Dr. Nate Samuels (Idris Elba), guilt-stricken over his handling of his wife’s passing, escorts his two teenage daughters, the rebellious Meredith (Iyana Halley) and her younger, within an inch of rebelling sister Norah (Leah Jeffries), on an African safari in their mother’s village. Rather than mending fences, the trio and …
The cradle of humanity becomes a crucible of its opposite. Netflix's first foray into theaters makes the most of the big screen's additional square footage by placing its small subject on a very large canvas: specifically, Agu (Abraham Attah), an African boy on the cusp of adolescence, navigating his way …
Preening action film about a five-man commando team with a delicate moral sense and robust appetite for fun. Idris Elba acts as though he were playing a real character instead of a video-game simulacrum. With Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Zoë Saldaña, Chris Evans, and Jason Patric; directed by Sylvain White.
A gruesome serial killer is terrorizing London while brilliant but disgraced detective John Luther (Idris Elba) sits behind bars. Haunted by his failure to capture the cyber psychopath who now taunts him, Luther decides to break out of prison to finish the job by any means necessary. The film also …
Idris Elba stars as the late, beloved South African leader, who was not always so beloved.
Word-pusher Aaron Sorkin makes his debut as a director, and whaddya know, he directs a lot like he writes: fast and smooth, bordering on slick. But just bordering, because love demands at least a soupçon of sincerity, and he’s found someone to love in Molly Bloom (Jessica Chastain). She’s a …
With all flights cancelled, a neurosurgeon who’s desperately needed in the ER (Idris Elba) and a journalist en route to her own wedding (Kate Winslet) split the cost of a charter plane, hoping to slip past a pending snowstorm. No sooner do they take off than pilot Beau Bridges earns …
Hollywood’s way of paying reparations for its slavish devotion to white serial killers. The narrative kicks off with the soon-to-be liberated psycho killer Idris Elba’s backstory, dispatched by way of a newscast played under the opening-credit ride to a probation hearing. It gets staler. For a third of the picture, …
Director Guillermo Del Toro goes for the gold, offering up a robots-punch-monsters movie tailor-made for the international market: modeled after Japanese anime, set largely in Hong Kong, featuring Chinese, Russian, and Australian heroes operating giant robots named with a German word, and offering a Brit (Idris Elba) as its emotional …
A miracle-debunker from LSU struggles to explain the sequence of Old Testament plagues visited upon a Bayou backwater called Haven. A sense of awe never arises, only a sense of awful. Hilary Swank and Idris Elba excepted and absolved. With David Morrissey, Stephen Rea, and AnnaSophia Robb; directed by Stephen …
Tangled intrigues in the London underworld, given the Guy Ritchie treatment, derivative, flashy, shallow, callous, utterly resistible. Depression, setting in early, deepens sharply at the finish: a written pledge of a sequel. With Gerard Butler, Mark Strong, Tom Wilkinson, Thandie Newton, Idris Elba, Karel Roden, Toby Kebbell, and Jeremy Piven.
Elementary heist thriller rendered unwatchable by director John Luessenhop’s hopped-up visuals, the cameraman so excited (often over nothing) that he can’t hold his instrument steady, pressing in so close as to lose sight of what we’re supposed to be looking at, always a step behind the action, a telephoto lens …
If you could make one dream come true, what would you wish for? An R rated romantic fantasy from George Miller (Mad Max[es], The Witches of Eastwick, Babe: Pig in the City) starring Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba.
Cheap thrills of the seeing-things variety: hallucinations, dreams, nothing with staying power. The initial edge thus turns dull in a hurry. But the upside-down heads — of dog and man — are creepy effects, and the climactic exorcism of a dybbuk (respectful observance of tradition), from the wispy body of …