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Folk tales have always existed to give shape and meaning to the formless randomness of ordinary life, and to account for why certain occurrences — the death of a parent, the rejection of a lover, the rivalry between brothers — can have an impact on our psyches disproportionate to their un-mythic scale. This is a function of storytelling brought to gloriously vivid, lyrical life in Ghana-born, Brooklyn-based Blitz Bazawule’s intimate yet resplendent debut “The Burial of Kojo,” in which until it’s impossible to tell which is which.

Bursting onto the screen in striking image after striking image, the film is a collection of fragments about Kojo (Joseph Otsiman) the sad-eyed, shiftless but charming father of little Esi. We meet him in his recurring dream-that-might-not-be-a-dream, narrated in melodic, accented English by Esi as an adult (Ama K. Ababrese). Kojo stares out at the breaking waves of the seashore where an incongruous...

Beasts of No Nation

Written and directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga

USA, 2015

Although the achievements of director Cary Joji Fukunaga in the first season of True Detective have never been widely disputed, the disastrous second season, produced without Fukunaga at the helm, made his contribution all the more apparent. The astonishing six-minute tracking shot midway through season one was an obvious high point, but Fukunaga embedded visual information throughout the season which brought the setting and characters to life. Beyond the convoluted plot, season two missed these sorts of details, leaving a bland detective show without enough aesthetic idiosyncrasies to make it compelling.

Fukunaga brings the eye which served him so well on True Detective to Beasts of No Nation, the first feature film distributed by Netflix. With a screenplay and cinematography also by Fukunaga, the film adapts the 2005 novel of the same name by Uzodinma Iweala.

Like Iweala’s novel,...

Over the weekend, cinema goers as well as Netflix subscribers were both given access to one of the year’s more intriguing awards contenders. In some ways, the impending Oscar campaign for Beasts of No Nation is unlike any that we’ve ever seen before. Beyond just being a dark film from Cary Joji Fukunaga that might be a tough sell to voters, it’s the first attempt by streaming service Netflix to appeal to members of the Academy. They’ve begun making inroads with the Emmys, but the Oscars is a whole different sort of beast, no pun intended. As such, this is one awards season subplot worth following closely. The movie is an adaptation of the novel by Uzodinma Iweala. It centers on Agu (played brilliantly by newcomer Abraham Attah), a young boy in an African village within an unnamed country who is essentially forced into becoming a child solider.