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      ‘I Used to Be Famous’ Review: Hold On to That Feeling

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      A boy band veteran teams up with an autistic teenager in this film about friendship and music.The title of this movie is a bit of misdirection. Yes, one of the main characters, Vince, was famous. He’s a boy band veteran who is 20 years past his peak popularity when the story picks up in the present day. But this is less a first person singular tale than one of a team effort.Vince, played with a mostly winning ingenuousness by Ed Skrein, is trying to get his musical career back on track. It’s not going well — he’s taken to setting up his gear on top of an ironing board for an impromptu park performance in his South London neighborhood. There, he’s joined by an onlooker with a pair of drumsticks who makes joyful noises on a metal bench. He makes Vince’s electronic noodlings into something like a jam.The kid is Stevie, who is autistic, and he’s played by the neurodivergent actor Leo Long. The seamlessness with which the actor and his compelling character fit into picture, directed by Eddie Sternberg, is the most noteworthy thing about it.Vince pursues Stevie to a neighborhood music program, an inspirational drum circle headed by Dia (Kurt Egyiawan). Vince then tries to convince Amber, Stevie’s protective mother (Eleanor Matsuura), that a club gig could be good for the kid. He practically begs his former boy-band colleague, the still-famous Austin (Eoin Macken) to hear the duo, named The Tin Men by a club owner.It’s all pretty predictable, right down to the transfer of don’t-stop-believing energy from Vince to Stevie, and the delivery of the inevitable line, “All he ever wanted was a friend.” This has the effect of making the finale, which actually takes an exit ramp off triumphalist clichés, genuinely surprising.I Used to Be FamousNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘See How They Run’ Review: An Agatha Christie Mystery Spoof

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      Unraveling a murder case backstage at a Christie play in 1950s London.The whodunit comedy “See How They Run” is set backstage in a 1950s London production of the long-running Agatha Christie play “The Mousetrap.” With a sprightly wit and an all-star cast to bring it to life, the movie manages to be a loving parody of theater gossips, postwar London and Christie’s murder mysteries all at once.The story is an investigation of the murder of a Hollywood film director, Leo Köpernick (Adrien Brody). Leo had been hired to adapt the play, and he was killed in cold blood at the theater, making all the show’s players potential suspects and, they fear, potential future victims. There’s the disgruntled screenwriter, Mervyn (David Oyelowo), the sensitive actor Dickie (Harris Dickinson), and the hard-nosed theater owner (Ruth Wilson). Each has their motives, and an odd couple of detectives are assigned to untangle them. Inspector Stoppard (Sam Rockwell) is a jaded veteran, and his apprentice is a movie-loving rookie, Constable Stalker (Saoirse Ronan).As a parody, the film is quick to show its appreciation for the genres being spoofed. One charming gag finds Stalker pausing her criminal analysis to praise the virtues of performers who are tangentially mentioned in the course of the investigation. “Rex Harrison, wonderful actor,” she reverently intones.It’s an endearing bit because the same compliments could be passed along to this film’s decorated cast. The director Tom George gives his performers permission to approach their roles with cake-eating aplomb, and he complements their enthusiasm with campy direction, winking at the audience through title cards, split screens and paisleyed production design. The result is a plummy affair, a proper figgy pudding baked out of once-stale Scotland Yard tropes.See How They RunRated PG-13 for brief violence. Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Riotsville, USA’ Review: A Fake Town to Explore Ongoing Unrest

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      A documentary delves into the responses to the 1960s protests, revealing uncomfortable truths about that time and ours.The mid-1960s saw a conspicuous rise in civil unrest in the United States. The war in Vietnam, substandard living conditions for people of color, and a larger shift in consciousness all contributed to people wielding violence as a tool of protest. The new documentary “Riotsville, USA.,” shows the federal government’s response to this tactic as both sinister and, in some sense, laughable.The Riotsville of the title is the name of a fake town built as a training ground for law enforcement, in which riot story lines were enacted by soldiers and police forces. More than one of these towns were built by the U.S. government in collaboration with local police departments, with the events filmed for official review. The documentary’s director, Sierra Pettengill, uses a variety of archival footage here. There are government films of Riotsville exercises, clips from talk shows, and a mini-narrative of a public television station whose progressive politics led to its defunding by the Ford Foundation. And of course, searing images from riots in Los Angeles, Chicago, Newark, Memphis and Miami.A federal government advisory commission on civil disorder actually concluded that the rioters had something to riot about. They recommended sweeping policies to redress inequities. The activist H. Rap Brown, who was in jail when the report came out, said the people on the commission ought to be in a cell too, as “they’re saying what I’ve been saying.” The only recommendation lawmakers acted on, however, was to increase police budgets.The film’s tone, largely defined by narration written by the essayist Tobi Haslett and read by Charlene Modeste, is often one of weary exasperation. At times, though, Haslett’s words are charged with indignation, which arguably overwhelms the reportage, as in Haslett’s heated account of the media coverage of the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. To this complaint, one imagines Haslett might respond, “Too bad.” This is not an objective film. It is a polemic, a work of activism, a challenge to the viewer.Riotsville, USANot rated. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Casablanca Beats’ Review: Hip-Hop Isn’t Dead

