The characters are written so well around one another that each moment of tension feels hostile, each moment of vulnerability feels sincere, and each moment of banter is hilarious.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 14, 2024

You can constantly feel throughout the film that it wants to be something of a remarkable and stylistic flick but falls short in its delivery. It’s a Trainspotting wannabe.

| Jul 20, 2023

Beats is a heartwarming and hilarious film about friendship and belonging and music...

| Mar 31, 2023

A soulful film that combines poignant, observational drama and colloquial comedy with aplomb.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 14, 2021

Welsh goes beyond the social realism so prevalent in British film, to capture the immediacy and euphoria of 1990s rave culture.

| Original Score: 15/20 | Feb 14, 2021

Beats thrums with an unbridled energy that owes less to the massive party it culminates with than to the poignant relationship between the two characters who head into it.

| Original Score: B+ | Feb 14, 2021

The film does a terrific job of replicating the rave scene adjacent to the cultural kerfuffle of Cool Britannia.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 14, 2021

Macdonald and Ortega strike gold in their characters' bond, which is the true heart of the film.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 9, 2020

There's an authenticity to the work and the character interactions, but the film doesn't just settle at being a well-written indie.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Sep 24, 2020

In a true manifestation of the film's simple, raw power, it evoked warm sentiment in me for a cultural moment I never experienced.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 15, 2020

The power of friendship and music forcefully shines through the gritty coming-of-age story Beats.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 17, 2020

Scottish indie about '90s rave scene has cursing, drug use.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 10, 2020

Welsh, brings authenticity to the film with a soundtrack filled with 90s rave staples. In many ways, the coming of age drama resembles a Spike Lee joint with shades of Trainspotting.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 3, 2020

It's packed with honest observations about being young and careless, as well as the understanding that life doesn't go the way we want. It's also both energetic and involving.

| Jul 2, 2020

I loved this movie, and I don't even like electronic dance music as a general rule.

| Jul 2, 2020

The movie conjures a breathless sense of heart-skipping hedonism, a first visit to the secret world of older girls and that feeling of the night opening up and stretching out forever with endless possibility.

| Jun 30, 2020

Beats is a pulsing, frenzied exploration of pushing boundaries and running right up to the edge...

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 28, 2020

The script may be a bleaker take on a tale we've seen so many times before, but their trembling steps toward adulthood hit the right rhythm.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jun 26, 2020

If "Beats" slows down on its way to the rave, it makes up for that and then some when it finally gets there.

| Original Score: B | Jun 26, 2020

Some of the rhythms are familiar, but the well-acted film's sense of time and place adds an emotional resonance beneath the pulsating soundtrack.

| Jun 26, 2020