Keith David on his incredible career: ‘I want you to understand Black men as full-scope human beings’

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The hard-working character actor has over 400 screen credits, from The Thing to Platoon to Rick and Morty, and he isn’t slowing down any time soon Keith David’s voice precedes him. Deep and resonant, with mellifluous notes that hark back to his boys’ choir days, it has spent decades inhabiting warriors, gods, rogues, fathers and a welter of cartoon oddballs. Before David appears in a Zoom window from his Los Angeles home office, his voice reverberates through my tinny laptop speakers like a foghorn. “Can you see me now?” he booms once our connection is established after fits and starts. “OK. Outside of technology, you know I’m … OK.” He fizzes about the project he just wrapped: a dark buddy comedy called My Friend Jim, in which he stars opposite Rob Lowe. It’s the latest entry in a seemingly unstinting slew of productions that have kept him booked and busy since the late 1970s, from The Thing to Platoon to There’s Something About Mary to Nope. Continue reading... from Film | The Gua...
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Young Soul Rebels review – life-giving ode to diversity in silver jubilee London

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Part thriller, part drama, part comedy, Isaac Julien’s urban pastoral set in the aftermath of a homophobic murder still feels fresh, buoyant and likable

Isaac Julien’s feature from 1991 is rereleased after more than 30 years and it still feels fresh, buoyant, likable and emotionally open. It is a paean to diversity and intersectionality set in east London during the 1977 Queen’s silver jubilee, with some cheeky jibes about middle-class outlaws and “St Martins” art-school types (St Martins being Julien’s own alma mater). Young Soul Rebels takes the form of an urban pastoral, but is also a kind of romantic comedy, a coming-of-age drama about friendship and a thriller about a brutal homophobic murder – and there’s actually a clever plot twist about the victim’s tape-deck which another type of film might have made much more of, maybe in the manner of Francis Ford Coppola.

A young black man is murdered while cruising in a park and the news has different effects on his friends, Chris (Valentine Nonyela) and Caz (Mo Sesay) who run a pirate radio station called Soul Patrol. Chris is stunned but Caz is all the more determined to throw himself into his music and maybe get them both a job on the local white-owned radio station, Metropolitan, which has a huge patriotic crown in the lobby and a life-sized cutout of the Queen, waving. (I’m surprised no one’s done that for King Charles.) Chris is angry that Caz is not as grief-stricken as he is, and pulls away from him into a relationship with stroppy white punk Billibud (Jason Durr); meanwhile, biracial and bisexual Caz faces bigotry from his black friends and he retreats from Chris into a new relationship with a production assistant at the radio station: this is Tracy, in which role Sophie Okonedo made a terrifically warm debut.

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