The Last Black Man in San Francisco
A24 | Release Date: June 7, 2019 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
83
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 39 Critic Reviews
Positive:
35
Mixed:
4
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The Seattle TimesSoren AndersenJun 18, 2019
Though his character bears Fails’ name and the picture is autobiographical, it’s not a documentary. Fails and co-screenwriter Rob Richert have embroidered on his experiences to create a story that melds realism with make-believe. Read full review
100
Washington PostAnn HornadayJun 13, 2019
A lyrical, visually stunning tone poem to loss, lies, reclamation and making peace with the past, The Last Black Man in San Francisco virtually defies conventional description. To see it is to believe it, even when it doesn’t strictly make sense. Read full review
100
Entertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattJun 8, 2019
It’s not a movie for admiring in freeze frame; it’s the kind you fall into with your whole heart and emerge from feeling, for two hours at least, what it is to fully be transported by the magic of film. Read full review
100
RogerEbert.comOdie HendersonJun 7, 2019
Jimmie’s story is a slow ballad, a tragic ode, a dirty limerick, a wistful lament and a heartbreaking elegy. It’s a tribute to the notion of home that we all carry. This is one of the year’s best films. Read full review
100
The New York TimesManohla DargisJun 6, 2019
Mostly, the movie has a cascade of images and ideas, reference points and glimpses of everyday beauty that flow and swirl and, over time, gather tremendous force. Read full review
100
San Francisco ChroniclePeter HartlaubJun 4, 2019
A strikingly immersive movie, a slow burn filled with subtleties and nuance, with its message nestled in the details as much as the greater story. While other filmmakers have effectively captured San Francisco’s landmarks and topography, story co-writers Fails and Talbot seem to be filming San Francisco’s streets with a microscope. Read full review
100
Time OutJoshua RothkopfFeb 19, 2019
Like Barry Jenkins similarly set Medicine for Melancholy, The Last Black Man in San Francisco supplies positivity to the struggle. Read full review
100
The PlaylistGregory EllwoodFeb 1, 2019
The film team is so strong and the direction so fine that it’s simply hard to believe this is actually Talbot’s first full-length feature film. And to detail much more would spoil the genuine surprise of their many on-screen artistic contributions. Read full review
93
TheWrapCarlos AguilarFeb 1, 2019
Aside from exploring the housing crisis benefiting developers and startups, “Last Black Man” hones in on male friendship from the standpoint of two young guys whose fraternal bond surpasses any need for the posturing associated with toxic masculinity. Read full review
91
ConsequenceDominick Suzanne-MayerJun 6, 2019
Fails is unsurprisingly exceptional given his relationship to the material, shaping the film’s overall tone as he goes along, portraying a kind of existential tour guide for a place that at once still stands, is being torn down every day, and never quite existed at all. Read full review
91
IndieWireDavid EhrlichFeb 1, 2019
Talbot has a gift for making twee material feel true, but his grip weakens during the pivotal home stretch of his debut, and as a result the ending doesn’t land with the emotion it deserves. Read full review
90
Rolling StoneDavid FearJun 6, 2019
Funny, poignant, personal and a rage-filled valentine to a metropolis that’s seen its fair share of gentrification. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenJun 12, 2019
One of the most original movies of the year. Read full review
88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzJul 5, 2019
The drama is an endlessly inventive and devastating work, a lyrical ode to a city that has turned its back on its most devoted citizens. Read full review
88
LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenJun 13, 2019
For all its pointed critique, The Last Black Man in San Francisco also offers a fair amount of whimsy. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsJun 12, 2019
The musical score by Emile Mosseri of the band The Dig, is very fine stuff, supple and surprising in its blend of classical, jazz and pop strains. It adds to the otherworldly quality established and sustained so well by Talbot, and by the actors. Read full review
88
The Associated PressJake CoyleJun 7, 2019
It’s all so handsomely shot and deliberately staged that you might at times worry that The Last Black Man in San Francisco is leaning more toward picturesque than profound. But when Talbot’s film rises to its rousing and sensitive climax, the fairy tale falls away and something authentically soulful emerges. Read full review
88
Slant MagazinePat BrownJun 3, 2019
The film simultaneously announces itself as an expressive portrait of a city, an endearing ode to male comradery, a leisurely paced hangout flick, an absurdist comedy, and a melancholic reflection on gentrification and urban black experience. Read full review
80
The Observer (UK)Simran HansNov 5, 2019
Talbot’s film is not perfect. A scene set to Joni Mitchell’s Blue makes its point awkwardly, and the narrative, like its characters, is prone to meandering. Yet as a film about place and personal mythology, it’s hugely moving. Read full review
80
EmpireKambole CampbellOct 21, 2019
