Niela Orr at The Baffler:
IT BEGINS THE WAY so many conventionally existential works of art do: with two men waiting for something. At the beginning of Joe Talbot’s The Last Black Man in San Francisco, a favorite at this year’s Sundance film festival, best friends Jimmie Fails IV (played by himself) and Montgomery Allen (Jonathon Majors) are perched on a road and set against nature, facing us. Only here, Jimmie and Mont are waiting for a bus that may or may not come. “They do not move,” Waiting for Godot’s famous set directions, would certainly apply.
Jimmie and Montgomery wonder about the bus schedule and watch a street corner preacher critique the forced migration of the city’s people of color. The scene is all Bay Area hella chill; it’s a brisk morning, and the men are so laidback you wonder if they have anywhere they need or want to be.
more here.