MICHAEL B JORDAN – ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

SINNERS – Review by Sherin Nicole

December 18, 2025December 21, 2025 Sherin Nicole Autumn Durald Arkapaw, hailee steinfeld, hannah beachler, Jayme Lawson, Li Jun Li, MICHAEL B JORDAN, Miles Caton, Ruth E. Carter, ryan coogler, Sinners, Wunmi Mosaku

Sinners is alive. Both in the moment and immortal. It’s a story about stories, a cinematic conjuring where folklore, music, and family become the marrow of survival. Ryan Coogler has crafted a bold reclamation but also an expansion of the American narrative on film, where vampires are less monsters than metaphors for the forces that have haunted and fractured our communities for generations. Here, the juke joint isn’t just a set piece. It’s a crossroads where Black-American, Chinese-American, Choctaw, and Old Irish traditions intersect in harmony and discord—each of our musical traditions entwined in the story’s DNA. Coogler trusts us to reconcile the mixing of genres, allowing the weight of history and centuries of rage to roil beneath the surface of Mississippi culture and lore. Never spelling out what anything means but trusting us to find the poetry in what we see and how it makes us feel.

Reviews

SINNERS – Review by Silvi Vann-Wall

April 18, 2025January 13, 2026 Silvi Van-Wall MICHAEL B JORDAN, Miles Caton, ryan coogler, Sinners

Let’s get one thing straight: Ryan Coogler’s Sinners is probably the most original genre film you’ll see in mainstream cinemas this year. Best described as a Southern gothic blues tribute with vampires (and even then that’s insufficient), Sinners sees Michael B. Jordan playing the dual roles of Smoke and Stack Moore; troubled twins who’ve returned to their home in Mississippi after living out their wildest gangster dreams in Chicago. Unbeknownst to them, beneath the veneer of emancipation, cottonfields, bone-white chapels and Spanish moss, there is a threat that even the KKK can’t hold a tiki torch to.

Reviews

CREED III – Review by Valerie Kalfrin

February 27, 2023March 1, 2023 Valerie Kalfrin Creed III, Jonathan Majors, Keenan Coogler, MICHAEL B JORDAN, Mila Davis-Kent, phylicia rashad, tessa thompson, Zach Baylin

More of a split decision than a knockout, Creed III immerses viewers in visceral boxing scenes but falls short in the character development that made the first two entries in this franchise such a delight. Michael B. Jordan (Black Panther: Wakanda Forever) again returns as Adonis Creed, the son of Apollo Creed, Rocky Balboa’s foe turned friend from the original Rocky franchise. Adonis, also called Donnie, is now a world championship boxer with a wealth of success who feels antsy in his retirement—one of several plot points that feel rushed and similar to the earlier Rocky films.

Reviews

CREED III – Review by Susan Kamyab

February 27, 2023March 1, 2023 Susan Kamyab Creed III, Jonathan Majors, Keenan Coogler, MICHAEL B JORDAN, Mila Davis-Kent, phylicia rashad, tessa thompson, Zach Baylin

Creed III is not exactly a knockout, but it is an intense match with some fantastic performances, and a solid directorial debut by Michael B. Jordan. Writing wise, the story has its flaws and feels a little slow at times. However, Jordan’s creative shots and thrilling fight and training sequences help compensate for any sluggish moments. It punches up enough emotions and excitement to satisfy any Rocky fan and is a crowd pleaser that hits harder when watched on the big screen.

Reviews

CREED III – Review by Nadine Whitney

February 27, 2023March 1, 2023 Nadine Whitney Creed III, Jonathan Majors, Keenan Coogler, MICHAEL B JORDAN, Mila Davis-Kent, phylicia rashad, tessa thompson, Zach Baylin

In his directorial debut, Creed III, Michael B. Jordan isn’t reinventing the wheel in terms of a sporting story, but he is adding an emotional nuance to it that makes it more than an ex-friends turned enemies battle of wills. Jordan wears his heart on his sleeve as both director and actor. Jonathan Majors could not be more perfectly cast as Dame – he is an actor that even at over six foot and looking like he could throw a truck across a room, is able to exude an internal intensity that is often astonishing. It feels that both Creed and Dame are fighting for their respective lives. Forgiveness is the key to Creed III, whether that be forgiving a child for his reckless actions or forgiving a man who was forged in the worst kind of fire. Jordan’s debut is a knockout.

Interviews

Dana Canedy on Faith, Love and A JOURNAL FOR JORDAN – Nell Minow interviews

December 22, 2021December 23, 2021 Nell Minow A Journal for Jordan, Dana Canedy, denzel washington, MICHAEL B JORDAN, Sgt. Charles Monroe King

The title of the book and movie is A Journal for Jordan, but it is really two journals. First Sgt. Charles Monroe King was deployed in Iraq when his son, Jordan, was born, and so his fiancée, Dana Canedy, gave him a journal to give him a connection to the son he would see just once before he was killed in action. When she received the journal with his effects, Canedy, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, shared her own story, with selections from King’s journal, framing each chapter as a letter to their son.

Reviews

TOM CLANCY’S WITHOUT REMORSE – Review by Susan Granger

May 7, 2021May 8, 2021 Susan Granger Guy Pearce, Jodie Turner-Smith, MICHAEL B JORDAN, Stefano Sollima, Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse

In his 1993 best-seller Without Remorse, novelist Tom Clancy introduced Navy SEAL John Kelly, a character in the Jack Ryan series who has been previously been played on-screen by Liev Schreiber and Willem Dafoe . Now it’s Michael B. Jordan’s turn. As this espionage thriller begins, Kelly’s head emerges from underwater in full scuba gear. He’s on a mission to extract an ‘asset’ out of Aleppo in Syria, where he and his men must unexpectedly battle Russian soldiers instead of the mercenaries that his CIA boss said would be guarding the hostage.

Reviews

JUST MERCY – Review by Martha K Baker

December 30, 2019January 2, 2020 Martha K. Baker (Archived Contributor) 0 Comments brie larson, bryan stevenson, Destin Daniel Cretton, jamie foxx, just mercy, MICHAEL B JORDAN

In 2014, Stevenson wrote Just Mercy, which recounts the beginning of the Equal Justice Initiative, similar to the Innocence Project and the Midwest Innocence Project. Stevenson’s book has become a most respectable film, the kind that forces a sob to rise from the heart at the end as captions explain what happened after the last scene fades to black.

News

WEEK IN WOMEN: WarnerMedia Launches Inclusion Initiative – Brandy McDonnell reports

September 11, 2018September 15, 2018 Brandy McDonnell 0 Comments frances mcdormand, hbo, MICHAEL B JORDAN, the weekin women, Warner Bros., WARNER MEDIA

Six months after best actress winner Frances McDormand delivered a figurative mic drop at the Oscars by championing the idea of inclusion riders, WarnerMedia – including Warner Bros., HBO and Turner — has announced a company-wide policy outlining its commitment to diversity and inclusion in front of and behind the camera.

Reviews

FRUITVALE STATION – Review by Pam Grady

July 26, 2013June 6, 2020 Pam Grady 0 Comments black stories matter, fruitvale station, MICHAEL B JORDAN, Movie of the Week, oscar grant, ryan coogler

A night of New Year’s Eve revelry in San Francisco ended in death on an Oakland train station for Oscar Grant, his back pierced with a transit cop’s bullet.