Half mood-piece, half character study, The Last Black Man In San Francisco is a deeply moving lament on the effect of gentrification on the people on the Bay Area’s margins. Read full review
80
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternJun 6, 2019
Mostly, though, The Last Black Man in San Francisco — which is what Jimmie sometimes feels like in the gentrifying city of his birth — glides from moment to meaningful moment with cumulative power and singular grace. Read full review
80
VoxAlissa WilkinsonJun 6, 2019
Most of all, The Last Black Man in San Francisco is a love letter — not a romantic one, but the kind you write when you can no longer hold on to a relationship that nonetheless shaped you profoundly. Richly textured and vividly rendered, it’s clearly the fruit of a lifelong love. Read full review
80
TimeStephanie ZacharekJun 6, 2019
This isn’t just a story about displaced communities, it’s about displaced souls, people so connected to history that they never feel quite at home in the present. Majors and Fails give fine performances here, in tune with each other but also with the pulse of the city that surrounds them. Read full review
80
SlateInkoo KangJun 5, 2019
San Francisco may be waging war against its most vulnerable residents, but if you can enjoy its beauty, as Jimmie and Montgomery do for a magical few days, its unique picturesqueness makes it easy to love. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyFeb 1, 2019
All the dramatic components have not only been well thought out by Talbot and co-writer Rob Richert, but they’re adorned, for the most part, by a sense of reality that keeps pretentiousness at bay. To be sure, this is a highly calculated and worked-out story, but the humor and lively playing of the entire cast keeps the film aloft across its two hours. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangFeb 1, 2019
A patchwork of impressions, ruminations and unsolved mysteries, The Last Black Man in San Francisco teems and even overflows with life and love, some might argue at the cost of narrative focus or momentum. That strikes me as precisely the point. Read full review
80
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriFeb 1, 2019
This is a film of shifting moods and occasionally contradictory narratives. It’s as much about delusion as it is about gentrification, and as much about friendship as it is about solitude. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliJul 5, 2019
It’s a rom-com where one of the participants is the self-described “last black man” and the other is a house. Read full review
75
Movie NationRoger MooreJul 3, 2019
Operatic in tone, a love poem that’s “Howl” raw in scope and despair, The Last Black Man in San Francisco is a deadpan elegy to a city, its ever-shifting populace, family lore and the weight of the past. Read full review
75
Philadelphia InquirerGary ThompsonJun 20, 2019
The movie simply has the best use of music (Talbot is also a musician) that I’ve seen this year, starting with a gorgeous score by Daniel Herskedal , and embellished with the smart, eclectic use of songs that speak to the city’s cultural history. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeMark FeeneyJun 14, 2019
The movie is daring and unconventional. It’s daring in feeling so static, with a distinctive, unhurried rhythm. It’s unconventional in letting evocation drive plot more than events do. It can feel a bit dreamlike that way. A melancholy lyricism defines the movie. Read full review
75
The AtlanticDavid SimsJun 11, 2019
The Last Black Man in San Francisco works best as a mood piece, and as its final act swung back toward heavy plotting, it mostly lost me, getting bogged down in thinly sketched interpersonal dynamics. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubVikram MurthiJun 5, 2019
The Last Black Man plays like a poetic portrait, part tender ode and part cartography of lived experience, bringing a nuanced and hard-earned perspective to the screen. Read full review
70
Arizona RepublicBarbara VanDenburghJun 13, 2019
“Last Black Man” pulses with undeniable energy and the promise of other, even better films to come. As director Joe Talbot’s first movie, it’s impossible to imagine it will be his last. Read full review
70
Screen DailyAnthony KaufmanFeb 1, 2019
This ambitious debut features flashes of imaginative visuals, quirky dialogue, and well-meaning messages about gentrification and disenfranchisement. Read full review
60
Vanity FairK. Austin CollinsJun 13, 2019
The displacement Jimmie feels pervades most every shot of Talbot’s film and gives it all a slow-churning aura of foreignness and melancholy, a diasporic sadness that’s interesting to see in the context of a film about an African American, rather than a recent immigrant. Read full review
60
The GuardianBenjamin LeeFeb 1, 2019
It’s a shaggy, wistful film that acts as a heartfelt tribute to both a city and a friendship and when the cutesy quirk that surrounds it is dialled down, we’re able to appreciate the underpinning earnestness. Read full review
60
VarietyPeter DebrugeFeb 1, 2019
While Talbot and Fails claim to have walk-and-talked their way all over San Francisco, the script — and especially the dialogue — is the most disappointing element of their first feature. Read full review
58
The Film StageDan MeccaFeb 1, 2019
The subject matter is immediate and engaging. But the structure of this film is languid to the point of aggravation. Read full review
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