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      ‘On the Come Up’ Review: Battle Rap’s Next Big Thing?

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      This film adaptation of the Angie Thomas novel follows a teenage rapper with a dream.If you’ve seen “8 Mile” or the more recent cinematic delight “The Forty-Year-Old Version” you already know that in a movie with battle rap at the center, the would-be MC with something to prove always chokes in the first battle. “On the Come Up,” the new movie based on the Angie Thomas novel of the same name and directed by Sanaa Lathan, is no different.Brianna Jackson (Jamila C. Gray), nicknamed Bri and known as Lil’ Law on the mic, freezes in the face of an opponent and spends the rest of the film chasing her titular come up.The movie seems geared to teenagers in the way that it over explains events and leaves little room for subtext. Yet at the same time, Kay Oyegun’s script often feels out of touch with the way real teenagers actually behave. Bri and her friends Sonny (Miles Gutierrez-Riley) and Malik (Michael Cooper Jr.) seem to always know the most mature things to do and say. And the predictable narrative arc, the happenstance lighting from scene-to-scene and Lathan’s minimalist take on the material all adds up to something you might watch once and promptly forget about.Da’Vine Joy Randolph’s performance as Bri’s Aunt and manager Pooh stands out from a crowded ensemble cast of supporting players whose many background stories distract us from connecting with Bri and her family as much as we might like. But even Randolph — and Lathan, who also delivers a solid performance as Bri’s formerly drug-addicted mother Jay — can’t overcome a clunky script that bites off more from the novel than it can properly chew in under two hours.The real missed opportunity here is making full use of the battle rap scenes that form the spine of the story. Gray as Bri delivers the expletive-free rhymes penned by the real-life rapper Rapsody well enough, but the canned applause baked into the scenes often doesn’t ring true. Bri’s rhymes sound more like spoken word poetry than the no-holds-barred battle rap that the film is continuously saying she, the daughter of a revered slain rapper, has in her DNA.Yet even with its flaws, the film, by bringing a character like Bri into the cadre of battle rap, is a welcome update to the male bravado types we’re used to seeing dominate the mic. And the lyrics feature a steady stream of word bending metaphors worth savoring:Cranes in the skyI might a be a little sisterSaid I might be like Bey’s little sisterGoin’ up against a bigger guy but this fight only gonna elevatorElevate her, like Solange, watch me riseTo the seat at the table.In other words, turn on the closed captions.On the Come UpRated PG-13 for violence and adult language. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. In theaters and streaming on Paramount+. More

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      ‘Invisible Demons’ Review: Capturing an Air Quality Crisis

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      The filmmaker Rahul Jain assembles a series of devastating panoramas in this documentary about air and water pollution in New Delhi.The title of “Invisible Demons,” a patiently observed documentary, refers to the tiny toxic particles polluting the air in the Indian capital of New Delhi. But the name may also denote another culprit: the leadership officials removed from the crisis who fail to find a solution for city residents.Through a series of arresting images, the director Rahul Jain presents a city on the verge of apocalypse. Hazardous foam coats the murky Yamuna River, which teems with sewage and industrial waste. Towering garbage heaps speckle the streets. And, on a particularly polluted day, Jain manages to record individual flecks of hazardous haze, the microscopic matter whizzing across the screen in golden streaks. Breaking up the soaring cinematography are a series of casual interviews with Delhi residents.Implicit within these pictures — and explicit in the testimonies — is a striking demarcation of the effects of the crisis based on wealth and access. Only some can afford air-conditioning and air purifiers, and families without running water must take time out of their days to fetch it from tankers.Intermittently, Jain, a native of Delhi, offers additional information through voice-over; at one point, he even acknowledges his own position in the society, recalling how he “grew up as an air-conditioned child who couldn’t even imagine the natural world outside the city.” One wishes for more of such narration, to contextualize the devastating panoramas he has assembled. But, for the most part, Jain lets the images speak for themselves.Invisible DemonsNot rated. In Hindi and English, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 10 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Nothing Compares’ Review: Sinead O’Connor’s Rise and Fall

