Justin Chang

In 1979, a black police officer named Ron Stallworth successfully infiltrated a local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. Director Spike Lee presents his story with humor and honesty in BlacKkKlansman.

Cruise shows no sign of slowing down as he takes on the role of secret agent Ethan Hunt once again. Critic Justin Chang says the new Mission: Impossible is full of "exhilarating, large-scale action."

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.