Daniel Kaluuya

Nope

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OJ on horseback

Nope is what you say when heroics are required but you’ve decided on an impulse that absolutely no way are you going to do what’s required. Maidens to be saved, beasts to be slain or dim passageways to be entered, whatever it is, the answer is no. Nope is also the return to form for Jordan Peele, the actor turned director whose conceptually brillant Get Out – Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner done as a horror movie – was followed up by the less conceptually innovative but nonetheless very tidy Us. Nope is Jaws done as a sci-fi, a tale of a big something lurking somewhere out “there” in the sky somewhere and … Read more

Judas and the Black Messiah

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Daniel Kaluuya as Fred Hampton

Part history lesson, part undercover thriller, Judas and the Black Messiah takes it as read that the audience knows the bare-bones facts about the Black Panther movement. And just in case they don’t, there are three powerful performers in key roles to help bounce over the gaps. These are the shapeshifting Daniel Kaluuya as Black Panther “Chairman” Fred Hampton, dead at 21, killed while asleep in nothing less than a state assassination. LaKeith Stanfield as Bill O’Neal, the mole who fed information about the Panthers to the police. And Jesse Plemons as Roy Mitchell, the FBI handler running O’Neal. We meet O’Neal before we meet the Panthers – he’s an audacious car thief … Read more