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      This new documentary shows many faces of Sinead O’Connor and highlights her genuinely incomparable voice.The ascent of singer-songwriter Sinead O’Connor’s star was arguably matched by its implosion, which began when, with the longtime abuses of the Catholic Church in Ireland and around the world in mind, she tore up a photograph of Pope John Paul II on “Saturday Night Live,” exclaiming, “Fight the real enemy.”The Irish artist’s sense of rebellion stems from many sources, the first of which is her Irishness. A couple of other factors are the Bobs — Dylan and Marley, both major influences on her thinking and her music. This documentary, directed by Kathryn Ferguson, doesn’t have any contemporary talking-head interviews; instead, it relies on O’Connor’s own speaking voice, both today — it is husky and slightly weary, sounding older than her 55 years — and on archival footage, in which she is quiet, shy, and remarkably tolerant of interviewers harping on her shaved head.The movie chronicles a fraught childhood and a rapid musical development. “How could I possibly know what I want when I was only 21,” she asks in her song “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” After her worldwide breakthrough, she knew she didn’t want the United States national anthem played before her stateside shows, and that she wanted to shed light on sexual abuse in the Catholic church.The reaction to these activist moves was vehement and often incredibly stupid and sexist, as nearly countless short clips of insults delivered by radio callers and celebrities (including Madonna and Joe Pesci) demonstrate. While her stardom was derailed, her music career continued, and the movie ends with a recent performance clip. (She announced this year that she was withdrawing from the music industry, however.)At no point during the movie proper is it mentioned that O’Connor’s biggest hit, “Nothing Compares 2 U,” was composed by Prince, which is peculiar. At the movie’s end, a title card notes that Prince’s estate denied the filmmakers permission to use the song in the movie. This jarring instance of what looks like narrative grudge-holding notwithstanding, “Nothing Compares” is a worthwhile appreciation of the artist.Nothing ComparesNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Carmen’ Review: You Will Live in Bliss

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      After her priest brother dies, a woman masquerades as a village’s irreverent new spiritual leader in this delightful drama.Thanks to a lineage from Bizet to Beyoncé, Carmen is a name associated with temptation. The new drama “Carmen” is not based on the famous opera and tells an original story, but its heroine calls her community toward earthly delights nonetheless.Carmen (Natascha McElhone) is the sister of a priest in rural Malta, the kind of holy man who chastises parishioners for singing too beautifully in church, and her joyless lot in life has been to act as his housekeeper. When her brother dies, Carmen is left without a home, money or a profession. But she’s free to live without the imposition of church authority.Carmen steals the keys to the vacant church and begins to masquerade as the village’s new priest. She doesn’t say Mass, but from the privacy of the confession booth she happily advises long-suffering wives on how to rid themselves of their husbands. Donations to the church explode, and Carmen repurposes the funds liberally: She buys herself a makeover and sends a neighbor to Rome to pursue her dreams. The only danger to her good works is the possibility that a pious churchgoer might expose Carmen’s deception and reimpose rules that weren’t working before she took over.There is a fable-like quality to this film, which plays a little loose with the details of the plot. It doesn’t quite make sense that in such a small village, Carmen’s schemes go largely unnoticed. But in a movie where the central theme is a divorce from orthodoxy, the writer and director Valerie Buhagiar makes the wise decision to orient her film toward what’s pleasurable rather than what’s logical. The Maltese countryside sparkles in the sunlight, and McElhone delights with a charming and slightly loopy performance as the irreverent spiritual leader.CarmenNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 27 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘Railway Children’ Review: A Nostalgia Trip, With Lessons

