“The difference is you were able to take all the ugly shit and make something beautiful. (...) But I'm stuck with it."

Oh wow, where do I even start with this one.
I see what Sam Levinson tried to do with the story but the way he portrays the characters and their relationship is just blatantly arrogant and almost childish. The pretentiousness throughout the whole film, from the black and white cinematography down to the laughable attempts at making the dialogue seem deeper that it actually is, was just so off-putting and made this hard to watch. On the plus side, Zendaya and John David Washington deliver great performances and did so much with however little they were given, though in Washington’s case, the over-simplicity of his character sort of ruined his performance for me, to the point where I couldn’t take much of it towards the end.
Laughable, obnoxiously pretentious and just not good at all. Oscar bait gone wrong.

2021 Ranked