Nia Long

In Michael (2026), Nia Long’s Katherine Jackson stands in doorways looking worried while Colman Domingo’s Joseph dominates the household scenes. We were frustrated by those appearances, which leave her registering concern while he gets to shape the scene. Antoine Fuqua has cast an actor known for making maternal figures credible, then given her little beyond the job description. We rate Long’s grounded presence, but it needs a part worth playing.

The problem was there in Boyz n the Hood (1991), her breakthrough as Brandi for John Singleton. We strongly recommend the film for the time it gives its young men, yet Brandi belongs to its less fully imagined group of women. Angela Bassett brings conviction to Reva Styles without being granted the freedom the men have to be complicated. Long’s part is another reason to regret that limit, not a reason to think less of her.

During the 1990s, she also appeared in Friday (1995), Love Jones (1997) and The Best Man (1999). As Nina Mosley in Love Jones and Jordan Armstrong in The Best Man, she became a central presence in Black love stories. Her ease in romantic pairings matters: attraction has to feel plausible before any complication is worth our attention. Those parts are worth remembering when another film employs her chiefly to lend steadiness to a family.

The later work takes her into thrillers, though a change of genre does not guarantee a fuller part. In Will Merrick and Nicholas D. Johnson’s Missing (2023), she is Grace, the mother whose failure to return from Colombia sends her daughter June, played by Storm Reid, searching through screens. We found it tense for an hour before the accumulating twists strained its plausibility; Reid does more to hold it together than the script. It is a qualified choice for thriller enthusiasts, rather than the place to begin with Long. For a first encounter with her work, we would choose Love Jones over either of the later films.