In the French director Catherine Breillat’s film “Fat Girl,” from 2001, two adolescent sisters go on summer holiday with their parents near the seaside. The older sister, Elena, is thin, beautiful, and somewhat weak-minded. The younger sister—the fat girl of the title—has a plain face and a sharp tongue. Elena begins to date an Italian … Read more
Yoruba movie star Kunle Afod says that in his 38 years of experience as an actor and director, he has learnt that “there is no friend or foe anywhere.” Afod, while speaking with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Wednesday in Lagos, said that nobody should be perceived as a permanent friend or enemy … Read more
RaMell Ross walks us through a pivotal scene in his début fiction feature, “Nickel Boys,” an adaptation of the novel by Colson Whitehead. Ross has spent years honing his skills as a visual artist, teacher, and documentary filmmaker, and his work questions how we see, and how these mediums have historically depicted, Black bodies. For … Read more
In May, I joined the director Todd Solondz for lunch at Union Square Café, the swank Manhattan bistro. The restaurant opened in 1985, the same year that Solondz dropped out of the master’s program in film at N.Y.U.’s Tisch School of the Arts, a short walk downtown. His last student project was “Schatt’s Last Shot,” … Read more
Leaders and representatives of various guilds and associations in the Nigerian film industry have pledged their support for the campaign against smoking and consumption of harmful substances in Nollywood films. (NAN) reports that the actors committed a National Stakeholders Engagement on Smoke-Free Nollywood held in Enugu on Tuesday. The National Film and Video Censors Board … Read more
Will win: Da’Vine Joy Randolph, “The Holdovers”Should win: Danielle Brooks, “The Color Purple”Should’ve been nominated: Hong Chau, “Showing Up” BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR Sterling K. Brown, “American Fiction”Robert De Niro, “Killers of the Flower Moon”Robert Downey, Jr., “Oppenheimer”Ryan Gosling, “Barbie”Mark Ruffalo, “Poor Things” Everything is coming together beautifully for Robert Downey, Jr., a three-time Oscar nominee … Read more
If the Oscars are meant to display the film industry’s ideal image of itself, the choice of “Killers of the Flower Moon” and “Barbie” among the year’s best movies is evidence that the spirit of artistic audacity has survived the age of superheroic domination. Those two films are high on my list of favorites, too, … Read more
