Small Axe: Lovers Rock
Amazon Prime Video | Release Date (Streaming): November 27, 2020 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
95
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 27 Critic Reviews
Positive:
27
Mixed:
0
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The New York TimesJeannette CatsoulisDec 10, 2020
Electric and alive as few films are, Lovers Rock will make you giddy with longing for a pleasure we’ve been too long denied: The singular rush of being one with a beat and a roomful of possibilities. Read full review
100
LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenDec 10, 2020
Lovers Rock is a work of freedom. Freedom from narrative, freedom from main characters, freedom from whiteness, freedom from discrimination. It’s about creating a space to dance, flirt, argue, smoke, breathe. Read full review
100
Rolling StoneK. Austin CollinsDec 3, 2020
The movie feels at times like a miracle — not least for what it does not do. McQueen’s ability to render a universe of incident and emotion out of granular details, sounds and visions that feel specific and fully lived, should not surprise us at this point in the career. This is a director whose work has long displayed an ability, and a fascinating eagerness to display, the power of dramatic tangents and uncanny effects of sound and image. Read full review
100
Vanity FairSonia SaraiyaDec 3, 2020
Lovers Rock is a love letter to the joy of being alive, and young, and at least momentarily, free. Read full review
100
Washington PostAnn HornadayNov 24, 2020
McQueen’s vocabulary is on particularly glorious display in this lambent gem of a film. Read full review
100
VoxAlissa WilkinsonNov 19, 2020
Watching Lovers Rock is like being at the party at which the film takes place. Read full review
100
EmpireJimi FamurewaNov 17, 2020
Displaying a more light-hearted and impressionistic hand than usual, Steve McQueen’s second Small Axe film is a woozy, musical fever dream with wit, sexiness and one unforgettable extended singalong. Read full review
100
The TelegraphRobbie CollinSep 17, 2020
Thanks to both its mesmerising cast and McQueen’s flawless command of atmosphere and mood, it pulls off what I can only describe as a kind of cinematic jiu-jitsu – heaving you back to that precise moment in history, then lifting your soul out of your skin in one seamless move. Read full review
100
RogerEbert.comOdie HendersonSep 17, 2020
The viewer is not only a fly on the wall at this party, they are also on the dance floor being carried along as the music moves them. Read full review
100
Screen DailyFionnuala HalliganSep 17, 2020
It’s a musical and a piece of time and a feeling that’s a privilege to share. Read full review
100
The GuardianPeter BradshawSep 17, 2020
McQueen’s compositional sense is a marvel; the movie’s period and location is evoked with masterly skill, and the romance is wonderful. What a cure for lockdown depression. Read full review
98
ABC NewsPeter TraversNov 25, 2020
Director Steve McQueen, adding to his ‘Small Axe’ anthology, deserves a mountain of superlatives for this rapturous immersion into a 1980 London house party where black revelers, denied access to white clubs, cut loose to reggae beats you won’t be able to resist. It’s pure pleasure. Read full review
91
The Film StageVikram MurthiSep 18, 2020
The organic community portrait ebbs and flows to a beat of its own making. Read full review
91
ConsequenceClint WorthingtonSep 17, 2020
McQueen’s focus is on the community, not the individual; his focus is on the party as a whole and the optimism and community it engenders. Films about the unabashed celebration of Black joy and success are few and far between, which makes Lovers Rock all the more remarkable. Read full review
91
IndieWireEric KohnSep 17, 2020
Even if Lovers Rock hovers somewhere between episode and movie on paper, it’s undoubtedly cinematic art, working small wonders with a sophisticated blend of minor-key storytelling and vibrant choreography that transforms the entire experience into a free-form musical. Read full review
90
Paste MagazineAndrew CrumpDec 3, 2020
McQueen has made a textured, warm, breathtaking and heartbreaking portrait of Black experience, condensed economically into slightly over an hour of runtime. It’s exhilarating. It’s gorgeous. It’s moving. It’s also dangerous. Read full review
90
IGNSiddhant AdlakhaOct 2, 2020
As a piece of political filmmaking, Lovers Rock is deft and nuanced, a celebration of joy and community built in response to oppression. Read full review
90
Film ThreatLorry KiktaSep 24, 2020
It’s a nearly perfect film. Read full review
90
UproxxMike RyanSep 17, 2020
It’s literally a party. It’s an all-encompassing experience that McQueen directs with the same urgency of his other, more inherently intense films – the urgency that has made him one of the best directors today (and one of my own personal favorites, if not just plain “favorite”). Read full review
90
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneySep 17, 2020
Its untethered, ethereal flow is utterly intoxicating, an immersive experience shaped by the clouds of cigarette and reefer smoke in the air, the smell of goat curry wafting from the kitchen, and above all, the sinuous rhythms of the slow-groove romantic reggae subgenre that gives the film its title. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangSep 17, 2020
It’s a delight to see the director cut loose, along with his gifted behind-the-scenes collaborators (including production designer Helen Scott and costume designer Jacqueline Durran) and his captivating stars. Read full review
90
VarietyOwen GleibermanSep 17, 2020
Lovers Rock is nothing more (or less) than a snapshot of an era, a moment, a series of lives. Yet it lingers like a song you don’t want to get out of your head. Read full review
90
TheWrapAlonso DuraldeSep 17, 2020
McQueen and co-writer Courttia Newland, working with a talented cast and crew, bring us in so close that we can smell the smoke and the sweat, and swoon over the sensuality of slow dancing. Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Sep 17, 2020
McQueen has zoomed in on a very specific milieu, but he’s also tapped into the universal and suddenly inaccessible joy of an endless night of music and dance, a house party for the ages. You don’t have to know your reggae or have been born 40 years ago to long for the ache of communal fun on which Lovers Rock waxes nostalgic. Read full review
83
The PlaylistRobert DanielsSep 17, 2020
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. Read full review
80
CineVueMatthew AndersonNov 29, 2020
It’s all over in the blink of an eye, but Lovers Rock is a party you won’t ever forget. Read full review
70
SlashfilmHoai-Tran BuiSep 17, 2020
Clocking in at a little over an hour, Lovers Rock is naturally a little lean, limited by its one-night premise and its brief sojourn into these characters’ lives. But it’s a tone poem that feels at once a love letter to the style of reggae music which it’s named after, and to the people who danced and fell in love to that music in ’80s London. Read full review
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