Over in some other corner of the internets, my friend Hello Kitty and I were compiling a list of Black Movies, and she encouraged me to present it here. This is by no means a definitive list, just some movies we both like and that we feel everyone, no matter what their racial background, should see. And not just because they are “Black,” but because they are freaking good.
Here’s the list.
Amistad, Roots, Glory, Sounder, A Raisin in the Sun, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. Stories of life during the years between slavery and segregation.
The Defiant Ones, A Soldier’s Story, In the Heat of the Night. Ground-breaking movies. These films challenged conventional racial stereotypes and were well ahead of their time.
Imitation of Life. The story of a light-skinned eight-year-old daughter who rejects her mother by trying to pass for White.
Mahogany. A Black model/fashion designer struggles to make it in an all-White industry.
No Way Out, American History X, The Birth of a Nation, Rosewood , Song of the South. Haters gonna hate. Keep you friends close, but your enemies closer. Gotta understand the ugliness.
Do the Right Thing. When worlds collide. And it was a travesty this film was “overlooked” during awards season. It scared everybody sh*tless because of its power and truths. And also, bullshit rumors of riots and shootings in theaters. Thanks “liberal” media!
Malcolm X. Beautiful film. And you realize Denzel’s Oscar was supposed to be for this film, not Training Day, right?
Boyz n the “˜Hood, Menace II Society, Straight Outta Brooklyn, Just Another Girl on the IRT, New Jack City, Belly. Street life… it’s the only life I know…
Boomerang, The Best Man, Love Jones, Love and Basketball, The Inkwell, Crooklyn, Eve’s Bayou, Akeelah and the Bee. Movies about people who also happen to be Black. YouKnowWhatI’mSaying?
Hollywood Shuffle. A scathing yet funny commentary on being Black in Hollywood. See also: Bamboozled.
Bamboozled. I really can’t classify this flick. I know a lot of people didn’t like it, but I thought it touched upon some very important and sensitive issues about depictions of Blacks in mainstream media. For a more digestible version of a similar message, try Dancing in September.
The Five Heartbeats, Dreamgirls, The Wiz, Carmen Jones, Porgy and Bess. Musical movies. All classics.
Movies about famous/important African-Americans. The Josephine Baker Story, Lady Sings the Blues, Something the Lord Made, The Tuskegee Airmen, Buffalo Soldiers, Hotel Rwanda, Bird.
The Color Purple. A masterful adaption of Alice Walker’s powerful novel.
Posse. Finally! A Western that prominently features Blacks, Native Americans, and Asians in the Wild West. No giant spiders, I promise!
Dead Presidents, Set It Off. Heist movies. When good people are pushed to do bad things.
Harlem Nights. Eddie Murphy. Richard Pryor. Della Reese. Red Foxx. This movie is a Who’s Who of comedy all-stars. Funny from beginning to end.
Daughters of the Dust. A film about the Gullah culture of the sea islands off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia.
Bebe’s Kids, The Princess and the Frog. Sadly, the only two not-blatantly-racist animated movies in existence.
School Daze, Drumline, Stomp the Yard. Three very accurate portrayals of life at an Historically Black College/University.
She’s Gotta Have It. In my opinion, the most honest look at female sexuality in film history.
Blade, Spawn. Black superheroes. Super awesome.
Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai. This movie is in a class by itself. The imdb.com description reads, “An African American mafia hit man who models himself after the samurai of old finds himself targeted for death by the mob.” Oh, but it’s so much more than that. Forest Whittaker with a sword. Soundtrack by RZA of the Wu-Tang Clan. Need I say more?
Black Dynamite. A send-up of every Blaxsploitation movie ever made.
Jackie Brown. Pam Grier being a BAMF. Watch this movie!
Tales from the ‘Hood, Bones. Horror movies where the Black people live. Well, some of them do.
Jungle Fever, Zebrahead, Something New. Honorable Mentions in this category: A Bronx Tale and Strange Days.
Whew! It’s a long list, but definitely not complete. What Black movies would you like to see included on this list? Add yours in the comments.
