Black Movies You Might Want To Check Out

April 12, 2011

Since lately we can only get a trickling of black movies in between Tyler Perry’s Madea Domination (what happened to the Jumping the Broom advertisements after the Madea’s Big Happy Family ones started to show, what there can’t be two black movies advertised on TV at once?), I thought it only appropriate to highlight under the radar black movies that do not involve a man dressed as a large unattractive smart mouthed black woman and that didn’t get much play or any play in the theaters or BET/TV ONE (sorry Three Can Play That Game won’t be listed). Here are some of my favorites:

1) Love Sex and Eating the Bones: It has Hill Harper in it. Nuff said. Okay, a little more. It’s a romantic comedy which usually isn’t my thing but I gave it a shot this time around and liked it and its original plot line.

2) I’m Through With White Girls  – now the title kind of put me off but I took a chance and I found the movie so adorable. It diffinetly went against the stereotypical roles of blacks in film. The main character is a black comic book nerdish guy who only dated white women because they were what he encountered in his world. Then he meets a black woman (biracial really) from the valley and well, you’ll have to check it out. But I’ve seen it twice and would watch it again. And that’s saying a lot for a girl that hates rom-coms.

3) Cadillac Records - not sure how many folks got to see this movie about the company but I can say I didn’t mind Beyonce’s performance in this as Etta James.

4) Daughters of the Dust-  I remember seeing this movie ions ago as a child. It was on PBS I believe and I thought it was so beautiful and I was fascinated with the Gullah http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gullah people since then. I actually can’t recall what it was about but the images of the island are still with me so if you are into arts cinema, I would recommend.

5) Miracle at St. Anna- A spike Lee joint. He can be hit or miss but if you are into war movies and looking at cute guys (hehe) I’d recommend this one. It actually made me cry.

6) Sparkle - before Dreamgirls there was this 1970s classic and if you are an Envoge fan you will know two of the songs that were originally performed by Aretha Franklin for the soundtrack of this album. "Given him something he can feeel, to let him knoooow this love is reaaal"!

7) Claudine-  this is one of the first non blaxpotation movies of the seventies and stars James Earl Jones and Diahann Carol. Worth a look!

8) Cornbread, Earl and Me  – just to see Lawrence Fishburne as a kid was enough for me, haha. But I really liked when they made good black books into movies. That’s a rarity now (other than Push) and quite sad because there are plenty of quality authors out there who could have great movies made of their books instead of all these recycled stage plays.

9) Colley High - I swear I was not a child of the 70s but they had some entertaining films then. This was even ranked in Entertainment Weekly’s 50 best High school movies (better have beat High School Musical!)

10) Sarafina!-actually saw this in school and it resonated with me. It’s a musical as well and tells the story of a student protest and apartied South Africa.

Then there are some mainstream ones I implore you to see again: Lean on Me, The Wiz, Higher Learning, Mahogany, Lady Sings the Blues, The Best Man, Posse. Got any to recommend to me?