Fleet of foot and fiery of belly, this new Les Mis is an attention-commanding debut from a filmmaker with a finger on his home town's ever-quickening pulse.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 22, 2020

Slips stealthily from astute observation to urgent action, reminding us of Hugo's maxim that "there are no such things as bad plants or bad men. There are only bad cultivators."

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 6, 2020

It is the most incendiary crime film to emerge from French cinema since Mathieu Kassovitz's La Haine.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 5, 2020

Debut writer/director Ladj Ly grew up on these estates and he captures the raw energy of the streets with such skin-prickling authenticity, French president Emmanuel Macron declared himself 'upset by the accuracy'.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 4, 2020

Ly is a deft orchestrator of story - and chaos.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 2, 2020

A politically-charged urban western. Will keep an eye out for Ly's follow-up.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 2, 2020

It's inexorable, terrifying, heartbreaking, with a finale that has plenty of weight. Ly's debut reminded me of Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing, made 30 years ago: urgent, provocative, tragic.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 26, 2020

Les Miserables boasts a cast of mostly unknown actors all of whom are excellent.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 25, 2020

Its merely plot-driven depictions of its residents converges with Ly's merely functional direction, to flatten "Les Misérables" into the undistinguished style of conventionally apolitical and socially indifferent conventional crime dramas.

| Jan 24, 2020

It is this kind of fascinating almost sort of autopsy.

| Original Score: 7.5/10 | Jan 23, 2020

When it reaches its boiling point, "Les Misérables" absolutely roils.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 23, 2020

Events slowly build to explosion, the ending purposefully open-ended with no one being in the right and almost everyone being in the wrong.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 22, 2020

It's an urgent portrait that captures a much different Paris than the original 1862 novel, but its themes remain. Victor Hugo would be proud.

| Original Score: B+ | Jan 20, 2020

[Ladj Ly's] film is best when it immerses us in small moments and naturalistic performances, propelled by Pink Noise's electronic score.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 17, 2020

You might call these the slums, but the film is not slumming. The drone itself is a player in this work, and an overhead shot of a ragtag outdoor bazaar reveals the place's startling geometry.

| Jan 15, 2020

With "Les Misérables," Ly delivers a passionate protest on behalf of an entire generation, whose future has largely been foreclosed.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 15, 2020

As a slice of life, "Les Misérables" is satisfying enough, but as the film wears on, the movie goes beyond the slice of life.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 15, 2020

It's rough and observant, stacked with finely etched characters whose sympathies keep shifting along with ours.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 15, 2020

While Ly's narrative of class and racial tensions between Black Muslim project dwellers and the abusive cops who patrol their streets offers stressfully stitched periods of suspense, the portrayal of the Black victims lack depth.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 13, 2020

It has the immediacy, understatement, and straightforward nature of a documentary.

| Jan 11, 2020