“Selma” wasn’t the only film about race to get short shrift from Oscar voters this past year. Black or White is a frank, touching and very well-acted melodrama about child custody and cultural perceptions of “blackness” and “the race card,” and could have earned Octavia Spencer and Kevin Costner fresh Oscar nominations.

Good acting and plenty to think about, but a better director than Mike Binder would have made a better film.

Black and White never panders too easily to sentiments, creating characters who are riddled with flaws but likeable all the same.

The filmmaker and his on-screen proxies boldly go places our national discourse desperately needs to go, yet rarely does.

The good news is that Kevin Costner does some of the finest, most deeply felt work of his career as a widower lawyer fighting for custody of his biracial granddaughter in Mike Binder’s Black and White. The bad news is that this well-intentioned family drama never quite shakes free from its didactic, movie-of-the-week dramaturgy and a hand-holding approach to race-relations.