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      Nabil Ayouch’s exuberant musical declares that the genre hasn’t faded; it has just been hiding in a Moroccan slum.When the rapper Nas proclaimed 16 years ago that hip-hop was dead — namely, by titling an album “Hip-Hop Is Dead” — it was a statement laced with self-aware irony: This was a hip-hop record, after all.As he always made clear, his title wasn’t the predictable gripe of an intellectual vanguard (“Painting is dead,” “God is dead,” etc.) but a call to action — a response to hip-hop’s co-option by corporate interests. It’s hard to imagine his assessment has improved. But if the French Moroccan filmmaker Nabil Ayouch’s exuberant new film, “Casablanca Beats,” is any indication, perhaps one need only look outside the United States for a reminder of the genre’s original power to create political change.Filmed in a hand-held, naturalistic style, “Casablanca” feels often like a documentary — until it spontaneously bursts into lyrics or dance, like “Fame” without the leotards, “Dancer in the Dark” without the contempt. The story is familiar, set in a tough neighborhood where Anas (Anas Basbousi), a former rapper, arrives to teach hip-hop at a community arts center.It is also, as his troubled teenage students are all too aware, a place that has historically produced suicide bombers. Hemmed in by joblessness, religious conservatism and captious expectations, the students are seduced by the devil’s music.Anas teaches class by day, sleeps in his car at night. Of his past, we know little. But when he tells his students that hip-hop is about speaking truth to power, not bling and petty beefs, it’s clear that he walks his own talk. We’ll forgive him and his students, flush with the joys and indignations of youth, for the occasional maudlin speech — and Ayouch for the attendant schmaltz. Hip-hop isn’t dead, the film energetically insists; it’s just been hiding in a Moroccan slum.Casablanca BeatsNot rated. In Arabic, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Four Winters’ Review: The Jewish Resistance

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      The men and women in this densely story-filled documentary recount taking up arms as members of the Jewish resistance in the forests of Eastern Europe.The Jews in World War II who formed resistance groups include one steely-nerved survivor in Julia Mintz’s story-filled documentary “Four Winters” who says it best: “If I’m not for me, who’s for me?” The men and women in this harrowing but spirited film took up arms in the forests of Eastern Europe to fight Nazis and their collaborators, living to tell tales that could be fodder for movie plots.Mintz cycles through eight interviewees who recall missions to kill Nazis, as well the day-to-day struggle for survival. After the horror of seeing family members murdered — often the end point for many Holocaust stories — these civilians fortunately escaped, and took the leap of learning to become soldiers.Everyone’s recall of tactical detail is daunting: we learn how to blow up a railroad, for one thing, and what to do with bullet wounds. One survivor, Faye Schulman, appears in a leopard-skin coat in pictures, adding an unexpected touch of panache.The talking-head close-ups convey more than what’s spoken. Notice how a normally stolid Frank Blaichman flicks a satisfied look to the camera when saying the name of the big, tough farmer they outfoxed. Gertrude Boyarski, a self-described “spoiled girl” before the war, speaks with an especially flinty gaze.The film’s deficits lie in its structure, which loses shape as it goes along. It could also use more information about its archival footage. But “Four Winters” offers an enduring warning amid today’s global struggle with authoritarian forces: As one speaker explains, her neighbors were already antisemitic before the war, but with power, they became vicious.Four WintersNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Confess, Fletch’ Review: Solving a Crime, Eventually

