LUV Reviews
TheMovieReport.com
Common more than pulls off the tough task in a revelatory, award-worthy turn.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
Metro Times (Detroit, MI)
Candis demonstrates a practiced hand in his direction, keeping the pace brisk and the tension taut. But there's no getting around the meandering and highly formulaic script.
Full Review
| Original Score: C+
Common Sense Media
Gritty drama follows young boy exposed to violence, drugs.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
East Bay Express
An attempt to do something new in the field of boyz-n-the-hood relationship dramas.
Top Critic
Both for good and for ill, "LUV" has a film-school feeling about it, and channels a legacy of fatalistic American crime cinema that includes "Mean Streets" and "Treasure of the Sierra Madre."
Saved from its predictable plotline by a strong cast and a central relationship written and performed with sensitivity, LUV reveals the stakes of trusting in a role model and the costs when that person turns out to be human.
"LUV" may not convince with Woody's aggressively telescoped transformation. But the actors compensate.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
It does not entirely succeed, but at its best "Luv" shows the kind of heart and intelligence that is always welcome - and often missing - in American movies.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
his contains plenty of incidental pleasures, including some vibrant images of contemporary Baltimore and fun character turns from Charles S. Dutton, Danny Glover, and Dennis Haysbert.
Here is a film about African Americans that sidesteps all the usual, hopeful cliches and comments on how one failed generation raises another.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Eye for Film
Succeeds on an emotional level even if it fails to deliver anything very surprising in terms of plot.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Candis generally displays solid skills, and clearly works well with actors.
ScreenCrush
if interpreted as "a fable" you may be able to shrug it off.
Full Review
| Original Score: 6/10
ColeSmithey.com
Clearly inspired by the television show "The Wire," newbie writer-director Sheldon Candis stumbles through crime drama clichés in a prosaic coming-of-age movie that fails to connect on any level.
Full Review
| Original Score: D
amNewYork
It's got the heart and soul, but not the brain.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Director-co-writer Sheldon Candis stretches a lot of the time, a romantic story seems to have been cut drastically, and the film's climax is far too typical.
Full Review
| Original Score: C+
A sometimes taut and occasionally preposterous day in the life of an 11-year-old accompanying his uncle on business in Baltimore.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Times-Picayune
A hackneyed, from-the-streets Sundance drama that would be mostly forgettable if not for the performance of child actor Michael Rainey Jr.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Paste Magazine
Candis doesn't trust his himself to pull it off, weighing the film down with a disconnected score that pushes an otherwise edgy story into melodrama.
Full Review
| Original Score: 5.8/10
