Rated 7+ IMDb · 70%+ RT Little-known finds Curated by humans
Rated 7+ IMDb · 70%+ RT Little-known finds Curated by humans
2019 Movie
Dir. Joe Talbot · United States of America · English, Haitian; Haitian Creole
On the yearning for a home
Like a Wes Anderson movie, The Last Black Man in San Francisco takes artistic risks and nails every one of them. There are many quirky, aesthetically well-studied, and even funny aspects to this moving story.
Jimmie has been maintaining a typical San Francisco Victorian house, regularly painting the windows and watering the plants. One small problem: other people live there and they don’t want him around. It turns out this was once Jimmie’s family house, having been built by his grandfather in 1948, and he misses it deeply.
This story is based on writer Jimmie Fails’ life, as he tried to reclaim his family home in SF. However, it’s not a movie that limits itself to gentrification. It transcends that to being about the universal yearning to find a place to call home.
Jimmie Fails dreams of reclaiming the Victorian home his grandfather built in the heart of San Francisco. Joined on his quest by his best friend Mont, Jimmie searches for belonging in a rapidly changing city that seems to have left them behind.
"The film captures the experience of displacement, of travelling among spheres in which you have increasingly little say or stake and trying to blend in."
— Nathan Heller
"Joe Talbot's lovely, quasi-Dickensian film boasts no absolute truths, instead leaning into its ambiguity, humanity and a quizzical moodiness."
— Stuart Klawans
Other
1 nom
Bilal Zouheir is the founder of A Good Movie to Watch. He is US-based and a member of the Nevada Film Critics Society. He grew up in Morocco, where he learned English from watching movies. Bilal's work with A Good Movie to Watch is focused on offering an alternative to streaming algorithms, which are often used as commercial tools by streaming services.
Beautiful and thought-provoking film.