Reviews
If Beale Street Could Talk
Directed by Barry Jenkins · starring KiKi Layne, Stephan James and Regina King
- 8 from the press
- 6.2 · 10 votes
If Beale Street Could Talk: reviews
- 6.2 Users10 votes
- 8.5 Critics8 reviews
- Rate it
Reviews
6.2 10 votes
- 100 %
- 910 %
- 810 %
- 750 %
- 60 %
- ≤530 %
What the critics say average 8.5 from 8
- 10 Los Angeles TimesJustin Chang
In cutting against the aesthetic grain, Jenkins gently and wisely corrects our vision. The passionate glow of this filmmaker?s embrace belongs, quite rightly, to his characters. He is generous enough to also extend that embrace to us.
Read - 10 Chicago Sun-TimesRichard Roeper
A great American novel has been turned into a great American film.
Read - 10 Roger EbertOdie Henderson
Not much has changed for people of color, which probably wouldn?t surprise the author. And yet, he?d demand we not give up. This film powerfully conveys that message. The struggle is real, but so is the joy. We live, we laugh, we love and we die. But we are not gone. Our story continues, carried onward by our storytellers.
Read - 8.3 Entertainment WeeklyLeah Greenblatt
In some ways Beale feels less like a movie than a well-staged, meticulously shot play; a period piece that floats beyond its specific time and place and into the realm of allegory.
Read - 8.0 The Hollywood ReporterDavid Rooney
f the movie?s slow burn seems to build toward a powerful release that doesn?t materialize, the sheer beauty of its craft and the heartfelt feeling behind every scene nonetheless command attention.
Read - 8.0 The GuardianBenjamin Lee
It?s a film with love at its root, both familial and romantic, and Jenkins fills so much of it with a radiating warmth.
Read - 7.0 VarietyPeter Debruge
The movie quotes Baldwin as saying, ?Every black person born in America was born on Beale Street,? but this one may as well be located inside a snow globe. In deciding how to translate Baldwin?s prose to the screen, Jenkins may as well have made Allen Ginsberg?s ?Howl? as a Douglas Sirk movie (or put Alice Waters? ?The Color Purple? through the Steven Spielberg filter).
Read - 7.0 The WrapDan Callahan
This is a film worth grappling with, even if Baldwin?s own talent has a diva-like way of pulling the focus back to his book and away from what we are seeing on the screen
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Questions about the reviews of If Beale Street Could Talk
- What score does If Beale Street Could Talk have?
- Readers give it 6.2 (10 votes). The critics, 8.5 on average from 8 reviews.
- What do the critics say about If Beale Street Could Talk?
- The highest score is Los Angeles Times’s (10) and the lowest The Wrap’s (7.0).