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      This winsome reboot of a British children’s classic, directed by Morgan Matthews, also addresses racial segregation in the armed forces during World War II.The Railway Children universe originates in Edith Nesbit’s 1905 serialized novel about a mother and three children at the turn of the century who leave London to live just off a country rail line. A popular 1970 adaptation starring the British actress Jenny Agutter followed (among others), but the most recent “Railway Children” is set during World War II. The three youngsters in Morgan Matthews’s winsome new film, are shipped to the northern countryside as part of the evacuation of children that occurred during German air raids.Thirteen-year-old Lily (Beau Gadsdon) and her younger siblings Pattie and Ted (Eden Hamilton and Zac Cudby), are taken in by Annie, a kindly schoolmistress (Sheridan Smith) and Bobbie, her mother (Agutter). The city kids go through an adjustment period, but they soon settle into an idyllic Yorkshire, which is bathed in the film’s burnishing glow.Dotted with lessons, this is initially a nostalgia trip handled with the cherubic faces of a children’s show. Tom Courtenay (“45 Years”) turns up as a beloved uncle to deliver a Churchillian speech at the dinner table.Drama arrives with the American soldiers who add fresh drama of a troubling sort. Lily and her siblings secretly give refuge to a very young Black enlistee, Abe (KJ Aikens, a bit wobbly), who’s sought by the military police. Perhaps unexpectedly, “Railway Children” takes up the fact that Jim Crow segregation was enforced within U.S. armed forces.Decency prevails in a somewhat ludicrous finale involving an army of children and a train containing a high-ranking officer. It’s an ending so tidy as to undercut the effort to broach a shameful side to the American war effort.Railway ChildrenRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Catherine Called Birdy’ Review: Ye Olde Lady Bird

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      Bella Ramsey plays a 13th century adolescent in Lena Dunham’s winning film.To flip through the pages of a 13th century manuscript, one might believe the medieval era was beleaguered by more snaky dragons and man-murdering bunnies than temperamental tween girls. Young women’s stories weren’t recorded — certainly not in their own hand, as literacy was low and paper costs were high — an absence that has prodded later generations to imagine the adolescent of the Middle Ages as demure and obedient, neither seen nor heard. Here comes “Catherine Called Birdy,” a headstrong comedy written for the screen and directed by Lena Dunham, to fill in that silence with a shriek.Birdy, played with zest by Bella Ramsey, storms into the frame baring her teeth and flinging mud pies. The 14-year-old daughter of a broke lord (Andrew Scott) and his oft-bedridden wife (Billie Piper), Birdy is mercurial, mulish and emphatically irritated by nearly everyone and everything in her shire. She logs her grievances in her diary, which riffs from Karen Kushman’s 1994 Newbery Medal-winning children’s novel. The film drops Kushman’s unromantic runner about pestilence (“Picked off 29 fleas today,” her Birdy writes) to focus on the girl’s passion for inventing curses (“Corpus bones!”) and her campaign to scuttle her father’s intention to save his estate by marrying his only surviving daughter to a flatulent creep she dubs Shaggy Beard (Paul Kaye).Husbands, as seen here, are either too old (81!), too young (9!) or too selfish, in the case of Scott’s repugnantly weak Lord Rollo, who wasted the family money importing tigers and silken robes he wears open-chested with beads, as if presaging Lord Byron’s fashion sense six centuries sooner. No wonder the girl would prefer to suffer a saint’s gruesome tortures than live on as one more forsaken wife.Dunham sets out to make life in 1290 feel as vibrant as if Birdy was rocking the glitter eye shadow of “Euphoria” instead of drawstring underpants. Occasionally, the movie overplays its bid for modern relevance — it’s dubious that a medieval teen would be able to come out as gay with just a knowing look — and the soundtrack’s twee covers of girl power anthems are a warble too far. (No need to perform Elastica’s “Connection” on what sounds like a lute.) But Dunham prevails in convincing audiences that coming-of-age in a so-called simpler time was equally tumultuous, and crams the corners of her movie with images of other female characters discreetly seizing their own moments of satisfaction — glimpses of joys which realize that it’s in the margins of a medieval tale where the best stuff happens.Catherine Called BirdyRated PG-13 for adult innuendo. Running time: 1 hour 48 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Goodnight Mommy’ and More: For the Love (and Hate) of Horror Remakes

