Justin Chang

The city of Oakland, Calif., is experiencing something of a renaissance moment in the movies. You could trace it back to 2013, when the Oakland-born director Ryan Coogler made Fruitvale Station, his ripped-from-the-headlines drama about the fatal police shooting of Oscar Grant III. The Oakland renaissance continues this summer with Blindspotting and Sorry to Bother You, two inventive, genre-busting independent features, each one about a young black man on a strange and harrowing quest for survival.

The war on drugs has gone from bad to worse in this follow-up to the 2015 film. Justin Chang says that though its "bigger and brasher" than the original, the story in this sequel doesn't fully engage.

Eugene Jarecki's documentary uses the rise and fall of Elvis Presley to track the ups and downs of America's past century. Critic Justin Chang calls The King a "feverishly analytical" musical essay.