What, you don’t think Candyman, directed by a white man, written by a white man, and starring Virginia Madsen, should have a place in the black film canon? Given those facts you may have a decent argument. But! Candyman himself is black, it’s set in the projects, and there are Rottweilers and gang-bangers. Plus, it’s Read More
(The whole thing is on YouTube, who knew?) I don’t expect you to have ever heard of For Love of Ivy. I hadn’t heard of it until a couple of years ago, one night when I was hanging out with my dad and we were trolling On Demand for something to watch. So, as we Read More
Last Saturday, TVOne aired Idlewild (as I’m sure they do pretty often) and I decided that, three years after my first DVD viewing, it might be time to give Outkast’s initially disappointing musical another try. So I buckled in for the two-and-a-half-hour screening (complete with edits and commercials) and now, I think I’ve figured out Read More
Eve’s Bayou, Kasi Lemmons’s amazing directorial debut, is the story of a young girl who learns a public secret about her father and must deal with the consequences of her discovery. Through a combination of voiceover narration, flashbacks, and premonitions within memories, Eve’s Bayou turns out to be much more than the tale of ten-year-old Read More
It’s hard to overstate the impact John Singleton’s 1991 film Boyz n’ the Hood had on black cinema. It helped launch the careers of a slew of prominent actors: Laurence Fishburne, Angela Bassett, Cuba Gooding, Jr., (who would all go on to be Oscar nominees on other films), as well as Nia Long, Morris Chestnut, Read More
