Popular reviews

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  Review by Julius Kassendorf ★★½ 53

  "My countryman is my enemy."

  Intersectionality

  James Baldwin was a queer black man. He had sex with men. And he was black. The closest this film comes to acknowledging that James Baldwin had sex with men is a text about his FBI files which states that he may be a homosexual. Otherwise, there is a photo of him holding three young girls, almost insinuating they're his daughters, and interviews with Dick Cavett talking about his children, that he didn't have. Other than a couple off comments about Malcolm X's long arms caressing his ankles, or pondering the absence of male kissing in America, you could come away from I Am Not Your Negro believing that he was a heterosexual.

  When…

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  Review by k(arst)en ★★★★ 7

  Essential. Plenty of other great reviews for this floating around that I can’t add a lot to so I’ll use this space to say please consider donating to as many organizations and signing as many petitions as you can.  

  click here for resources

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  Review by Adam Kempenaar ★★★★ 1

  The story of the Negro in America is the story of America. 
  
  It is not a pretty story. 
  
  An absolute gut punch of a line in a film that incisively supports its thesis.

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  Review by iana ★★★★

  seeing james baldwin's words accompanied by footage from today is a real harsh reminder that we've made very little progress as a society

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  Review by Sally Jane Black 10

  CW: race, sexuality, white supremacy, violence/murder referenced, genital mentions, rambling

  In an interview I've seen a hundred times, Baldwin talks about the white view of black people. He condenses that view into the most common racial slur in America, and contrasts it to being "a man." I've seen this so many times, from the first time a few years ago when I was trying to figure out how and what to say about race to now, when I saw it again, in new context, juxtaposed with a parade of his thoughts, haunted by this piece that I had read days before and this piece I read shortly thereafter, when I saw it again, another layer presented itself. I had previously…

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  Review by Mike D'Angelo ★★★ 2

  54/100

  Apart from episodes of Biography and American Masters, there doesn't appear to be a straightforward biographical documentary about James Baldwin, who clearly merits such treatment—not just because he was one of the 20th century's greatest American minds, but because he appeared on television so frequently that there's probably sufficient archival material around which to build a feature film. Whenever Baldwin appears on camera in I Am Not Your Negro, the movie is electrifying, and the absence of context (we learn virtually nothing of Baldwin's life) seems irrelevant—I'd happily watch an entire movie of him talking, in the style of the Ceausescu doc from a few years back. Or like Best of Enemies minus Buckley, say. But the conceit of…

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  Review by Daisoujou ★★★★★ 15

  As I write this review, very early morning May 31st, 2020, protests are erupting in what seems to be damn near every major city in the United States. George Floyd has recently become yet another victim of police brutality, as a cop used his knee to crush Floyd's neck for almost 9 whole minutes until he died. Derek Chauvin is a murderer. The other 3 cops who watched it happen are no better. Of course, you'd hardly know that from looking at the response. It took days of protesting for the man to even be arrested, and only on 3rd degree murder charges. Police are convicted at such low rates that it's easy to be skeptical of the idea that…

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  Review by Sean Gilman ★★★★½ 3

  What I would give for Baldwin's Malcolm X movie starring Billy Dee Williams. . .

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  Review by Jake Cole ★★★½ 1

  The further we get from the 20th century, the more James Baldwin seems like its most important public American intellectual. His television appearances present an erudite, unassuming figure whose natural wit is visibly suppressed as collateral damage of his attempt to tamp down his rage. The Baldwin of interviews and debates is disarming in his clarity, presenting stark, strident analyses with such carefully worded poise, rendering the subjectivity of black life in almost clinically observant tones. Disgust creeps around the periphery of his voice, and whatever temptation he might have to toss in a wisecrack is obliterated by the complete effort paid to not airing his anger.

  As such, Peck’s decision to cast Samuel L. Jackson to read excerpts of…

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  Review by Rafael "Parker!!" Jovine ★★★★ 4

  For some time now I have gone from not knowing of James Baldwin's existence to practically loving him. Once you hear an interview or read a book about the man, it's not hard to see why he has become one of the most prominent figures in and out of the black community.

  Based on his unfinished work and narrated by (at least personally) an unrecognisable Samuel L Jackson, for 90 minutes we see the author's perspective on the mistreatment and outright racism that prevailed in film, television and society as a whole. Among all the things that stood out to me was Baldwin's point of view in "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?", a film that has a reputation for being…

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  Review by Muriel

  “history is not the past. it is the present. we carry our history with us. we are our history. if we pretend otherwise, we literally are criminals.” 

  an essential viewing of james baldwin’s words that are as painfully relevant today as they were years ago. black lives matter, do what you can to help! 

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  Review by 🔪 Leighton Trent 🔪 ★★★★★ 3

  "The world is not white. It never was white, cannot be white. White is a metaphor for power, and that is simply a way of describing Chase Manhattan Bank."

  James Baldwin understood our country possibly better than any other person that has lived in it. Or, at least he was able to articulate it in such a way that we feel the weight of these 400 years bearing down on the black men that brought white men here to this country - 400 years of exploitation, violence, hatred and murder. And his words here are as timely as when he wrote and/or spoke them; so much and so little had changed in that time.

  This is a painful and horrifying…