MURTADA ELFADL

The militant group Boko Haram has been a dangerous and ubiquitous presence in Nigeria and its neighboring countries for many years. In “Le Spectre de Boko Haram,” Cameroonian filmmaker Cyrielle Raingou focuses on their presence in a small village in northern Cameroon, on the border with Nigeria. Her observational and gritty documentary registers the impact of Boko Haram’s actions on three school-age children, brothers Mohamed and Ibrahim and their classmate Falta. The nonfiction film is a cle...

Now that TÁR has been nominated for 6 Oscars, listen to the three episodes we recorded dissecting the film and Cate Blanchett’s performance. All in one spot.

“The Locksmith” has the right elements for a crime thriller: an ex-con seeking revenge and being chased by a vengeful cop while trying to protect his family. Ryan Phillippe plays the title character, Miller, introduced in the middle of a robbery. Things go wrong and his cohort gets killed. Flash forward 10 years, and he’s out of prison. In the present, he reconnects with his daughter (Madeleine Guilbot) who’s in the care of her policewoman mother (Kate Bosworth). Of course he will be pulled b...

Eileen is a movie that will launch both endless debates and deep devotion. It’s bound to divide people, as evidenced by the stunned silence of its audience at the end of its Sundance premiere.

Two hands caressing each other. A long embrace between two people where we only see their arms and backs. A child’s hand on a fishing rod as her father instructs her, off camera, on how to catch fish. All Dirt Roads Taste Of Salt luxuriates in these montages. Slow as molasses and narratively opaque, it’s a movie that demands patience from the audience...

Saint Omer haunts from its first image. A woman holding a baby walks on the beach towards the sea while the loud waves overwhelm the soundtrack. In another place, another woman wakes up from a nightmare calling for her mother. In two precise scenes, director Alice Diop establishes the stakes of her story—France’s selection for the Oscars’ International Feature category—with clarity and confidence.
Soon we are launched deep into the stories of these women. First, we meet Rama (Kayije Kagame), ...

“Everyone around me is a narcissist,” says one of the characters in Jesse Eisenberg’s When You Finish Saving The World. The line gets a big laugh but it spotlights the tough task that Eisenberg, making his feature writing and directing debuts, sets out for himself; making a movie about two characters who...

A tale as old as time; a fallen hero seeks redemption through one last mission. In “New Gods: Yang Jian,” the eponymous hero is actually a god, who now scrapes by as a mercenary for hire. When a mysteriously seductive singer asks him to find a family member, the adventure turns personal. The latest in the New Gods saga — a sequel to “New Gods: Nezha Reborn,” released in the U.S. on Netflix — “Yang Jian” offers vivid and exciting animation matched with traditional Chinese mythic storytelling t...

After starring roles on the small screen, including as an erstwhile Marvel superhero, Mike Colter makes the most out of his first leading role in a film
Mike Colter acknowledges that most people know him for playing the eponymous character in Marvel’s Luke Cage. However, in a career that has spanned almost two decades Colter has been able to play a variety of roles, not just that indestructible superhero on Netflix. He was Lemond Bishop, the powerful Chicago drug lord in the Emmy-winning CBS ...

Anna Diop has the range, and the evidence is in her performance in Nanny. In a film that is both a psychological character study and a horror film, the task facing the actor was two-fold, playing one character but in two distinct performances. In the first, she’s earthy and grounded, delivering all the complexities of a woman missing the son she left behind as she navigates a tricky job with demanding employers and falling in love despite her aching heart. In the second, she’s loose and unhin...

We first hear Jonathan Majors in Devotion before we see him, establishing the character’s idiosyncrasies. His Jesse Brown, the first Black aviator in U.S. Navy history, is muttering to himself inside the locker room, thinking he’s alone. Later on, that moment is expanded upon in a pivotal scene. Again he’s alone in the locker room, but this time he’s repeating all the racial expletives people have thrown at him. As the camera comes closer we see that he’s breathing sharply, tears coming out o...

Lydia Tár is a mammoth character and Cate Blanchett comes at her with gusto. In writer-director Todd Field’s masterpiece, she’s a world-class symphony conductor in free fall. And the character is so specifically written that many thought she was a real person. That’s due in large part to Blanchett’s precise, controlled, yet somehow also free and magnetic performance. It’s a symphony in which Blanchett gets to play all her instruments—her fluency with accents, her modulated gestures, a gracefu...

Is there anyone more popular in pop culture now than Keke Palmer? It seems that everything she said or did in 2022 went viral. She’s a constant meme generator and people love to quote her. Yet there’s more reason for this constant idolization than just her charming outsize temperament: Palmer is an accomplished actress who gave one of the best performances of the year in Jordan Peele’s horror satire, Nope. From the very first moment of her character’s introduction, where she delivers a monolo...

Playing goodness and honesty on screen can be a tall order. There are no big gestures or long monologues to rely on. You risk going unnoticed or being eclipsed by the bigger characters around you. However, Lesley Manville finds a way to beguile in Mrs. Harris Goes To Paris. Manville’s eponymous character is a middle-aged cleaner in London with a dream to buy a couture dress from the famous Dior fashion house. Mrs. Harris dares to follow her dreams no matter how frivolous, while Manville dares...

Naomi Ackie is having a moment ... you could even call it “One Moment In Time.” The British actor, who was first noticed alongside Florence Pugh in 2016’s Lady Macbeth and has since appeared in the TV comedies Master Of None and The End Of The F***ing World, and a little movie called Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker, is leading a film for the first time in her career. And she’s playing a true icon to boot: Whitney Houston.
To portray the legendary diva, Ackie tells The A.V. Club, she immersed...