42 replies on “The Blacker the Netflix…”
What about Blaxploitation movies themselves? Jackie Brown is a tribute to the films of the 1970s, to the extent of having the genre’s most famous star, Pam Grier, star as Jackie Brown. Sure they could be OTT, but some of them were great movies too. (my personal favourites are Across 110th Street, Shaft and Truck Turner).
What do people think of O? (The modern film version of Othello with Julia Stiles.) I watched it as part of a Shakespeare class and rather liked it, but I don’t think it’s considered to have a particularly transgressive stance on race.
This list is great!
Bamboozled is really uncomfortable, but it has a lot to say. It took me a long time to digest that one.
These films are all great mentions. I have some other favorites to add:
The Wood, a coming-of-age story about three guys growing up in 80’s L.A. They are at both immature and sweet, and most of the film is a flashback, as one of them is on his wedding day and is freaking out about it. It’s just a really touching and nice movie.
Someone once said that The Town is a ripoff of Set it Off, and I agree. Despite that The Town comes from a novel, the story is very similar, like a white guy’s version of it.
Brown Sugar has always been one of my favorite romantic comedies. It has great music, Taye Diggs and Sanaa Lathan share a sweet chemistry, Mos Def and Queen Latifah were scene-stealers as best friend characters, and everyone in the movie just looks like a regular person, not too glam, and nobody is really the bad guy, even when they do something wrong or aren’t sympathetic in some way.
Brown Sugar is so good. Not a single bad performance.
I think I said that about The Town. At least, I said that immediately after I saw it.
And yes, Brown Sugar and The Wood are both excellent additions to this list.
Ah, Set it Off. Such a great movie. The copy I have of it is so scratched up from years of watching it over and over again.
I saw The Town a few weekends ago, and I didn’t immediately think of it as a rip-off of Set it Off, but now I want to watch them both back to back to analyze the similarities.
Also, Separate But Equal. It’s a 1991 made for TV movie that depicts the Brown v Board of Education case. Sidney Poitier plays Thurgood Marshall. It’s split into two parts, the first half takes place in Clarendon County, SC and shows how the community dealt with the “separate but equal” issue and how they ended up getting involved with Brown V. Board of Education. The second half of the movie follows the Supreme Court trial. It’s a very interesting movie.
The first half filled me with righteous anger, the second half was a lot calmer, but still kept me enthralled. Although I knew how the trial would end up, the movie had me at the edge of my seat.
American Violet was a good movie, it has a good cast (Alfre Woodard!) and an interesting story line. One that is, unfortunately, based on true events.
Here’s the wiki
Comediez?
I got Boomerang, Hollywood Shuffle, Black Dynamite on there! :-)
But seriously, what comedies would you have like to have seen included on this list?
Hi it’s HK here.
For those of us who were born post Civil Rights Act of 1964 I really have to recommend “No Way Out”. It’s tough film, but the brutal language and violence gives you a glimpse what life was like for Black Americans. There are scenes of Black people in different walks of life, just living and working. There’s even a tender scene between Sidney Poitier and Cora Joanne Smith, as husband and wife. All the Black actors give authentic performances, none have to adapt stereotypical behaviors or language–rather progressive for 1950. Plus you get an early glimpse of Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis.
It’s a great history lesson.
And yes Richard Widmark was good friends with Sidney Poitier in real life, so it truly pained him to do those scenes and utter those epithets.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Way_Out_(1950_film)
I’m adding this to my Netflix rightnowrightnow. Thanks!
I, too, can’t believe I left off A Lesson Before Dying! I haven’t seen that movie in forever, but the message still resonates with me.
And Idlewild was a vastly underrated movie.
There are SO many good Black movies, it’s a shame they typically aren’t seen by a lot of non-Black people. I wonder why that is?
They aren’t marketed to mass audiences unless you have Hollywood moneymakers like Will Smith or Eddie Murphy. Hollywood marketing/PR still has segregationist notions IMO. They put business first. With business you use shorthand and the thinking is based on stereotypes, the tried and true.
Well, that explains Tyler Perry.
You got it!
I’d like to add A Time To Kill to this list. Yes, the main attorney and sidekick are white, but I found the performances in it compelling and disturbing in a way I didn’t get from the book characters.
Also, though this was a very limited release in a grassroots way, I highly, highly suggest watching Silent Choices by Faith Pennick (disclaimer–she’s a close friend’s sister and a fantastic woman). http://www.silentchoices.com/
I’ll be sure to add it to my watch list.
