Robert Daniels

The ticking clock makes The Midnight Sky a post-apocalyptic survivalist space film whose narrative is so overloaded that the emotional weight offers zero gravity.

With a jukebox parade that will invite viewers to inevitably sing-along to classic earworms, How Can You Mend a Broken Heart is the Bee Gees documentary you’ve been waiting for. It’s a fitting tribute to their unending love for each other.

Education ends “Small Axe” on unsuspectingly grand terms. Yet the compact 63-minute coming-of-age film never loses its soft devoted touch. And McQueen, already an incredible filmmaker, shows another facet to his immense range.

Alex Wheatle combines the relevant themes that guide the prior “Small Axe” installments: music as an escape from one’s environment, police brutality, and a character adrift from his community — yet the writing struggles to connect the major plot points for big picture interpretations of Alex’s cultural self-education.

Avis loses the novel’s sincerity by watering down Sewell’s animal welfare plea. In this update, the humans are not as villainous. Beauty is not as prominent. And the novel’s mustang spirit diminishes into a ho-hum horse movie.

While the film boasts a strong ensemble, all of whom give fantastic performances, especially Davis, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is Boseman’s movie from beginning to end. He shows his full range. All the tools, from his charm to piques of anger, that fated him for stardom.

The father-son drama in Embattled might win some rounds, but the abundance of clichés leads to a loss overall.

Hillbilly Elegy is a prime example of a systemic failure, from script to craft to acting.

Remi Weekes’ feature directorial debut not only exposes the horrors of the immigration system, but mines survivor guilt for a clever, bone-chilling thriller.

Like the limited legislative change that has occurred due to the underappreciated efforts of these valiant activists, I wish Snyder’s Us Kids resulted in more.

Featuring a breakout performance from an enrapturing Wong-Loi-Sing, and a beguiling turn from Siriboe, Really Love is a timeless black romance. Kristi Williams is an assured new voice already nestling herself inside audiences’ hearts.

Boyega is superhuman here. Because no matter the decade, Logan isn’t an easy character to understand with regards to decision making. Yet Boyega’s sincerity holds us in this story, even when we can’t fully understand the why behind Logan.

Mangrove is rebellion. Mangrove is liberation. McQueen’s Mangrove, in its every personal minute, is love and devotion, not just to the now, or even the past, but for the progress of Black generations yet to come.

While many will draw parallels between scenes involving civil unrest to the events of 2020, the philosophical differences between Hayden and Abbie — cultural versus electoral revolution, respectively — ring closely to the debates raging within progressive politics today, and actually prove more interesting.

A brisk film that could do with twenty more minutes, Green’s “Good Joe Bell” has its heart in the right place, but the limited gaze the writers and director offer withholds this redemptive tale from being the uplifting critique of homophobia and bullying that it needs to be.

Lover’s Rock is a personal love note, not only to an era and a culture, but to the days of youth and all-night parties.

Pollards’ MLK/FBI is more than an eye-opening look at an icon, and the evil forces working to tear him apart, it’s a critical chapter that should be imprinted inside every white American’s heart. Especially right now.

Concrete Cowboy breathes new life into the western genre and sheds a brighter light on a faction of Black culture that was largely unknown by white audiences until today.

David Byrne’s American Utopia is an ideal world; it’s exhilarating and joyful; and Byrne and Lee actually do make a perfect pair.

It’s a fun soulful documentary that’s rarely ever invasive, depicting the type of statesman we’re sorely missing today.

Brendan Walsh’s cold survivalist thriller, Centigrade, is a creatively crafted claustrophobic study of a fractured marriage. Strongly acted, the drama wallows in melancholy while presenting peaks of hope amid its simple icy setting.

Though the filmmakers hoped to balance the historical atrocities of slavery with contemporary racial oppression, Antebellum — yet another unnecessary slave movie — rarely feels like a horror flick. Instead, its needless brutality, ropy character work, and misguided twist make it easily 2020’s worst movie so far.

Sprawling and ambitious, flawed yet admirable, failure and success concurrently reside in every minute of Tenet. A technical feat but a narrative dud.

Though Willmott has the best intentions with The 24th, and the story of this infantry is ripe for the Black Lives Matter era, the narrative drama is a missed opportunity to honor these fallen heroes.

Peninsula combines components from I Am Legend, Mad Max, and the Fast & Furious series for a nonsensical joy ride that, while entertaining, lacks the sharpness of its predecessor.

Greyhound is the bare essentials when it comes to war films. With little character development on paper, the narrative finds victory through Hanks’ patient physical performance and the craftsmanship within the battles.

While not perfect, nothing worthwhile ever is, Da 5 Bloods sees Lee exploring brotherhood, PTSD, greed, and how lost legacies and voices have led to present protests for a deceptively rousing war drama.

Through its images of peaceful protests and demonstrations from the era, McDonough's narrow but inspiring film finds deeper relevance in the face of the current protests surrounding George Floyd’s murder.

Even if this rom-com never completely coalesces, Showalter’s The Lovebirds does ultimately deliver a worthwhile conclusion

Barker takes his initially enthralling documentary and dilutes the story with this new feature, creating melodramatic lightness without an affectingly heavy touch due to the tepid tone and wheezing tempo. In short, it snoozes.

While The Call of the Wild is silly, and never completely pulls the wool over the eyes with respect to the CGI, there’s enough meat on the bone to gnaw on before burying it in the backyard.

It ultimately crashes into a heap due to a host of rambling non-connective ideas and tonally grating dialogue.

Charm City Kings is beautiful and important, unabashedly Black, yet rarely traumatic, and almost always determined statement. Soto has crafted an incredible empathetic narrative, one mile of road at a time.

Palm Springs adds meaning to the seeming meaninglessness of life, with infectious fun and introspective pleasure to boot.

Unique and unfazed, hilarious yet philosophical, Black Bear is the comedic form reinvented and re-conformed to mad and intoxicating ends.

Possessor is a bloody existential fever dream that, at its best, is unnerving and thrilling, and, at its worst, is tiring and misbegotten.

A tightly constructed narrative, which examines the role of forgiveness,The Two Popes is a lowkey buddy comedy that simply follows two actors at the top of their game.

If Radioactive spent more significant time with Curie’s eccentricities . . . we might have arrived at a real character study. Instead, the biopic’s strained narrative bonds dissolve, awash in a series of disconnected events.

Little Wome fills and drains your heart, fills and drains your heart, fills and drains the heart. But the best remains the same. ‘Little Women’ lives by vitality and hope.

The director’s best asset remains his indelible style. In his films, he usually doesn’t employ much fluff, limiting how often he cuts. Instead, he relies on pans and savvy blocking. That’s imperative in Richard Jewell, a steady biopic whose best upticks arrive through patience.

Queen & Slim is an extraordinary Black Odyssey; a film whose tracks reverberate with echoes of the underground railroad.

While Hedlund and Macdonald exhibit incredible chemistry, the outlandishness of the twists “Dirt Music” takes makes their performances nearly impossible to appreciate due to their cartoon buggery. Working with “Notebook”-level cheese, here the story’s stale.

Unfortunately, Iannucci and Blackwell are so intent on making every quip funny, they lose the story.

Larraín’s Ema will grate some. Even so, it’s one of the most ambitious and visually stunning films of the year.

Gerima’s Sankofa is an invocation not just to African ancestors, but also the present-day viewer. It calls to attention how history exists in the present, how the spirits of the long-gone can still affect today.