Nickel Boys just came out this week, but critics have already dubbed it a "masterpiece" and one of the best films of the year. The film is an adaptation of Colson Whitehead's novel of the same name, which follows two Black boys at an abusive reform school in 1960s Florida.

Today on Commotion, film critics Sarah-Tai Black and Jackson Weaver join Elamin Abdelmahmoud to discuss Nickel Boys and whether the praise it's receiving is valid.

Elamin: This movie is getting all this acclaim, and I want to take their acclaim very seriously. But it's also acclaim that is from mainstream movie critics, and some of us get a little nervous when we see a movie that is dealing with Black pain and Black lives and is getting this wide acclaim from the entire movie critic establishment infrastructure because some of us remember Green Book. Some of us remember these moments where a movie that, I think, failed to represent Black pain properly, ends up being beloved for the wrong reasons. But then you end up with this book. Sarah-Tai, is the critical acclaim that is so universal for Nickel Boys, is it different? Does it feel warranted for you?

Sarah-Tai: Absolutely. I mean, honestly, I woke up in a night terror sweat this morning with my Green Books again — the chronic disorder known as the Green Books, fear and anxiety combined swirling together.

But no, luckily, this is not a Green Book situation, this isn't an Emilia Pérez situation, where I'm looking at critics and being like, "What in the heck? Are we on the same planet? Are we in the same world?" I think that the thing with Nickel Boys is that the folks who were the first to champion it were Black folks. And the flow of that critical acclaim from the festival circuit reminds me a lot of Moonlight and how that was really something that was championed by Black voices on the festival circuit and then rolled and rolled and became even this bigger snowball, just like Nickel Boys, this film that's doing something formally and narratively different than anything we've ever seen before. I don't want to be super reductive in comparing it to Moonlight, but I know that all Black folks who remember that feeling of watching Moonlight for the first time, and that's the feeling I had watching Nickel Boys. And I never have that feeling. I'm chasing that feeling, literally chasing that high. This is a really, really special film. And I think the way that [director] RaMell [Ross] has adapted it, formally and narratively for the screen, is really stunning and beautiful.

Elamin: Pegging it to the feeling that you get after watching Moonlight is a really high bar.

Nickel Boys is just hitting theatres this week, so still relatively early days. Jackson, do you imagine it being a significant player when we think about the awards season?

Jackson: I really hope so. I mean, I 100 per cent agree with Sarah-Tai, in the sense that this is a movie that stands head and shoulders above. We're going to blame it again [on] Green Book and Emilia Pérez. These are movies that give you the sensation of participating in something important about race relations or disenfranchised groups, but they just let you off the hook being like, "You watched a movie that made you feel good about being yourself as somebody who's not in one of these groups." And you get to walk out and check your box on the Oscars voting list and then say, "I'm done being an ally today." This movie challenges you, which unfortunately might alienate people. Emilia Pérez did unfortunately good at the Golden Globes. I want to believe that people are good enough to give this a vote, and I want to believe that it's going to do well.