This screen adaptation...is vital because it has the potential to reach marginalized communities. But it also stands as an aching, lyrical, performance-driven masterpiece in its own right, a film so intense and engrossing that movie houses really should screen it with an intermission.

This film is conceived as a showcase for its performers, and, as that, it is immaculate.

Fences is a deeply affecting treatise on marriage, poverty and the struggles of sons to confront the long shadow of the man who brought them into this world.

Washington isn't a visionary director, something he's proved before in "The Great Debaters" and "Antwone Fisher." But he is a fine actor, and if nothing else Fences preserves his career-best performance, as a loving, bullying, wounded, roaring bull of a man.

Washington, Henderson, Davis, and Hornsby are each “holy shit” great in their own ways, the four of them deepening the dynamics they forged together during their time on stage.