Sidney Poitier is my mother’s boyfriend. They’ve never met, but my family is clear that she would leave my father in a flash if Sidney ever came knocking. It is for this reason that I had seen every Sidney Poitier film made before I was old enough to get into a PG-13-movie. One of my favorites remains For Love of Ivy—a bit of late-‘60s fluff about a suburban family that sets out to find a boyfriend for their black maid so that she will abandon her plans to leave them and go to school in New York City. It stars Carroll O’Connor at his irascible best, a young Beau Bridges, a radiant Abbey Lincoln and, of course, my would-be stepdaddy. The silly premise aside, For Love of Ivy addresses themes of class and privilege. And I love to watch the relationship unfold between the worldly businessman/hustler that Poitier plays and Lincoln’s shy, sheltered maid.
Mahogany, starring Billy Dee Williams and Diana Ross, is one of my favorite love movies ever made. It requires a true romantic to appreciate the love demonstrated in this great movie because it was not initially intended as a love story. And love is a powerful thing.. But, throughout Mahogany, it subtly shows the power of love.
When the couple first meet, Brian (Williams) is not interested in romance; he is involved in his own work as an activist and construction worker. Despite this, the mere appearance of Tracy (Ross) breaks his concentration while he is delivering a public speech. He is passionate and committed to his cause, yet she penetrates that and grabs his attention. That is something only a soul mate is able to do.
Brian and Tracy are both struggling in different careers. She gets a big break and is offered a chance to model in France. Brian gives a lesson on how selfish love can be at times. He doesn’t want her to go because he fears losing her. …
Whenever we see healthy Black relationships, we need to celebrate; especially when we see it in film.
It’s been a decade since the release but Brown Sugarstill rings true to me as a love story. I know that technically the main characters, Sydney (Sanaa Lathan) and Dre’ (Taye Diggs), cheat on their significant others in order to find true love; but we’ll get back to that in a minute.
Contrary to conventional thought, the relationship that stands out to me the most is that of Sydney and Francine (Queen Latifah). Yes, the cousins not the lovers. I love that two relatives that can often be considered distant are so close. They know each other, play together, and most importantly have each other’s back. This is the way family should be but too often we see familial relationships that become catty and adversarial.
Sydney and Francine have a relationship that is as full of life as they are. And to add a little spice to the…
That time, that place, where you realize that you have a good man, the thoughts, and daydreams of what could be begin…That is all said in the look Havilland Savage (Chenoa Maxwell) gives Lee Plenty (Christopher Scott Cherot) as they drive home after New Year’s. It is a look anyone who’s been in love will recognize. It is the realization of something changing, a closeness blooming inside and budding in your eyes as you look at your lover.
Hav Plenty has a way of articulating your heart in moments like that. It is a simple movie that shows the slow and flawed progression as two people try to make their way into a relationship. The insecurity, the pride, the doubt, the vulnerability; it’s all there. The fact that Christopher Scott Cherot wrote the screenplay based on his own relationship is the key to what makes this film so believable and so familiar. Equally impressive as writing this film is…
The Prince of Broadway tells the story of Lucky, an illegal Ghanaian immigrant, eking out a living as a salesman of illicit designer duds on the streets of Manhattan’s discount shopping district. Posted up in his “street corner” office, Lucky perfects the art of the handbag hustle and has pronounced himself the King of Broadway Avenue. His world is abruptly turned upside down with the arrival of the 2-year-old son, aptly named Prince, he never knew existed. Director Sean Baker shot the film without a script (just a plot outline) and with actors who had never previously been actors thereby achieving a heightened state of reality that exhaustive staging and professional training can sometimes negate. When a woman from one night in Lucky’s not so distant past leaves him with the toddler she claims they conceived; life as Lucky knows it stops. He tries vigorously to return the child to his mother…
Posted at Visual Inquiry, the research blog for visual studies at the Annenberg School at Penn. Many thanks to Mark Anthony Neal for linking to this post.
Watching a Tyler Perry movie is a strange and ecstatic experience. Perry’s desire for shenanigans, inanity and heightened emotions always makes for an entertaining evening. But his films are in a strange in-between space: between melodrama and traditional drama, between alternative cinema and Hollywood style, and between black authenticity and pure elitism. Through it all, what vexes film scholars, especially critics, is how style, content, auteurism and culture clash and miss each other in Tyler Perry’s films. Understanding Perry now is crucial, especially as he embarks into new cinematic territory, most notably in next year’s adaptation of Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf.
