Melina Matsoukas’ gritty style of filmmaking is a welcome relief in a cinematic world where it feels like every film needs to look ‘clean.’ Hard-hitting and at times experimental Queen & Slim is not a film that is easy to forget.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Oct 29, 2024

Witnessing two beautiful, dark-skinned people fall in love is always just cause for celebration especially on the big screen. But why can’t stories like this ever be done without trauma? It’s tired and offensive. And audiences deserve better.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jul 14, 2024

Queen & Slim Should Have Been a Great Movie

| Original Score: C | Oct 13, 2023

The desperate need to locate hope and light (and maybe even love where those things are in short supply) recommends Queen and Slim, especially at a time of frustration and division.

| Jun 7, 2023

Queen & Slim is an instant classic that does a superb job of capturing the current Black experience that Black people can relate to while also giving the audience multifaceted representatives of Black characters.

| Original Score: 9/10 | Jan 17, 2023

It sometimes goes over the top but there are many potent, well-staged scenes, too.

| Oct 4, 2022

Activist cinema that combines charismatic leads, stylish visuals and great music usually never looks and sounds this good.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 23, 2022

Queen & Slim‘s ride or die mantra builds and when it reaches its destination, it establishes itself as the most significant road trip film of the Woke decade. Dense, witty, and absolutely devastating.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 22, 2022

Queen & Slim lags in parts, and at 130 minutes, can be an occasionally choppy watch. But the two lead actors do a phenomenal job of behaving like smart rom-com lovers...

| Jul 19, 2022

Kaluuya and Turner-Smith create a chemistry like few others. A road movie filled with a Neo Bonnie & Clyde feeling. It's impressive that this is a debut for both screenwriter Lena Waithe and director Melina Matsoukas. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 8/10 | Jun 17, 2022

Kaluuya and Turner-Smith do an incredible job of inhabiting characters that grow and change in authentic ways.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Jun 4, 2022

The heights that Matsoukas reaches are stunning, and the brief blunders made don't seem like something she's unlikely to repeat.

| Original Score: 86/100 | Jan 14, 2022

It's a movie that I think tries to do a lot of things... What it's trying to do in terms of social commentary, I don't think it fully reaches its goal.

| Sep 16, 2021

Jodie Turner-Smith breaks out in a nail-biting road movie that deserves cult classic status.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 11, 2021

I think this would have been a much more effective piece of social commentary if it just focused on these two and their struggles. When it does focus on these two, it's this really cracking on-the-run thriller.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 15, 2021

With terrific performances Queen & Slim transcends the outlaws-on-the-lam genre. Instead it is a timely humanistic drama that combines resilience with despair.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 30, 2021

It's an uneven, if watchable, lovers-on-the-lam film.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 24, 2021

"Queen & Slim" rates as great pick for a date movie if you're in the mood to get some.

| Original Score: A | Jan 10, 2021

Righteous anger surges through this urgently timely film for the era of Black Lives Matter.

| Sep 25, 2020

Even when the picture becomes hard to watch, it's still impossible to look away.

| Sep 23, 2020