Bookmark this page!

Check out our new blog! We'll be posting great discounts and deals there often.

African-American Cinema DVDs

The Pursuit of Happyness (Widescreen Edition)

Sales Rank:2165
List Price: $19.94
Lowest New Price: $10.69
Lowest Used Price: $4.01
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)

Format:

AC-3
Closed-captioned
Color
Dolby
Dubbed
DVD-Video
Subtitled
Widescreen
NTSC

Director(s):

Actor(s):

Will Smith
Jaden Smith
Thandie Newton
Brian Howe
James Karen

Click here for Customer Reviews and more...

Love and Basketball (New Line Platinum Series)

Sales Rank:3257
List Price: $14.98
Lowest New Price: $8.99
Lowest Used Price: $5.97
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)

Format:

Closed-captioned
Color
DVD-Video
Widescreen
NTSC

Director(s):

Actor(s):

Nathaniel Bellamy Jr.
Glenndon Chatman
James DuMont
Christine Dunford
Omar Epps

Gina Prince-Bythewood, a former college athlete, puts a spin on this one-on-one tale of Love and Basketball. Sanaa Lathan (The Best Man) is the fiercely driven, hot-tempered Monica, a tomboy who gives her all for basketball. Omar Epps (The Mod Squad) is Quincy, an NBA player's son who has pro dreams of his own. Next-door neighbors since first grade, they start as rivals (she flabbergasts the boy by outplaying him in a game of driveway pickup) and age into best friends and lovers. The romantic complications follow a familiar game plan, but the film throws a fascinating spotlight onto the contrast between men's and women's basketball. While Quincy plays college ball on huge courts to cheering, sold-out crowds, we see Monica's sweat, tears, and sheer physical dedication in front of tiny audiences in small gyms and second-rate auditoriums.

The story is pointedly set in the late 1980s, years before the establishment of the WNBA, so Monica's prospects for pro ball lie exclusively in Europe, while Quincy steps into the pros at home. It's a pleasure to see a character as passionate and fully developed as Monica, and Lathan gives a fiery portrayal (she had never played ball before the film, but you'd never tell from her performance). Prince-Bythewood favors her struggle over Quincy's and opens our eyes to her unique challenges with a sharp, savvy contrast. Alfre Woodard costars as Monica's harping mom (always trying to get her to be more ladylike) and Dennis Haysbert is Quincy's philandering father. Hoops fan Spike Lee produced. --Sean Axmaker

Click here for Customer Reviews and more...

Something the Lord Made

Sales Rank:2710
List Price: $14.98
Lowest New Price: $6.68
Lowest Used Price: $6.94
MPAA Rating: Unrated

Format:

Closed-captioned
Color
DVD-Video
NTSC

Director(s):

Actor(s):

Alan Rickman
Mos Def
Kyra Sedgwick
Gabrielle Union
Merritt Wever

Something the Lord Made recounts the relationship between Dr. Alfred Blalock (Alan Rickman) and Vivian Thomas (Mos Def). It begins in 1930s Nashville when imperious cardiac surgeon Blalock hires Thomas, an African American carpenter, as his janitor. When the latter reveals a passion for medicine and facility with surgical instruments, Blalock promotes him to lab tech. Thomas isn't given a raise, works side jobs to make ends meet, and is expected to be grateful. Along the way, he follows Blalock from Vanderbilt to Johns Hopkins, where they save thousands of lives through their pioneering work, but will Thomas ever get any credit? The film provides a satisfying answer to that question. Joseph Sargent (A Lesson Before Dying) directs with subtlety and intelligence, while Rickman and Mos Def are in top form, often underplaying where most actors would do otherwise. Something the Lord Made won the 2004 Emmy for outstanding made-for-TV movie. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Click here for Customer Reviews and more...

The Corner (HBO Miniseries)

Sales Rank:2813
List Price: $39.98
Lowest New Price: $7.53
Lowest Used Price: $4.90
MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)

Format:

Box set
Closed-captioned
Color
Dubbed
Subtitled
NTSC

Director(s):

Actor(s):

T.K. Carter
Khandi Alexander
Sean Nelson
Clarke Peters
Glenn Plummer

The bleak reality of drug addiction is captured with unflinching authenticity in The Corner, an excellent, reality-based HBO miniseries. Having lived on the streets of West Baltimore, Maryland, where this compelling drama takes place, actor-director Charles S. Dutton knows the territory, physically, socially, and emotionally, and his compassionate approach is vital to the series' success. Dutton cares for his characters deeply enough to give them a realistic shred of hope, even when hope is consistently dashed by the ravages of addiction. This is, at its root, a family tragedy, focusing on errant father Gary (T.K. Carter, in a heartbreaking performance) a once-successful investor trapped in a tailspin of heroin dependency. His estranged wife Fran (Khandi Alexander) was the first to get hooked, and she's struggling to get clean, while their 15-year-old son DeAndre (Sean Nelson, from the indie hit Fresh) deals drugs, temporarily avoiding their deadly allure while facing the challenge of premature fatherhood.

Through revealing flashbacks and numerous local characters, we see the explicit fallout of addiction, and while violence occasionally erupts, its constant threat is secondary to Dutton's dramatic vision, which remains steadfastly alert to the humanity and neglected potential of these lost and searching souls. The Corner is, essentially, the civilian flipside of HBO's equally laudable series The Wire, which approaches a similar neighborhood from a police-squad perspective. Performances are uniformly superb, details are uncannily perfect, and for all of its human horror, The Corner is riveting, not depressing. A closing interview with the characters' real-life counterparts bears witness to the fact that these lives--with inevitable exceptions--need not be lost forever. --Jeff Shannon

Click here for Customer Reviews and more...

