The Boys Presents: Diabolical

Isn’t that all we really want from the movies? Brain soft, Gucci soothing, and that’s all she wrote.

Courage, deceit and rage are displayed in powerful performances by Stansfield, Kaluuya and Dominique Fishback as Hampton’s wife.

Both an acting showcase from some of the finest actors working today and a necessary reckoning with the past, Judas and the Black Messiah is w...

Hall breathes life and light into it in a way that lends a weight of beauty and honesty to its immersion into a world of purposeful pretense.

Branagh has directed all kinds of movies over the past 30 years… It’s perhaps appropriate, though, that his most personal film woul...

Ruth Negga and Tessa Thompson complement one another by portraying characters who exist at opposite ends of the same spectrum.

A sickened rage and psychological nuance courses through every meticulously arranged frame of the film.

Psychologically it’s not at all complex, but the film’s variation on a particular type of self-denial is tragic and quite unusual...

Ruth Negga shines in Rebecca Hall’s adaptation of the Nella Larsen novel.

Hall’s a tremendous actor, working here behind the camera, and what Thompson and Negga accomplish on screen in this extraordinarily deta...

A series of gorgeously shot episodes that are often dramatically oblique in isolation but combine to form a mesmerising, deeply disquieting ex...

Is Craig’s poignant farewell the best of the actor’s run? I’d put the emotionality of Skyfall and the eye-popping Casino Royale a...

The characters of Passing may feel uncomfortable giving voice to the shifting identities and desires and expectations they experience. But Passing...

You may be tempted to watch this ambitious package of shorts in a single sitting, though these animated appetizers are worth savoring for how...

Hall emphasises the moral grey area by shooting in black and white, an ingenious choice that allows her to light Clare as black or white, depending...

The stars bring it all home by understanding how to say a lot, while also saying very little. There’s a great deal of subtext in every s...

Judas and the Black Messiah is a stunning feature debut from director Shaka King, and it would be worth watching for the performances alone. B...

Passing is as richly felt as it is carefully conceived.

Much of "Passing" could be a stage play: people talking in confined spaces, the confinement figurative as well as literal. It’s a c...

Whether this is a one-time passion project or the beginnings of an ongoing move from acting into directing in her career focus, Hall has craft...

It’s one of the rare adaptations that catches the essence of literary style in its images and its tones.

Hall’s touch is unerring, deceptively delicate, quiet and immaculate, like that final fall of snow.

Lovers of classic Hammer horror films should sink their teeth into writer/director Sean Ellis’s gory werewolf tale.

Larsen never set out to deliver answers; just rich, searching stories rounded in real experience – precisely what Hall has translated to the b...

An impressive filmmaking debut from actor-turned-director Rebecca Hall which largely avoids cliché or soapboxing about race, featuring two excellen...

"Get Out" alums Daniel Kaluuya and LaKeith Stanfield magnetically reteam for Shaka King’s potent true story…

The entire film exists in this perpetual state of a deceptively gentle push and pull. It’s a masterful balance of tone.

With run times less than a quarter of an hour each, it’s perfect for an entertaining evening binge. (Just put the kids to bed first – and...

Both leads excel: Negga impish but mournful; Thompson hemmed in by race, gender, all of it.

Everything about Denis Villeneuve that keeps me from loving his previous works really works here… [Villeneuve’s] chilly, inhuman quality real...

Hall seems to have grasped the story as a performer would, prioritizing the potency of the characters' interior lives over the plot… She draws...

Negga is altogether extraordinary, a sort of human mirage of aspirational perfection and psychological delusion, shimmering with warmth and mischie...

There is such sensitivity and intelligence in the performances from Thompson and Negga and the cinematography from Eduard Grau and production desig...

The Boys Presents: Diabolical is a reminder of just how gross and fun a world of superpowered sociopaths can be.

Negga is heartbreaking as a woman who seems to recognize, despite fun-loving appearances, that time is running out on her ruse.

Some of the shorts are absolutely fantastic, playing with the trappings of the show’s world to create funny or heartbreaking stories that stand on...

What’s most striking about Hall’s direction is her visual acuity, her gift for composing images that are gorgeous, disorienting and str...

Hall and the actors navigate this with such precision that every frame, every shot, every action seems perfectly of a piece.

In the end, Passing will leave its audience gasping and then framing and reframing in their minds a story ripe with ineffable realities.

Passing is as good as its performances and rests on their shoulders. Negga is the film’s powerful secret weapon, proving every bit that she d...

While the standard isn’t uniform across all eight episodes, there are no calamitous "misses" in the mix. Each entry lands a couple of solid jo...

Thompson and Negga are both tremendous.

A witty, sweetly told drama about a hearing 17-year-old girl in a deaf Massachusetts fishing family.

Diabolical is meant for fans of the universe, by clear fans of the universe, an ambitious and lighter antidote to the more cynical and dark parent...

Hall’s feel for the period and her gift for folding potent discourse into the attractive visuals kicks it up to the level of high art.

A tragedy that’s more squalid than it is grandiose, and is all the more moving for it.

This film is nothing short of masterful.

Whether you’re a fan of The Boys or not, you’ll enjoy the animated shorts in The Boys Presents: Diabolical, mainly because they tell good stor...

Rebecca Hall makes an impressive debut as a writer/director with Passing, a rare film that allows the interior life of its female characters t...

Starring Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga in two of the year’s best performances, this mesmerizing film about race, class and gender identity in...

Eight for Silver really gets under your skin, and it feels dangerous and dirty.

Although this is the first film written and directed by Hall… it is an astonishingly confident one.

Ruth Negga and Tessa Thompson meet the intense acting demands of actress Rebecca Hall’s gorgeous directorial debut.

[I]t feels like an actor’s film: a delicate, melancholy study in black and white, nearly every scene filled with careful silences and subtext.

It’s a tremendous debut effort for Hall, whose work seems more like that of a seasoned veteran than a first-timer.

Hall clearly wants her movie to be more than a passing fancy and, in terms of cinematography and performances, it’s truly extraordinary.

The acting is satisfyingly rich, as is often the case when an actor directs a movie.

I devoured the book as soon as I’d watched it, and Hall’s imaginative achievement only grew in the process. It’s a marvellou...

A psychologically rich character study that slowly builds in tension until it becomes nearly unbearable.

Despite its imperfections, this is a beautifully crafted piece of filmmaking and one that heralds an exciting new direction for Hall.

None of it is required viewing for the main series and non-fans won’t be converted into full-on devotees with this short spinoff. Nevertheless, it...

With an incredible ensemble and an elegant eye, Rebecca Hall’s "Passing" is a high-wire act of a debut that tackles its several thorny issues...

It’s in all the words unsaid that the film’s narrative prowess resides.

A good director can make you feel the vibrating summer heat, the hushed tranquility of a winter night, and the deepest feelings of a pers...