Re: Imitation of Life: I’m glad you’re not referring to the 1934 version! IMO, the 1959 version is a better movie overall (this may be because it was made almost 30 years later).
Yes, the Douglas Sirk version is a better film over all, but I would also argue for the 1934 version because of the Aunt Jemima pancake story line and for Fredi Washington who played Peola. It’s more authentic with Ms. Washington playing the girl who wants to pass.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fredi_Washington
I personally prefer the 1934 version myself, but I generally like films of that period, full stop.
So I assume you like pre-code films, right? The early 30s was a great time for the movies!
I like a lot of the pre code films — I think most people would be shocked to know what was going on in pre-code Hollywood. But in general a bunch of my favorite movies came out right around the same time — The Thin Man, It Happened One Night, Captain Blood, A Night at the Opera, The 39 Steps, I’m No Angel. The Women is 1939 and is high on my list of fantastic, untopable movies.
pre-code is the way to go!
Yes! I like that the 1932 version actually used a black actress who can “pass for white.”
It’s unsurprising that Hollywood, time and again, casts white actresses in non-white parts (Pinky and Show Boat come to mind).
Oh “Pinky”!! Hollywood loves to prop that film up to show how liberal and progressive they were. Freaking Jeanne Crain–are you serious?!
Now the remake of “Show Boat” is interesting because I want to believe the rumors that Ava Gardner had Black ancestry.
Great list.I’ll have to check some of these out.
I wrote MK a long rambly email last night/early this morning when I was editing about Imitation of Life. If you haven’t seen it, you really need to, but if you can make it all the way through without hysterically crying I think you might be dead inside.
This is a great list, and another post I’m bookmarking forever.
You should watch both versions. The earlier one is not as entertaining, but Delilah and Peola are more authentic characters.
I love that you included Hollywood Shuffle, which is one of my favorite films. I find myself thinking about it a lot right now, in this economic landscape — particularly the call that ‘there is always work at the post office’.
Hollywood Shuffle was brilliant. I turned it on once on TV, in the middle of it, and wasn’t sure exactly what it was, but thought it was at both funny and fascinating. Robert Townsend continued on the themes of Hollywood Shuffle in his sitcom The Parent ‘Hood, where he had an episode talking about the marginalized roles black actors played in the 1930s. I thought it was an excellent episode, but the show wasn’t too popular when it was around.
I have watched very few movies on this list, but I’d say my favorite is American History X.
The performances are great and we can see how the mind of a racist works.
It also shows that racism affects not only the black community, but the entire society in a very negative way.
I developed a very unhealthy attraction to Edward Norton in that movie. ::hangs head in shame::
Great list!
I really enjoyed Lackawanna Blues, although I didn’t realize until just now getting the link from IMDB that it was a tv movie. For some reason I thought it had a limited theatrical release.
Anyway, it’s about a young kid from a mixed background (black and latino) growing up in a boarding house in Lackawanna, NY, being raised by the house mother S. Epatha Merkerson, and interacting with the folks who pass through the boarding house. Really beautiful stuff.
Nothing But a Man (1964) – realistic portrayal of the struggles a black man in the South faced, and their effects on his interpersonal relationships.
I can’t believe A Lesson Before Dying isn’t on this list. I loved the novel by Ernest Gaines, and the movie with Don Cheadle in the role of Grant is fantastic.
Has anyone else seen Ballast?
It’s a snapshot of the lives of a single mother raising her troubled teenaged boy in the Mississipi Delta area. Her son’s father commits suicide and that sends her, her son’s and his (deceased man’s) twin brother into a downward spiral.
The film is beautifully acted although none of the actors are professionals. The movie unfolds almost like a documentary–which can be attributed to the fact it was filmed with a hand-held camera.
It’s a short film (96 minutes), but it’s one of the more powerful Black films I’ve seen in the last 5 years.
I just googled it. Sounds wonderful.
I don’t know how the reviews were or even when it actually came out but thanks to the powers of Netflix, I fell in love with Idlewild.
Andre Benjamin is seriously underrated.
Paula Patton is Gorgeous – but I think everyone knows that.