Jake Alda Coffey’s review published on Letterboxd:
Second viewing.
Rewatched this 48 hours later and yup.... it’s still great. Something I noticed upon my rewatch is how great the ending is. It flows so well!
In my last review of this movie I talked about LaKeith Stanfield and barely even mentioned Daniel Kaluuya, so let’s talk about Kaluuya now. Kaluuya was always a great actor. I first came across him when he was in an episode of Black Mirror back in 2014. He was great in that but his breakout role didn’t happen until 2017 when he played Chris Washington in the horror classic movie Get Out. His performance in that was extremely grueling. But His best performance, in my opinion, occurs in Judas and the Black Messiah. It doesn’t feel performative, which is a trap many actors fall into when playing real life people. His posture, the way he stay, the dialect in his speech are all performed flawlessly. He’s been getting lots of Oscar buzz, and I definitely think he’ll get a nomination. Hell at this point, there could be a serious shot he could win. He’s earned it.
I’m also surprised Shaka King has been getting no Oscar buzz?? He absolutely knocked it out of the park with this.
I’m going to be rewatching one more movie at the festival and then I’m officially done with Sundance 😭
UPDATE: my festival pass ended so I was unable to watch the last movie I wanted to watch. Well, this was a great experience. Hopefully I get to enjoy it in person next year!!
