87
Metascore
53 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100The PlaylistJason BaileyThe PlaylistJason BaileyJenkins captures the humor, verve, and considerable complexity of the prose.
- 100Screen DailyTim GriersonScreen DailyTim GriersonIf Beale Street isn’t quite as seamless as the Oscar-winning Moonlight, this adaptation of the James Baldwin novel still proves to be a stirring, absorbing experience that articulates something ineffable about everyday life.
- 100Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangLos Angeles TimesJustin ChangIn 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.
- 100Vanity FairK. Austin CollinsVanity FairK. Austin CollinsWhat Jenkins gets most right—what astonishes me the most about this film—is Baldwin’s vast affection for the broad varieties of black life. It’s one of the signature lessons of Baldwin’s work that blackness contains multitudes.
- 83Entertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattEntertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattIn 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.
- 80The GuardianBenjamin LeeThe GuardianBenjamin LeeIt’s a film with love at its root, both familial and romantic, and Jenkins fills so much of it with a radiating warmth.
- 80The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyThe Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyIf 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.
- 75The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Kate TaylorThe Globe and Mail (Toronto)Kate TaylorJenkins creates many remarkable scenes, particularly as the male characters discuss the racist realities with which they live.
- 70VarietyPeter DebrugeVarietyPeter DebrugeThe 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).