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      With the American update of the Austrian horror film “Goodnight Mommy” now streaming, a horror fan discusses why remakes for him are a must-see.The 2015 Austrian psychological horror film, “Goodnight Mommy,” is an eerie little gem. I went into the recent remake with apprehension but determined to keep an open mind, primarily because of Naomi Watts. I remembered feeling similarly territorial over my bootleg VHS copy of the 1998 film “Ringu” before seeing Watts in its nightmarish 2002 American remake “The Ring.” Michael Haneke’s 2008 retelling of his own 1998 home invasion film “Funny Games” was just as terrifying the second time around with Watts in the lead.As the end credits rolled on the new “Goodnight Mommy,” I decided the mournful 1970s tune, “Look What They’ve Done to My Song, Ma,” would have made a better title. No fault of Watts; my issues with Matt Sobel’s film stem from a cloying emphasis on the redemptive power of motherhood, a theme extremely at odds with the original, and how this version bafflingly seems determined to spoil its own twist ending from the start.But I don’t regret watching the movie. I’m passionate about horror; if offered a choice between seeing a critically adored drama or a poorly reviewed slasher, I’ll choose the latter almost every time. There’s only so much time in a week, and as I’m constantly reminded, a masked man could behead me at any moment.Susanne Wuest and Lukas Schwarz in the 2015 Austrian film “Goodnight Mommy,” directed by Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala.RadiusHorror remakes surged in the 2000s. “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,” “Friday the 13th,” “The Hills Have Eyes” and other seminal 1970s and ’80s classics were dusted off, recast and rewritten. In their podcast “Aughtsterion,” the hosts Sam Wineman and Jordan Crucchiola gleefully cover horror from this era in-depth and point out that many of these remakes were crueler than their originals, both in kills and dialogue, and reflected the decade’s cultural sleaze — everything from TMZ to American Apparel ads to “Girls Gone Wild.”The rise of torture porn films, like the “Saw” and “Hostel” franchises, during the same period is now widely seen as an allegoric reaction to Sept. 11 and the American-led invasion in Iraq, but a grim failure at attempting this theme arrived with a remake of the 1976 film “The Omen,” 30 years after the original played to its decade’s fascination with religion and cults. The rehash had no interest in disguising its intent and showed footage of the burning World Trade Center to signal the impending end of days. Stephen Holden’s Times review noted that particular choice “sharpens this remake’s sour tang of exploitation.”And yet, even after reading that review, I was at the theater later that night. I needed to witness the mess myself, a sort of cinematic rubbernecking, so I could talk about it with authority among friends. I’ll even admit that I couldn’t resist the studio’s marketing gimmick of releasing the film on June 6, 2006.Dakota Johnson in Luca Guadagnino’s remake of “Suspiria.”Amazon StudiosIt’s thrilling when my devotion to the genre pays off and a remake works, like Luca Guadagnino’s 2018 take on “Suspiria.” Rather than try to replicate Dario Argento’s 1977 gorgeous, color-soaked tale of a witchy dance academy, Guadagnino went with a muted palette, allowing his character-centric story to shine. Here were real women operating a coven, not just the minions of a villainous asthmatic ghoul.On the flip side of classy, but equally cherished in my eyes, is “Piranha 3D” (2010), which transformed a tame “Jaws” rip-off from 1978 into an over-the-top judgment on sordid topless reality TV content. The director Alexandre Aja served up phallus chomping, a Sapphic underwater ballet set to “The Flower Duet” from Léo Delibes’s opera “Lakmé,” even a cameo by Richard Dreyfuss, a.k.a. Hooper from “Jaws.”I find as much value in a horror remake with a large budget for entrails as I do in one that’s a moody meditation on the transformative power of dance. I treasure this genre because it allows me to define horror however I want.Jerry O’Connell in “Piranha 3D,” directed by Alexandre Aja.Gene Page/Dimension FilmsOf course I don’t speak for every horror fan. Despite #horrorcommunity being a popular Instagram and Twitter hashtag, the better term for us is horror crowd, as explained by Phil Nobile Jr., the editor in chief of Fangoria magazine.“Horror — as an interest, passion, or profession — has fandoms and sub-fandoms; it has cliques; it has little fiefdoms,” Nobile Jr. wrote in a newsletter last April. “A community is an idea (or maybe an ideal), a crowd is a mathematical reality.” He made this distinction while ruminating on homophobia and political differences among fans, but the phrasing is comprehensive. Put simply, our opinions are all over the place, and that’s often on display when a remake gets released.The new “Goodnight Mommy” left me cold instead of giving me chills, and I’m OK with that. A horror remake sparks discourse, lights up social media, fuels podcasts, spurs think pieces. When this happens, for a brief and lovely moment, I soak it all in and naïvely do feel part of a horror community before slipping back into the crowd. More

