The Last Black Man in San Francisco

This movie is beautifully made, shot and acted. There's a good deal of comedy here. The City is a character and breathes in a way not shown before on film. It's the small places shown, the neighborhoods that don't make it into other movies, the light and the cold. The sense of longing is strong in this film. The characters, all of whom are a bit off, long for a stability that isn't there, but that they all hope for and work towards. This is a movie about people who are being crushed in a variety of ways by the workings of capitalism and keep struggling forward. It's not a political movie or an obnoxious "message" movie. Nothing to hit you over the head. It just shows you folks. This is a love letter to a city that ain't there anymore. A place where I grew up but am a stranger. Where the homes I grew up and played baseball in the streets in front of, no one let's kids play in the street in front of anymore. The kids like the housed are too expensive.

This movie began as a joke between friends...then those friends: Director Joe Talbot and lead actor Jimmie Fails worked on this project unofficially for 10 years. Each scene is thoroughly orchestrated, nothing is rushed in this film. Nuanced themes are pervasive throughout this visually beautiful movie. I do not believe a movie based in Hollywood could acheive the things this movie has. It is a masterful portait of delusions, the transitory nature of ownership, gentrification, friendship, growth, masculinity, the growing pains of the life, the City as a whole and much more. I give it 10 stars for the fact that I do not believe there was any room for improvement. A new classic.

The writing, acting, cinematography, and music made this movie an excellent watch. The writers captured the true essence of living in San Francisco, from the depths of the Tenderloin to the Uber wealthy Pacific Heights neighborhood, the film portrayed a gritty and complicated city to live in, affected tremendously by gentrification and generational wealth disparity. The acting was superb from both lead actors, who showed tremendous range from scene to scene and created characters the audience connected and empathized with. If you live or plan to live in San Francisco, this is a must watch! Bravo!

Beautiful cinematography and a wonderful use of music highlight this melancholy, moving film about the gentrification of San Francisco that is pushing black communities to the polluted fringes.

The film feels a hair or two shy of reality, existing in a rarefied world where visual poetry supplants gritty realism, but I very much enjoyed the vibe this film generated and was able to relax into its aesthetic. It's got two impressive performances, one by Jimmie Fails, who also co-wrote, as the main protagonist, a young black man who squats in the vacant home that formerly belonged to his family; and the other by Jonathan Majors, who plays his artistic best friend. There have been a lot of welcome and very good black-themed movies in the last year or so, and this one shares more of the elegiac tone of an "If Beale Street Could Talk" than the angry energy of a "BlacKkKlansman" or "Blindspotting."

I will say though that one revelation about this film changed my impressions of it a little bit for the worse, and I'm not sure whether or not it's fair of me. I assumed the creators of it were people of color, and that what I was getting was a film from a black perspective. But then I discovered that the director and producers are white men, and now I'm not so sure how I feel about it, mostly because I no longer know whether or not this film is authentic to the black experience. It still has good things to say either way, and it certainly doesn't traffic in the same kind of cultural appropriation as something like "Green Book" from last year, but I have to admit that I'm not sure how I feel about consuming black stories as told by white people.

It is a lovely film though, and it captures a lot of the magic that the city of San Francisco has exercised on me personally from visits there. Which makes it all the more tragic that it's becoming a city that's out of reach for most middle class Americans, let alone disenfranchised minorities.

Grade: A

An artsy movie. Very good story, script, and plot. Excellent cinematography, really shows the beauty of San Francisco. Excellent message on gentrification, homelessness, and love. Very good believable acting. The pacing was a little slow, but overall a very good movie. Overall, I'll give it an 8/10.