Candice Frederick

In an era when "Black Lives Matter" narratives often focus on tragedy and violence, director Melina Matsoukas’s Queen & Slim, twists the formula, offering a surprisingly tender tale about two complicated lovers driven toward each other after a fateful police encounter. Written by Lena Waithe, this bold new drama refuses to either vilify or commend its lead characters, played by Jodie Turner-Smith and Daniel Kaluuya, who cling to each other after a frightening act of self-defense launches them...

Exploring what it’s like to be a black cop in conflict, especially in the #BlackLivesMatter era, has become popular fodder for filmmakers. But while it’s an interesting topic to pursue, the films that have dared to do so have been unsatisfying.
“Monsters and Men” struggled with determining a resolution, “Black and Blue” pivoted to a humdrum action saga and now director Brian Kirk’s new film, “21 Bridges,” also struggles to find its voice in the conversation.
Written by Adam Mervis and Matthew...

After breakthrough roles in 12 Years a Slave, Roots, Birth of a Nation, and Underground in a span of three years, there was a time when 27-year-old actor Kelvin Harrison, Jr. thought he’d set a world record for starring in the most movies about slavery. While these powerful stories taught him where he came from, he admits he was ready to explore other parts of himself. Then came the next era of his career, where he’s now starring in Trey Edward Shults’ Waves, a film that Harrison says is “abo...

Trey Edward Shults (“It Comes at Night”) unsparingly examines a family’s implosion but still allows for hope

The race sequences are breathtaking, but the characterizations need a tune-up in James Mangold’s latest

For all the post-#MeToo talk of dismantling a culture built on toxic masculinity, significant change is slow coming. So when a reformed offender like Shia LaBeouf acknowledges the root of his bad behavior, it looks like progress. But is it enough?
With his semi-autobiographical movie Honey Boy, LaBeouf challenges himself to look his demons in the eye. The actor wrote and stars in Alma Ha’rel’s unflinching feature directorial debut based on LaBeouf’s own life. The film opens at the height of O...

In an era defined by apocalyptic news stories like border walls and rampant gun violence, the belief in divine intervention is beginning to sound more inconceivable than, say, a zombie apocalypse. That’s undoubtedly why prophetic TV series such as “The Walking Dead,” “The Handmaid’s Tale,” and “Years and Years” have captivated audiences already losing hope in humanity.
But that sense of despair has provided space for other fascinating small-screen fare to explore and even interrogate faith an...

Leslie Odom, Jr. has almost always embodied men on screen who exude a level of confidence and authority other people would kill to have.
He earned a Tony award for his role as infamous U.S. Vice President Aaron Burr in Broadway’s Hamilton. He played Tuskegee Airman Declan “Winky” Hall in Red Tails. He was also the distinguished Dr. Arbuthnot in Murder on the Orient Express. Now, he's stepping into the shoes of Walter Still, father of the Underground Railroad, in director Kasi Lemmons’ film Ha...

As a Black actress standing at just 5 feet 1 inch tall, Cynthia Erivo knows what it’s like to be underestimated—even with a Tony Award for her powerhouse performance as Celie in Broadway’s The Color Purple: The Musical. So when producer Debra Martin-Chase asked her to play Harriet Tubman in the long-anticipated biopic Harriet, Erivo was determined to prove herself deserving of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
The film (in theaters Friday), directed by Kasi Lemmons, depicts the life of the...

Just when you think writer-director Edward Norton has already given you a whole lot to chew on in his neo-noir “Motherless Brooklyn,” he adds more things. And not all of them are satisfying.
To be fair, “Motherless Brooklyn” would be really great as an episodic TV series. Or perhaps if it was divided by chapter titles to punctuate the packed plot. But Norton tries, and about 50% succeeds, to adapt Jonathan Lethem’s sprawling novel of the same name into an intriguing masterwork.
It at least be...

Even with just a 75-minute runtime, watching writer-director Phillip Youmans’ feature film debut “Burning Cane,” a meditation on compromised faith among black southerners, is an arduous experience. It’s dark (both narratively and visually), sluggish, and relentlessly bleak. But this all seems to be the filmmaker’s intention.
Inspired by his own upbringing in the Southern Baptist church, Youmans offers an unfiltered look at black protestant life in the hollows of Louisiana. Just as he does wit...

Jojo Rabbit demands a lot of its audience. It asks us to accept a goofy caricature of Adolf Hitler as the inspiration for a misguided 10-year-old boy living in World War II Germany. It requires us to believe kinship could exist between him and a Jewish girl in hiding. It asks that we leave the theater crying tears of joy—maybe even laughing.
These contrasting messages are difficult to reconcile, even as the film—the latest from writer/director Taika Waititi and inspired by Christine Leunens’ ...

As much as we have confronted rape culture and the patriarchal control of female bodies, there is still an area that has too often remained untouchable in the conversation: the specific roles religious and cultural norms have played in the persecution, abuse and suppression of women’s sexuality. That is where director Barbara Miller squares her uncompromising new film, “#Female Pleasure.”
Miller somewhat wobblily opens the documentary with images of objectified women in recognizable male-desi...

Documentaries often make us look at difficult facts in a way that provokes further conversation, action, or interrogation. But then there is “Tell Me Who I Am,” which gradually unmasks a disturbing truth so resolutely and unnervingly that it requires no further dialogue, just recovery for both the audience and its central protagonist.
Drawing from a startling real life story, director Ed Perkins plants audiences inside a film where mounting mystery climaxes to unsettling concern as we watch a...

These days, the basic act of waking up and switching on the news can easily fill you with such dread that you wonder why you even bother. At least, that’s where I am at this point when even a “slow news days” still includes whatever the Trump administration has done to threaten democracy. Our current political and social climate also informs many of the fictional images we’ve seen on TV shows like Black Lightning, Unbelievable, and Superstore. As great as it is that the small screen is confro...