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      ‘The 400 Blows,’ a Directing Debut That Still Astonishes

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      In 1959, François Truffaut premiered his first film, about a Parisian boy playing hooky, and moviemaking hasn’t been the same since.One of the most impressive debuts in film history, François Truffaut’s “The 400 Blows” created a sensation at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival and elsewhere. It was voted the best foreign film of the year by New York film critics — a movie that “brilliantly and strikingly reveals the explosion of a fresh creative talent,” Bosley Crowther wrote in The New York Times.Showing for two weeks at Film Forum in a new 4K restoration, the movie is not only crucial to one’s film education but well worth revisiting.“Amazingly, this vigorous effort is the first feature film of M. Truffaut, who had previously been (of all things!) the movie critic for a French magazine,” Crowther noted. As a critic, Truffaut was particularly harsh on French “quality” films — so much so that Cannes denied him accreditation in 1958. Revenge was swift when he returned the following year and won the award for best director. (Marcel Camus’s “Black Orpheus” received the Palme d’Or. The third French film in competition, Alain Resnais’s “Hiroshima Mon Amour,” came up empty.)“The 400 Blows” has two stars. One is the then-14-year-old Jean-Pierre Léaud, who plays Truffaut’s alter ego, Antoine Doinel, and thus began a career as the embodiment of the French new wave. The other is the city of Paris — gray, grimy and glorious — the arena for Antoine’s fleeting joys and petty crimes.Antoine is an unwanted child, as was Truffaut. Punished by his teacher, rejected by his self-centered mother (Claire Maurier), he plays hooky, runs away from home, steals a typewriter, gets busted trying to return it, is booked by the cops and winds up in reform school. The movie is full of actual incidents from Truffaut’s childhood, including his fabricating his mother’s death as an excuse for truancy. Few movies have been so personal.“The 400 Blows” is dedicated to the critic André Bazin, Truffaut’s mentor, who died just as the movie began shooting. The early scenes of the boy’s classroom misadventures strongly recall “Zero de Conduite,” the 1933 sendup of French education, directed by Truffaut’s great influence, Jean Vigo. There are other, more inside references, including the unlikely notion that Antoine’s parents might see a quasi-underground work-in-progress by Truffaut’s colleague Jacques Rivette, “Paris Belongs to Us.”“The 400 Blows” is a landmark film for several reasons. It was likely the first openly autobiographical commercial feature, and as such caused Truffaut’s parents considerable distress. It also introduced one of the 1960s’ most resilient clichés — the concluding freeze-frame close-up. Truffaut got the idea from Harriet Andersson’s accusatory stare at the end of Ingmar Bergman’s “Summer with Monika” (as noted when Antoine steals a lobby card of Andersson’s “Monika”). But building on the wistful refrain that runs throughout, “The 400 Blows” ends on a note of sadness all its own.Truffaut and Leaud returned several times to the character of Antoine Doinel. Film Forum is showing “The 400 Blows” with rotating screenings of later films like “Stolen Kisses” and “Love on the Run.” The character survives and even thrives. Yet it is the heartbreaking last shot of “The 400 Blows” that will fix his identity for as long as there are movies.The Four Hundred BlowsSept. 23 through Oct. 6 at Film Forum in Manhattan; filmforum.org More