RaMell Ross Listens to Miles Davis While He Works

At a time when Hollywood recycles the same genres and tropes ad nauseam, it’s hard to reinvent what a movie can be — unless you’re RaMell Ross. The director’s second feature, an adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer-winning 2019 novel The Nickel Boys, teaches its audience in real time how to process it. Ross calls the film “anti-narrative,” not because there’s no plot...