Are Tyler Perry’s movies “bad,” and, whether yes or no, why should we care?
The Color Purple has become such a cultural reference point that it is difficult to remember that this Pulitzer prize-winning novel adaptation was the object of heated controversy.
The film was directed by Steven Spielberg and based on the novel by Alice Walker. Letters were written to Ms. Walker and company threatening to boycott the film on account of its negative depiction of black men, the not-so-subtle lesbian relationship of Shug and Miss Celie, and the questions circulated by cultural watchdogs – “Can Hollywood justly tell a black woman’s story?”
No one talks about these things anymore. Maybe…if you talk to an older relative and ask did they go see The Color Purple when it debuted in 1985.
Despite all the controversy, The Color Purpleain’t going nowhere. The novel is now part of the contemporary American canon read widely in schools and universities. The movie, like any solid work of art, has remained a part of our cultural conversation and feeds a culture hungry for revisionist works of art…
“What the hell is going on with them moon pies?” I asked myself during the film.
Did you know that Mobile, Alabama started Mardi Gras? Yes… Alabama. It started there in 1703, 15 years before New Orleans.
There are two Mardi Gras in Mobile: one is the all Black Mobile Area Mardi Gras Association (MAMGA) and the other is the all White Mobile Carnival Association (MCA), each with their own King and Queen. The Order of Myths, a film by Margaret Brown, documents the celebrations and covers a broad scope of topics: the history of Mardi Gras in Mobile, the persistence of institutionalized racism and sexism, and the progress of African-Americans.
The style of this film is fast, almost too fast; there is no lingering on one thought, fact, or action. Often I would try and absorb a scene only to be rushed to another fact, another thought, or another action. I wanted to throw the remote at the television and shout: “Wait…
What happens when a white couple gives birth to a black child? Skin, a drama directed by Anthony Fabian, answers this question by exploring the conflict between familial belonging and societal racism. Amidst the backdrop of Apartheid-era South Africa, Sandra Laing (whose life the film is based on), becomes almost celebrity in her father’s legal battle to have her classified as white, despite her brown skin and kinky hair. Later, when Sandra runs away from home to marry a black man, her father banishes her from the family.
Sophie Okonedo gives a fine performance as the meek, strong-willed Sandra, and Sam Neill explodes onscreen as Abraham, a man obsessed with proving his daughter’s whiteness, and his paternity. The film is a clever examination of the fallibility of racial classification, as each character struggles to love, exist, or in Abraham’s case, accept his own daughter, under the…
I’m not sure if there’s been a film in my generation that has been the object of so much mixed emotion, and perhaps vitriol, drawing a line in the sand along gender lines. Almost all of the guys that I know have talked about Precious at arm’s length. Some of us have even said “I’m not ready to see that film.” Yet my female friends have almost unanimously said “I got to go see it,” etc.
The movie’s been out for a few weeks now. Granted, I’ve been busy but I know I could have seen it sooner. There was almost an instant retreat when I saw the extra large darkskinned black women featured prominently on film—a rarity for contemporary film. And this is unfortunate as the darkskinned black woman is a part of all of us, so why the hesitation? I suppose it’s because the big-boned black women aren’t framed in a flattering way and this is a part of a larger narrative. Remember growing up we’d…
Sidney Poitier is my mother’s boyfriend. They’ve never met, but my family is clear that she would leave my father in a flash if Sidney ever came knocking. It is for this reason that I had seen every Sidney Poitier film made before I was old enough to get into a PG-13-movie. One of my favorites remains For Love of Ivy—a bit of late-‘60s fluff about a suburban family that sets out to find a boyfriend for their black maid so that she will abandon her plans to leave them and go to school in New York City. It stars Carroll O’Connor at his irascible best, a young Beau Bridges, a radiant Abbey Lincoln and, of course, my would-be stepdaddy. The silly premise aside, For Love of Ivy addresses themes of class and privilege. And I love to watch the relationship unfold between the worldly businessman/hustler that Poitier plays and Lincoln’s shy, sheltered maid.