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      Jon Hamm bops along amiably enough as the carefree, wiseacre detective once played by Chevy Chase.Insouciance goes a fairly long way in “Confess, Fletch,” which revives the wiseacre investigator once played by Chevy Chase and featured in a series of novels by Gregory Mcdonald. Now Jon Hamm bops along as Irwin Fletcher (a.k.a. Fletch), living the life of Riley and explaining to strangers that he once was a great reporter. Tapping into a minor vogue in murder mysteries, Greg Mottola’s relaxed-fit film follows Fletch after he discovers a dead woman in the art-filled Boston house where he’s staying.Fletch blithely feeds tips to the police detective (Roy Wood Jr.) on the scene, ignoring the fact that he’s under suspicion himself. At the same time, his Italian girlfriend, Angela (Lorenza Izzo), suspects her stepmother of angling for her family’s art since the disappearance of her father. So Fletch noses around, questioning a high-rolling art dealer (Kyle MacLachlan) who loves EDM, a gabby neighbor (Annie Mumolo, more or less channeling Janice Soprano), and Angela’s chaotic stepmother (Marcia Gay Harden, having a ball).If any of that elicits a “heh,” you might warm to Mottola’s ambling brand of comedy, which also casts a faintly absurd light on the yacht-friendly Boston milieu. Yet a haplessness clings to Hamm that tends to take the air out of his character’s shenanigans.All of which makes one appreciate master practitioners of the unhurried detective genre like Peter Falk or James Garner. But getting peeved at Mottola and Hamm’s easygoing efforts would be like getting mad at a cat for sleeping too much.Confess, FletchRated R for sex, some drugs and gumshoe mischief. Running time: 1 hour 38 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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      ‘Goodnight Mommy’ Review: Behind the Mask

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      Twin boys worry that their mother might be an impostor in this disappointing remake.Far be it from me to quibble over punctuation, but the absence of the vocative comma in the title of “Goodnight Mommy” — an American remake of the Austrian chiller “Goodnight, Mommy” (2015) — should be read as a warning of other, more problematic omissions.Like the prickling atmosphere of dread that blanketed the original and is only pallidly reproduced here. The plot, though, remains roughly the same: Twin boys, Elias and Lucas (Cameron Crovetti and Nicholas Crovetti), arrive at their mother’s isolated country home after an unspecified absence to find her head swathed in gauze and her behavior apparently altered. Telling the boys she has undergone “a little procedure,” Mommy (Naomi Watts) bars them from her darkened quarters, and also — uh-oh! — from the barn. Is she an impostor?That question will be answered, if without the aesthetic elegance, masterly editing or rumbling horror of the first film. Even so, Kyle Warren’s screenplay is potent enough to generate several moments of suspense, and Watts, an exceptional actor sidelined too often by poor choices, is not the problem here. That would be the decision to jettison the children’s most creative cruelties — and consequently much of the movie’s tension — and a director, Matt Sobel, who’s determined to steer the audience toward a specific interpretation of events. The result is a film that feels lazily compressed and overly literal, suggesting a lamentable discomfort with ambiguity that’s all too common in arthouse-to-mainstream retreads.The new movie’s late-pandemic timing and the ubiquity of masking, however, add a fresh layer to the psychological underpinnings of both films. Perhaps never before have we understood so clearly how much of our ability to trust rests on being able to see the entirety of the human face.Goodnight MommyRated R for disturbing dreams and dirty dancing. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. Watch on Amazon Prime. More

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      ‘The African Desperate’ Review: Double Speak

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      Martine Syms’s whip-smart satire brings the invisible, everyday negotiations of a Black artist to startlingly visual life.Martine Syms’s debut feature derives its title from a Freudian slip. In the opening scene, as Palace (Diamond Stingily), a sculptor at an upstate New York art school, describes her thesis project to an all-white faculty panel, she mispronounces “African diaspora” as “African desperate.” It sounds nonsensical, but no one bats an eye, and the professors continue with their jargon-riddled commentary. This is the art world, a place as open to absurdity as it is closed to diversity. Here, people say made-up terms with grave conviction yet are incredulous that a Black woman like Palace has made it to the Venice Biennale.Drawn from Syms’s own experiences as a visual artist, “The African Desperate” is less an art-school parody as it is a portrait of existential incongruity, where contempt mingles with deep affection. After being anointed a Master of Fine Arts, a frustrated Palace is ready to pack up and leave, but she stays on for 24 final hours of debauchery, coaxed by friends, drugs and potential lovers.As Palace stumbles through a series of neon-hued encounters, ranging in tone from slapstick to dark comedy, Syms brings the invisible, everyday negotiations of a Black artist to startlingly visual life with layers of images and sounds. When a white classmate says she’s never heard of the Jamaican writer Sylvia Wynter, Palace doesn’t react, but a meme flashes briefly on-screen with the caption: “What if I told you there were Black theorists?”There’s an echo of Luis Buñuel’s “The Exterminating Angel” in “The African Desperate,” though Palace’s stuckness in her off-putting milieu is less surreal than tragically banal. As alienating as art school might be, it’s also a refuge for our eccentric, orange-haired heroine.The African DesperateNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters. More