Everybody brings their thing to their criticism. I bring this wealth of opinions and feeling and knowledge about race and gender and sexuality. I feel like I have it, I may as well express it, and if it's applicable to what I'm writing about and I'm not forcing it, I should try to use it, because it's interesting. It speaks to more than some people.

I have a pretty good sense of when to express misgivings. And white critics are just as capable of pointing those things out and noticing them as people of color.

Sidney Lumet's chief preoccupation wasn't art. It was right and wrong in the American city, nearly always in New York.

I'm a human who is aware of the history of humanity and the ways in which the movies touch on those things.

I do feel a responsibility to address things that are problematic, but I don't have to go out of my way to do that.

The enormous success of 2009's 'The Blind Side,' in which Sandra Bullock makes a black teenager one of the family, demonstrates that America isn't post-racial. It is thoroughly mired in race - the myths that surround it, the guilt it inspires, the discomfort it causes, the struggle to transcend it.

Polisse' is the sort of cop thriller where people do things like angrily bang on a desktop or sweep everything off it. If it happens once, it must happen six times. But every time it did, I wanted to stand up and cheer, which I've never wanted to do for any such thriller.