The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019) (2025)

Popular reviews

• Review by demi adejuyigbe ★★★★½ 9

  Wow. Honestly not sure what to say about this movie, past calling it beautiful, inside and out. I kinda can't believe it's a debut feature. Another great film in a series of great recent films about the gentrification of the Bay Area and conflicts of race and masculinity that come with the desire to push back against it.

• Review by maria ★★★★ 8

  he was a sk8er boy he said fuck society dis huge ass house is mine and my totally platonic best friends', boys

• Review by Karsten ★★★★ 12

  Took me a bit to warm up to this and just how differentit is. Truly a breath of fresh air both in it’s story and filmmaking. It’s very dense and there’s a lot that happened so I might have to revisit this the next time I get the chance but man. Great performances, great ending, and the music.....god DAMN.

• Review by Lucy ★★★★½ 2

  “you don’t get to hate it unless you love it”

  stylistically new but also so familiar, like a long forgotten classic lost in the pages of history. every shot is a breath of fresh air, it almost feels like the first real film i’ve seen all year. i’m stunned

• Review by matt lynch ★★★ 9

  I HEARD YOU PAINT OTHER PEOPLES' HOUSES

• Review by Sean Baker 14

  Beautiful, funny and very different... has a real signature. Can't wait to see what Joe Talbot does next. Not sure I love the script but I enjoyed the ride. Perhaps I felt the SF love was poured on a bit thick but it is a love letter to the city so it's appropriate.

  Beautiful score by Emile Mosseri

  and props to casting director Julia Kim (Starlet) for a very dynamic cast.

  Watched at Arclight Hollywood

• Review by Josh Lewis ★★★★ 2

  People aren’t one thing.

• Review by davidehrlich ★★★★ 4

  San Francisco has always been a city with a short memory. The fog rolls over the hills during the late afternoon, wiping the slate clean as it sweeps over the bay. The Earth shakes every so often, dislodging anything that got too comfortable where it was. The Japanese used to be the most visible immigrant population until the U.S. government decided to forcibly relocate them to internment camps that were scattered across the western seaboard. “Vertigo” is set there, because no American city is more attuned to the fear of rotational moment. So is Philip Kaufman’s “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” a horror movie about a health inspector who slowly discovers that he’s being surrounded by alien duplicates. Today, the…

• Review by Taylor Williams ★★★★★ 3

  It seems I have a soft spot for person-location relationships in movies.

• Review by lauren ★★★★½

  as i left the theater the usher asked me how it was and i hope my response of good paired with my bloodshot eyes from crying didn’t send the wrong message

• Review by Ayo Edebiri ★★★★½

  started sobbing at a shot of a literal chair

• Review by Mtume ★ 39

  Nah bruh, this ain’t it.

  This cinematic trend to beautify Black struggle and minimize it narratively to some struggle of “self” rather than a real analysis of how Blackness always gets the short end of the stick by design is a horrible trend. This film attempted to use cinematic tricks and visual aesthetics to cover up for the fact it has nothing real to say about what has happened to Black people in gentrification despite its grandiose title. It hides beyond vague personal storytelling of family mis-truths that they top off with some cliche Black masculinity conversation that you could find in a Vox article all the while making a caricature of the urban Black male. But I’m supposed to forgive it cause it has slick visual imagery that attempts to stroke your sentimental heart strings? B.S. I give it a 1 star cause I liked that it had some Zoom shots. Other than that, skip it.