Metacritic reviews

It does what so little of the dialogue has managed to do: implore audiences to embrace black female survivors and to understand the cultural and painful dilemmas they continue to endure along their avid fight to heal the wounds of the entire black race. Though it’s at times a gutting watch, it’s ultimately about hope and sisterhood.

On the Record has so many beautiful instances of artful storytelling.

If the subject ultimately proves to be more slippery and diffuse than in the duo’s previous films (The Invisible War addressed sexual assault in the military, The Hunting Ground, campus rape), it also never feels like less than required viewing: brutal, heartbreaking, and — with or without Oprah’s co-sign — utterly necessary.

Overall, On the Record is a stunning feat of complexity that’s both contained and expansive.

Revelatory, moving, and honest, it is essentially the story of one brave woman’s decision to publicly accuse the rap mogul Russell Simmons of harassment and rape. But it’s also a painful, parsed education on the subject of black women and abuse.

On the Record presents a searing, at times shocking exposé of alleged criminal acts. Yet here, as in those earlier chronicles, what’s extraordinary is the disturbingly intimate communion the film creates between the audience and the survivors. Not just the facts but the meaning of these alleged crimes comes scarily alive in the emotional details of their telling.

It’s a smart and sturdy behind-the-scenes look at a high-profile #MeToo drama, and succeeds at scrutinizing the conundrum facing countless women still afraid of speaking out.

On the Record itself is a thorough and self-aware film.

Russell Simmons’ victims’ sense of their own complex relations to historical power structures emerges from the film’s lucid recounting of the sexual assault allegations against him.

How sexism, toxic masculinity, complicity, and not-so-borderline criminal behavior is baked into the music business gets pecked at but never fully unpacked.