(CNN)Welcome to movie-awards season, arsenic 2 films arriving this week, "Belfast" and "Passing," look backmost to the past done the lustrous filter of glorious achromatic and white -- the erstwhile seeing Ireland's tumult successful the 1960s via the eyes of a child, the second America's radical past successful Harlem during the 1920s.
Written, produced and directed by Kenneth Branagh, "Belfast" isn't precisely autobiographical but chronicles a communicative and clip that the histrion and filmmaker knows well, arsenic unrest involving hostility by Protestants toward Catholics roiled the boy's close-knit community. The resulting tumult has caused a cash-strapped household to statesman contemplating leaving, unsettling nine-year-old Buddy (newcomer Jude Hill), who wants to enactment successful a municipality wherever everybody knows his name.
The movie begins successful colour earlier fading to achromatic and achromatic arsenic Branagh launches the assemblage backmost to Belfast successful 1969, wherever Buddy's parents ("50 Shades of Grey's" Jamie Dornan and "Outlander's" Caitriona Balfe) combat and statement and fret astir the future.
"We're surviving successful a civilian war," dada says, uncovering his woman much resistant to leaving down each that she's known.
Beautifully shot, and sentimental without being saccharine, the movie presents Buddy arsenic a kid importantly influenced by American movies and TV, watching things similar "Star Trek," "High Noon" and "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," from which helium derives his consciousness of heroism and justice. (He's besides shown speechmaking a Thor comic book, a sly notation to an earlier Branagh directorial effort.)
The formed is sensational, including a scene-stealing Ciarán Hinds and Judi Dench arsenic Buddy's caring grandparents, with the lad spending a batch of clip particularly with grandpa arsenic his parents conflict to get by.
In the property notes Branagh compares the movie to manager Pedro Almodóvar's "Pain and Glory" arsenic a fictionalized enactment based connected his aboriginal life, which surely falls nether the "Write what you know" category. Alfonso Cuarón's "Roma," besides changeable successful achromatic and white, reflects different caller illustration of a movie infused with specified idiosyncratic detail.
Yet specified films tin besides go a self-indulgent trap, a imaginable misstep that Branagh deftly avoids successful a communicative that conveys his fondness for this play and these radical (augmented by a opus people from Van Morrison) arsenic good arsenic its ugliness.
Branagh has directed each kinds of movies implicit the past 30 years, from his predominant adaptations of Shakespeare to "Cinderella" and the aforementioned "Thor." It's possibly appropriate, though, that his astir idiosyncratic movie would besides crook retired to beryllium his crowning achievement.
"Passing" besides comes from an actor, Rebecca Hall, moving down the camera -- present for the archetypal clip arsenic some writer and manager -- adapting a 1929 publication that delivers a almighty showcase for Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga ("Loving").
Thompson's Irene, a doctor's wife, has really flirted with "passing" successful bid to walk clip successful White society, but she's jolted erstwhile she reconnects with puerility person Clare (Negga), who has taken the enactment to the extreme, surviving arsenic a White pistillate and marrying a affluent White antheral (Alexander Skarsgard).
Yet Clare's discontent and consciousness of what she's sacrificed becomes a increasing contented arsenic she begins to walk much clip with Irene, astatine what appears to beryllium important peril should her deception beryllium exposed.
In this case, shooting successful achromatic and achromatic makes a connection that reinforces the film's cardinal tension, which is simply a satellite arsenic seen successful Black and White, with nary shades successful between. While the cardinal performances, particularly Negga, are terrific, the 1 drawback would beryllium that the communicative moves somewhat dilatory successful getting backmost to Clare's tale, which somewhat overshadows that of Irene -- who is joined to a doc (André Holland) and chiefly serves arsenic an uncomfortable perceiver of this unsafe balancing act.
Hall captures however the 2 women chafe against the strategy and its limitations successful antithetic ways, and shoots the movie with a haunting, astir hypnotic quality. That atmosphere, successful a sense, is stronger than the story, but it's much than capable to marque "Passing" a movie that shouldn't beryllium passed by.
"Belfast" premieres Nov. 12 successful US theaters, and "Passing" premieres Nov. 10 connected Netflix. Both are rated PG-13.
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