The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019)

The film team is so strong and the direction so fine that it’s simply hard to believe this is actually Talbot’s first full-length feature film. And to detail much more would spoil the genuine surprise of their many on-screen artistic contributions.

Aside from exploring the housing crisis benefiting developers and startups, “Last Black Man” hones in on male friendship from the standpoint of two young guys whose fraternal bond surpasses any need for the posturing associated with toxic masculinity.

Talbot has a gift for making twee material feel true, but his grip weakens during the pivotal home stretch of his debut, and as a result the ending doesn’t land with the emotion it deserves.

All the dramatic components have not only been well thought out by Talbot and co-writer Rob Richert, but they’re adorned, for the most part, by a sense of reality that keeps pretentiousness at bay. To be sure, this is a highly calculated and worked-out story, but the humor and lively playing of the entire cast keeps the film aloft across its two hours.

A patchwork of impressions, ruminations and unsolved mysteries, The Last Black Man in San Francisco teems and even overflows with life and love, some might argue at the cost of narrative focus or momentum. That strikes me as precisely the point.