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A Raisin in the Sun
(more) »rank: 7651starring: Sidney Poitier, Claudia McNeil, Ruby Dee, Diana Sands, Ivan Dixon
directed by: Daniel Petrie
: :When a newly widowed matriarch receives a $10000 life insurance check she soon learns her family has their own ideas on how to best spend the money. Special features: subtitles in english spanish portuguese korean and thai production notes talent files interactive menus scene selections and much more. Studio: Sony Pictures Home Ent Release Date: 02/22/2000 Starring: Sidney Poitier Louis Gossett Jr. Run time: 127 minutes Rating: Nr essential video:Lorraine Hansberry's play is given sensitive treatment by filmmaker Daniel Petrie (The Bay Boy). Sidney Poitier heads a fine cast in the story of an African American family in Chicago ...
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Do the Right Thing
(more) »rank: 7446starring: Danny Aiello, Rick Aiello, Paul Benjamin, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee
: :The hottest day of the year in the bedford-stuyvesant area of brooklyn explodes into events that will change the residents lives forever. Studio: Uni Dist Corp. (mca) Release Date: 01/09/2007 Starring: Danny Aiello Ruby Dee Run time: 120 minutes Rating: R Director: Spike Lee essential video:Spike Lee's incendiary look at race relations in America, circa 1989, is so colorful and exuberant for its first three-quarters that you can almost forget the terrible confrontation that the movie inexorably builds toward. Do the Right Thing is a joyful, tumultuous masterpiece--maybe the best film ever made about race in America, revealing racial ...
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Boyz 'N the Hood
(more) »rank: 7686starring: Hudhail Al-Amir, Lloyd Avery II, Angela Bassett, Mia Bell, Lexie Bigham
: :The story about three friends growing up in a south central los angeles neighborhood and of street life where friendship pain danger and love combine to form reality. the hood is a place where drive-by shootings and unemployment are rampant. But it is also a place where harmony co-exists with adversity. Studio: Sony Pictures Home Ent Release Date: 02/20/2007 Starring: Ice Cube Cuba Gooding Jr. Run time: 112 minutes Rating: R Director: John Singleton essential video:John Singleton, at the age of 23, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for his debut film, Boyz N the ...
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In the Heat of the Night
(more) »rank: 7932starring: Sidney Poitier, Rod Steiger, Warren Oates, Lee Grant, Larry Gates
directed by: Norman Jewison
:Description:Starring Academy AwardÂ(r) winners* Sidney Poitier, Rod Steiger and Lee Grant, this provocative mystery thriller won** five 1967 OscarsÂ(r), including Best Picture. Highlighted by an evocative score from OscarÂ(r)-winning*** composer Quincy Jones, In The Heat Of The Night is a 'powerful film' (The New York Times) that delivers the 'highest level of exciting entertainment' (New York Daily News)! While traveling in the Deep South, Virgil Tibbs, a black Philadelphia homicide detective, becomes unwittingly embroiled in the murder investigationof a prominent businessman when he is first accused of the crimeand then asked to solve it! Finding the killer proves to be difficult, ...
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A Soldier's Story
(more) »rank: 5573starring: Howard E. Rollins Jr., Adolph Caesar, Art Evans, David Alan Grier, David Harris
directed by: Norman Jewison
: :Denzel washington stars in this dark drama of murder and racism on a southern military base. Special features: full screen and widescreen versions subtitles: english spanish chinese korean thai director norman jewison commentary march to freedom documentary and theatrical trailer. Studio: Sony Pictures Home Ent Release Date: 12/21/2004 Starring: Denzel Washington Run time: 101 minutes Rating: Pg essential video:Director Norman Jewison's (In the Heat of the Night) 1984 adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play explores the ramifications of racism and loyalty through the prism of blacks in the military, revealed through a murder mystery set in the 1940s deep ...
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Shaft
(more) »rank: 14558starring: Victor Arnold (II), Dominic Barto, Sherri Brewer, Drew Bundini Brown, Charles Cioffi
: :Richard roundtree scores as the tough private eye whose hunt for a missing woman puts him in the middle of a syndicate feud. Special features: behind-the-scenes documentary soul in cinema: filming shaft on location feature-length audio commentary by director gordon parks and much more. Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 05/03/2005 Starring: Richard Roundtree Charles Cioffi Run time: 98 minutes Rating: R Director: Gordon Parks essential video:Gordon Parks (The Learning Tree) directed this 1971 detective story about John Shaft (Richard Roundtree), an African American private eye who has a rocky relationship with cops, an even rockier one with Harlem ...
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Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
(more) »rank: 24253starring: Spencer Tracy, Sidney Poitier, Katharine Hepburn, Katharine Houghton, Cecil Kellaway
directed by: Stanley Kramer
: :Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn (who won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance) are unforgettable as perplexed parents in this landmark 1967 movie about mixed marriage. Joanna (Katharine Houghton) the beautiful daughter of crusading publisher Matthew Drayton (Tracy) and his patrician wife Christina (Hepburn) returns home with her new fiance John Prentice (Sidney Poitier) a distinguished black doctor. Christina accepts her daughters decision to marry John but Matthew is shocked by this interracial union; the doctors parents are equally dismayed. Both families must sit down face to face and examine each others level of intolerance. In GUESS ...
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Do The Right Thing - Criterion Collection
(more) »rank: 16916starring: Danny Aiello, Rick Aiello, Paul Benjamin, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee
:Description:The hottest day of the year explodes onscreen in this vibrant look at a day in the life of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Featuring a stellar ensemble cast that includes Danny Aiello, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Richard Edson, Giancarlo Esposito, Robin Harris, Samuel L. Jackson, Bill Nunn, Rosie Perez, and John Turturro, Spike Lee's powerful portrait of urban racial tensions sparked controversy while earning popular and critical praise. Criterion is proud to present Do the Right Thing in a new Director Approved special edition. essential video:Spike Lee's incendiary look at race relations in America, circa 1989, is so colorful and exuberant for ...
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To Sir, With Love
(more) »rank: 23139starring: Sidney Poitier, Christian Roberts, Judy Geeson, Suzy Kendall, Lulu
directed by: James Clavell
: essential video:Novelist James Clavell wrote, produced, and directed this 1967 British film (based on a novel by E.R. Braithwaite) about a rookie teacher who throws out stock lesson plans and really takes command of his unruly, adolescent students in a London school. Poitier is very good as a man struggling with the extent of his commitment to the job, and even more as a teacher whose commitment is to proffering life lessons instead of academics. The spirit of this movie can be found in such recent films as Dangerous Minds and Mr. Holland's Opus, but none is as moving as ...
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Eve's Bayou
(more) »rank: 26860starring: Jurnee Smollett, Meagan Good, Samuel L. Jackson, Lynn Whitfield, Debbi Morgan
directed by: Kasi Lemmons
: essential video:Actress Kasi Lemmons made an auspicious debut as a writer and director with this delicately handled, wrenchingly emotional drama, hailed by critic Roger Ebert as one of the best films of 1997. Eve's Bayou begins with ominous narration: 'The summer I killed my father, I was 10 years old.' From that point the story moves backward in time and memory to Louisiana in 1962, when a young girl named Eve (Jurnee Smollett) witnesses a shocking act on the part of her womanizing father (Samuel L. Jackson). But what really happened? And can Eve be certain about what she saw ...
