Directing TV used to be a glass ceiling - you'd maybe get to leave a fingerprint or two on whatever the project was, but essentially you were a gun for hire who'd statically realise the showrunner's ideas. Now it's a different landscape - the Golden Age has led to the person behind the camera defining an episode as much as the writer, something that was an odd exception even five years ago. Nobody's profited from this more than Cary Fukunaga. He directed every episode of the near-perfect first season of True Detective (he was astute enough to turn down the sophomore offering), in the process turning himself from exciting cinematographer with an interesting CV to one of the biggest names in the visual medium. So hopes were naturally high for Beasts Of No Nation, his first post-Yellow King project. And boy did he deliver. There's the visual panache that's become his calling card executed with contextual care, but the way he crafts the story of Abu, an orphan in a war-torn African country who becomes indoctrinated as a child soldier to Idris Elba's war lord is astute and involving. It's so measured that while Elba gives a powerhouse performance, it's Abraham Attah's final monologue on his broken psyche that sticks with you; young actor and director working together building to something shocking. Oh, it was also the first movie ever distributed primarily through Netflix. But the film's so good that's hardly worth commenting on any more. Read the full review here.
