow-up, “The Blackberry Train,” came out in 2016. James previously contributed to albums by both of his parents, including “Flaming Pie” and “Wide Prairie.”Through a representative, McCartney and Ono Lennon declined to comment on the new track.Paul McCartney did tout his son’s fresh work on social media, adding: “lots of love to Sean Ono Lennon.”Perhaps the most poignant reaction to the track, and to the opportunity and burden of the Beatles legacy, came from yet another band scion: the drummer Zak Starkey, who is the son of the drummer Ringo Starr.One observer had ruefully commented on an Instagram post from an unofficial Paul McCartney fan account, “Sad ya can’t just walk your own road.”Starkey — an accomplished drummer who has toured with the Who and Oasis — replied, the Beatles are a “wall u cannot go thru over or under — I was 25 when I came to terms with that.” More

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    Nadia Boulanger, Music’s Greatest Teacher, Wrote an Opera

    Nadia Boulanger’s “La Ville Morte” was repeatedly thwarted by death and World War I, then nearly lost. Finally, it is having its American premiere.In March 1912, the famous violinist and composer Eugène Ysaÿe visited the home of his fellow musician Raoul Pugno in Paris. At the piano, Pugno played and sang through “La Ville Morte,” an opera he was writing with Nadia Boulanger, a mentee-turned-collaborator 35 years his junior.“Of this very private performance,” Ysaÿe wrote to Boulanger later that month, “I keep the most profound and happiest impression.” The opera, he told her, was “so beautiful, so sound, so poignant.”“La Ville Morte” was the most ambitious project of Boulanger’s young composing career. And once it took shape, with a piano-vocal score completed that summer, she wrote under the final measures, “Alleluia!!!!”But one thing after another kept “La Ville Morte” from reaching the stage. In 1914, Pugno, an essential partner in selling it to the public, died. World War I broke out, delaying the planned premiere, not for the last time. Several years later, Boulanger’s dear sister, the composer Lili Boulanger, died, too, and Nadia virtually stopped writing or promoting her own music.Robin Guarino, center, the director of “La Ville Morte” for Catapult Opera, rehearses with the singers. Guarino said she was amazed by the score and the “feminism sizzling under the surface.”Ava Pellor for The New York TimesBoulanger would instead go on to become one of the greatest music teachers in history — a formative figure for titans of the 20th century, like Aaron Copland and Elliott Carter, and other legends, including Quincy Jones, Burt Bacharach and Philip Glass.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Lincoln Center’s Summer Festival to Focus on Civic Bonds

    The third edition of Summer for the City will feature hip-hop, comedy, classical music and more, under the motto “life, liberty and happiness.”Lincoln Center said on Wednesday that it would devote its summer festival to themes of community and civic participation, with a mix of hip-hop, comedy, dance, classical music and more under the motto “life, liberty and happiness.”The festival, Summer for the City, will feature premieres of anthems about contemporary hopes and struggles. Classical music concerts will be more participatory than in the past; at one event, audience members will be asked to vote on the program. And civil rights will be prominent, with the New York premiere of an opera about Eric Garner, who died in 2014 at the hands of police officers on Staten Island.“We know the performing arts have a role in strengthening our community and strengthening our civic bonds,” Shanta Thake, Lincoln Center’s chief artistic officer, said in an interview. “This is a time where we can really be together and celebrate the ideas and ideals that we all share.”The third edition of the festival, which will run from June 12 to Aug. 10, is part of the center’s efforts to appeal to a younger, more diverse crowd, in part by promoting a broader array of genres, including pop music and social dance.Under Henry Timms, Lincoln Center’s president and chief executive, the center has shifted its focus from classical music and international theater, prompting some criticism that it is not doing enough to promote traditional offerings. (Timms will depart his post in August; a search for his successor is in progress.)After eliminating the Mostly Mozart Festival, a summer fixture since the 1970s, Lincoln Center renamed the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, saying that it was time to reimagine the ensemble for a modern and more inclusive age. This season, the Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center, as the ensemble is now called, will convene for the first time under the rising conductor Jonathon Heyward.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More