Courtesy photo
JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH
(in theaters and HBO Max)
 During the late 1960s, charismatic leader Fred Hampton (David Kaluuya) serves as the chairman of the Black Panther Party in Chicago.
After getting arrested for stealing cars and posing as an FBI agent, William OâNeal (Lakeith Stanfield) is recruited by the FBI to infiltrate the Black Panthers and to report to FBI Agent Roy Mitchell (Jesse Plemons) about the activities of Hampton.
Shaka King directs this stunning recreation of the racial inequities of the time with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover (Martin Sheen) demanding that Panther leaders be captured. Kaluuya gives a powerful performance as young orator Hampton, who exhibits bravery and strength while pursuing justice for Black people.
In this powerful 19th century romance set in the American Northeast, Abigail (Katherine Waterston), a farmer’s wife, and her new neighbor Tallie (Vanessa Kirby) find themselves irrevocably drawn to each other. A grieving Abigail tends to her withdrawn husband Dyer (Casey Affleck) as free-spirit Tallie bristles at the jealous control of her husband Finney (Christopher Abbott), when together their intimacy begins to fill a void in each other's lives they never knew existed. Directed by Mona Fastvold and scripted by Jim Shepard and Ron Hansen, The World To Come explores how isolation is overcome by the intensity of human connection.
‘The World to Come’ Film Review: 2 Lonely Women Find Romance in Bleak Frontier Drama
The bleakness of frontier life underscores the emotional anguish of a pair of unhappily married couplesElizabeth Weitzman | March 1, 2021 @ 6:45 AM Last Updated: March 1, 2021 @ 7:24 AM
Bleecker Street
“With little pride and less hope, we begin the new year.” So starts Mona Fastvold’s mournful frontier romance “The World to Come,” on January 1st of 1856. (The film’s Sundance screening follows a premiere at last summer’s Venice Film Festival and precedes an imminent theatrical release.)
The words are written in the diary of young wife Abigail (Katherine Waterston), who reads them as an ongoing narration of her inner thoughts and torments. She and her husband, Dyer (co-producer Casey Affleck), have recently lost their little girl to diphtheria, and the space between them is miles wide. He has channeled all his emotions into their struggling farm, a hardscrabble plot