Black Excellence within the Black Experience of TV and Film
Some films tell you what a health crisis looks like. H.P.V. (Her Pretty Vagina) makes you feel the exact moment no one is looking at you while you’re in it, and that’s the difference between a PSA and a piece of art. Written, directed, and produced by Kiah Clingman, H.P.V. stars Taylor Polidore Williams (“Reasonable […]
Food for the Soul is an enjoyable watch, warm and occasionally funny without ever making light of the cultural tensions at its center. Screened at MVAAFF, Chisom Chieke’s 18-minute short follows Ada (Karen Obilom), a Nigerian-American artist and medical school dropout, and Trey (Marcus Scribner), her Black-American fiancé and game creator, as their relationship brings […]
Love Song is a film where I understand exactly what the writer-director is trying to do, but unfortunately, it never quite landed for me. The premise is compelling: a married music producer runs into a former flame during his morning commute, forcing him to confront family, creative ambition and a love he left behind. There […]
Please Return Your Carts, which screened at the 2026 Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival is the kind of short that makes you appreciate how much can be said through one really smart creative choice. Directed by Kendra Jo, the 2025 short follows Benson Cross (Russell Hornsby), an Army veteran who has settled into a solitary […]
Au Gratin opens the way a lot of real family gatherings do: chaotically. Ericka (Tiffany Daniels), the youngest of the siblings, gets to her mother’s house first. She goes to wake her mom up and realizes something’s wrong, maybe seriously wrong. And before she can even get a full sentence out about it, the rest […]
THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS Directed by Aleshea Harris, Is God Is is bold, comedic, neo-noir, gory, violent, and one of the best revenge films I’ve seen in a very long time. This is the kind of movie that sits with you long after the credits roll because it is not trying to simply entertain you. […]
Let me be upfront with you. Anytime Meryl Streep is on my screen, I am watching. I do not care how good or bad the movie is — she makes everything worth seeing. So when Devil Wears Prada 2 finally arrived, I was right there with everybody else, excited and ready. And while I did […]
Academy Award–winning actor Michael B. Jordan has been on a major run, coming off a strong awards season where he picked up multiple wins for his performance in the 2025 film Sinners. We’ve recently seen him take on darker, more intense roles, so seeing him transition into an animated kids movie shows he’s not trying […]
Peacock’s new take on The ’Burbs arrives with a clear mission: keep the paranoia, update the perspective, and let a new kind of neighbor lead the chaos. The eight-episode dark comedy thriller reimagines the 1989 cult favorite made famous by Tom Hanks, trading in a bored suburban husband for a new mother trying to figure […]
There’s very little hand-holding in Dutchman, and that’s intentional. Directed by Andre Gaines, who also co-wrote the screenplay alongside Qasim Basir, the film is an adaptation of Amiri Baraka’s 1964 Obie Award–winning play The Dutchman. Rather than attempting a literal translation of the stage text, the film reimagines Baraka’s ideas for present-day America—preserving the psychological […]