LaKeith Stanfield

Die My Love

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Grace and Jackson in the car

I’m amazed at how many of “the best films of 2025” have left me pretty cold. Die My Love joins the list alongside the likes of Sinners, The Mastermind and Bugonia – everyone loves them, but I thought they were just OK. I did like Die My Love, though, particularly the florid performance by Jennifer Lawrence as a woman losing her mind in a severe case of post-partum depression. Possibly. It’s never entirely spelled out, but then that’s often the case with diagnosing the baby blues too. It’s a one-woman show offering co-star billing but not oodles to do to Robert Pattinson, who plays Jackson, the partner of Grace (Lawrence), who has brought … 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