Lorraine Ali

The Many Saints of Newark might have played better as a limited series rather than a truncated self-contained production, with the potential for a deeper story to unfold over several impending episodes.

The message — explore and embrace the rich legacy of your ancestors because it’s part of you — may sound simple, but in Beyoncé Knowles-Carter’s hands, it’s hardly a rudimentary platitude. With Black Is King, she creates a pageant of sight and sound honoring the Black diaspora, weaving a collection of vibrant, profound and defiantly creative scenarios into one abstract and mostly cohesive narrative.

Remarkably, the new Netflix movie takes the same pathetic approach. It’s as if the film arrived to the streaming service in a bubble, unaware that the culture has moved on and that Netflix is brimming with content written, directed and starring strong women. In this horribly timed release, the debasement of multiple women is supposed to be all in fun — and funny, because The Crüe is having a good time and it’s rock ’n’ roll, baby!

It’s raw, powerful, moving and candid. This is what it is like to be on the ground in Aleppo.