Find Movies & TV
Home
Live TV
On Demand
Discover
Explore
Movies & TV Shows
Most Popular
Leaving Soon
Categories
Action
Animation
Comedy
Crime
Descriptive Audio
Documentary
Drama
En Español
Horror
Music
Romance
Sci-Fi
Thriller
Western
Explore
Browse Channels
Featured Channels
SNL Vault
Ion Mystery
CW Forever
Categories
Black Stories
Hit TV
Drama TV
True Crime
Reality
News
Sports
Comedy
History & Science
Movies
Food & Home
Lifestyle
Nature & Travel
Daytime TV
Game Shows
Sci-Fi & Action
Kids & Family
Classic TV
Anime & Gaming
Chills & Thrills
International
En Español
Music
Sign In
Bless Their Little Hearts
Directed by
Billy Woodberry
1986
85m
Drama
7.2
100%
67%
Add to Watchlist
A dramatic look into the life of a family in Watts.
More
Where to Watch Bless Their Little Hearts
Kanopy
Free
Criterion Channel
Subscription
OVID
Subscription
+5 more
Cast of Bless Their Little Hearts
Nate Hardman
Charlie Banks
Kaycee Moore
Andais Banks
Angela Burnett
Banks Child
Ronald Burnett
Banks Child
Kimberly Burnett
Banks Child
Langston Woodberry
Mistresses' Son
Eugene Cherry
Gene
Ellis Griffin
Pasquale
Ernest Knight
Duck
Lawrence Pierott
John
Bless Their Little Hearts Ratings & Reviews
From the Front Row
Mattie Lucas
Woodberry is an unheralded virtuoso, and Bless Their Little Hearts is a revelation that can at long last be given its due.
Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews
Dennis Schwartz
An engaging and unsentimental independent American film about the black experience.
Shadow and Act
Brandon Wilson
The enormous generosity Woodberry demonstrates as a director also reminds us not to buy into the "Great Auteur" approach to understanding the movement he participated in.
The New Yorker
Richard Brody
Woodberry crafts a passionately pensive realism-nearly every scene of action is matched by a long one in which one character or another, in observant repose, looks back and sees their self reflected in society's mirror.
Chicago Reader
Jonathan Rosenbaum
[A] wonderful neorealist look at a working-class black family in South Central LA.
Village Voice
Jim Ridley
Bless Their Little Hearts forms, with Killer of Sheep, a landmark diptych about work as the crucible of the American character -- either in its abundance or its absence.
New York Times
Vincent Canby
Bless Their Little Hearts is so understated that at times it seems diffident...this, however, is the style of the film that Mr. Woodberry, Mr. Burnett and their splendid cast have chosen to make, and it works beautifully...
The Stranger (Seattle, WA)
Kathy Fennessy
The acting is unpolished, but Woodberry's empathy elevates the scenario.
Boston Phoenix
Gregory Solman
These scenes come to a head in a 10-minute argument in the Banks' kitchen that's shot in one long, testy take...The spontaneous, convulsive bursts of emotion evinced by Hardman and Moore are so tainted with real anger it puts professional acting to shame.
Los Angeles Times
Linda Gross
The acting is outstanding. The film is so claustrophobic and intense that a viewer feels locked inside the apartment along with the family.
812filmreviews
Robert Daniels
An unforgettable movie that's a snapshot of how adverse economic pressures can weigh heavily on Black families.
Boston Globe
Jay Carr
It's structurally rudimentary, yet the purity of its feelings emerges forcefully. It was a gamble to make a film about desperation in such understated, laconic terms, but Woodberry brings it off.
L.A. Weekly
F.X. Feeney
This is an L.A. that no film or television show pays attention to, the L.A. of the people who ride the buses, the L.A. of the people who will never live on the hill and who couldn't care less about the Hollywood sign.
San Francisco Examiner
Ying Ying Wu
This low-budget ($25,000) film's quiet drama takes advantage of its realistic settings and non-actors in a way that recalls not only the tradition of Italian neo-realism but also Robert Young and Michael Roomer's moving 1964 film... Nothing But a Man.
San Francisco Examiner
David Armstrong
Woodbury's Bless Their Little Hearts has... a sense of slow, grinding, inevitability leavened with deep feeling that is rarely sentimental.
Philadelphia Inquirer
Desmond Ryan
[Bless Their Little Hearts] is a remarkably subtle and insightful look at what poverty does to family life... The strength of Woodberry's film lies in its perceptive study of how this hopeless predicament corrodes a man's self-esteem.
Jaredmobarak.com
Jared Mobarak
The film isn't perfect, wears its budget on its sleeve, and finds its final two or three scenes disjointed through incongruous jump cuts that feel like whole scenes are missing, but it's honest in its decision to not sanitize life's hardships.
48 Hills
Dennis Harvey
Written by Charles Burnett, it's a low-key-yet-potent look at the soul-grinding effects of long-term poverty and hopelessness on a Watts family that is slowly but surely falling apart.
TheArtsStl
Sarah Boslaugh
The Banks household may not realize it, but they're living exemplars of what it feels to be on the losing end of Ronald Reagan's economic policies...
Slant Magazine
Derek Smith
More than most other films about poverty, Bless Their Little Hearts understands how it can feel like a waking nightmare from which there is no reprieve.
Watch Bless Their Little Hearts Videos
Bless Their Little Hearts
Bless Their Little Hearts
Trailer
Take Plex everywhere
Watch free anytime, anywhere, on almost any device.
See the full list of supported devices
Home
Live TV
On Demand
Discover
