Is 'Emancipation' must-see Apple TV+?

Emancipation, the new Will Smith movie about a slave's epic journey to freedom, sounds good enough to make you overlook the actor's slaptastic outburst at the Academy Awards ceremony earlier this year.

Smith has been making the rounds on a pathetic apology tour, trying to convince people not to snub Emancipation because of his bad behavior.

Maybe he should've skipped the cringe-worthy pitch and let the movie speak for itself. Our reviewer Scout Tafoya calls the film "quite a bit better than an Oscar-ready slavery drama made in today’s Hollywood has any right to be."

He also calls Emancipation, which arrived on Apple TV+ today, director Antoine Fuqua’s best film yet.

Read the full review to see if you should stream Emancipation this weekend.

-- Lewis Wallace, managing editor

P.S. Not an Apple TV+ subscriber? You're in luck. Apple just sweetened the free trial offer for its streaming service in Emancipation's honor. New and "qualified returning" subscribers can get two months free now.

Based on a true story about a slave’s quest for freedom during the Civil War, Apple TV+’s oddly positioned Oscar contender Emancipation pairs action with an unflinching look at slavery’s brutality. It stars Will Smith, whose bizarre post-Slap apology tour makes for strange bedfellows with Emancipation’s stark subject matter and the film’s action-oriented director.

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Tweet o' the day

One more thing ...

"I'm a very big believer in equal opportunity as opposed to equal outcome. I don't believe in equal outcome because unfortunately life's not like that. It would be a pretty boring place if it was.

But I really believe in equal opportunity. Equal opportunity to me more than anything means a great education. Maybe even more important than a great family life, but I don't know how to do that. Nobody knows how to do that. But it pains me because we do know how to provide a great education. We really do. We could make sure that every young child in this country got a great education. We fall far short of that." — Steve Jobs, 1995, on the importance of education

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