Lilies of the Field

Sales Rank:4952
List Price: $14.98
Lowest New Price: $8.98
Lowest Used Price: $11.25
MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)

Format:

Black & White
Closed-captioned
DVD-Video
Letterboxed
Subtitled
Widescreen
NTSC

Director(s):

Actor(s):

Stanley Adams
Pamela Branch
Isa Crino
Dan Frazer
Francesca Jarvis

Sidney Poitier won an Oscar for this endearing movie about a handyman who thinks he's just passing through a little town in New Mexico, and ends up staying awhile to build a chapel for a cluster of German-speaking nuns. The renowned actor is highly entertaining in his combative exchanges with Lilia Skala, playing a Mother Superior who survived Hitler and makes no bones about bullying the goodhearted, itinerant worker into doing more and more for her. The film has an ambling, easygoing style with several memorable moments, not least of all is Poitier leading his holy hostesses through verses of the gospel song "Amen." Lilies is directed by the late Ralph Nelson, a pioneering director of live television who also made a number of popular feature films with notable performances (Jackie Gleason in Requiem for a Heavyweight, Cary Grant in Father Goose, Cliff Robertson in Charly) in the 1960s and 1970s. --Tom Keogh

Click here for Customer Reviews and more...

Life (dvd)

Sales Rank:3921
List Price: $12.98
Lowest New Price: $5.72
Lowest Used Price: $3.83
MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)

Format:

Anamorphic
Closed-captioned
Color
Dolby
DVD-Video
Widescreen
NTSC

Director(s):

Actor(s):

Eddie Murphy
Martin Lawrence
Obba Babatundé
Nick Cassavetes
Anthony Anderson

Martin Lawrence and Eddie Murphy play it surprisingly straight in this film by director Ted Demme. Though there are laughs to be had, this is a story about perseverance in the face of a life of disappointment (yet the film was sold as a prison comedy). But Stir Crazy this isn't. Rather, Lawrence and Murphy play a couple of New Yorkers making a moonshine run from New York to Mississippi during the Prohibition who find themselves framed for murder and sentenced for life to a prison chain gang. As they age, the two become close friends, although the strait-laced Lawrence always resents the free-wheeling Murphy for getting him into the situation in the first place. Ultimately, these two men learn to find meaning where they can, taking value from friendship and their limited ability to affect the lives of others. At times preachy, it ends on an upbeat note; the film's biggest laughs are reserved for the final section, in which Lawrence and Murphy don age makeup and play octogenarians. --Marshall Fine

Click here for Customer Reviews and more...

The Tuskegee Airmen

Sales Rank:3333
List Price: $9.98
Lowest New Price: $3.82
Lowest Used Price: $3.55
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)

Format:

Anamorphic
Closed-captioned
Color
DVD-Video
NTSC

Director(s):

Actor(s):

Laurence Fishburne
Allen Payne
Malcolm-Jamal Warner
Courtney B. Vance
Andre Braugher

This true story of the black flyers who broke the color barrier in the U.S. Air Force during World War II is a well-intentioned film highlighted by an excellent cast. Proud, solemn, Iowa-born Laurence Fishburne and city-kid hipster Cuba Gooding Jr. are among the hopefuls who meet en route to Tuskegee Air Force Base, where they are among the recruits for an "experimental" program to "prove" the abilities of the black man in the U.S. armed services. Fighting prejudice from racist officers and government officials and held to a consistently higher level of performance than their white counterparts, these men prove themselves in training and in combat, many of them dying for their country in the process. Andre Braugher costars as a West Point graduate who takes charge of the unit in Africa and in Italy (where it's christened the 332nd). The film is rousing, if slow starting and episodic, but it's periodically grounded by a host of war movie clichés, notably the calculated demise of practically every trainee introduced in the opening scenes (ironic given the 332nd's real-life combat record--high casualties for the enemy, low casualties among themselves, and no losses among the bombers they escorted). Ultimately the Emmy-nominated performances by moral backbone Fishburne and the dedicated Braugher and the energy and cocky confidence of Gooding give their battles both on and off the battlefield the sweet taste of victory. --Sean Axmaker

Click here for Customer Reviews and more...

Glory

Sales Rank:1773
List Price: $14.94
Lowest New Price: $7.48
Lowest Used Price: $6.97
MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)

Format:

Anamorphic
Closed-captioned
Color
Dolby
DVD-Video
Full Screen
Widescreen
NTSC

Director(s):

Actor(s):

Matthew Broderick
Denzel Washington
Cary Elwes
Morgan Freeman
Jihmi Kennedy

One of the finest films ever made about the American Civil War, Glory also has the honor of being the first major Hollywood film to acknowledge the vital contribution of African American soldiers to the country's historic struggle. Based on the books Lay This Laurel, by Lincoln Kirstein, and One Gallant Rush, by Peter Burchard, and the wartime letters of Robert Gould Shaw, the film tells the story of the 54th Regiment of the Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, an all-black unit comprising Northern freemen and escaped slaves. Under the command of Shaw (played by Matthew Broderick), the 54th served admirably in battle until they made their ultimate demonstration of bravery during the almost suicidal assault on the Confederate Fort Wagner in Charleston, South Carolina, on July 18, 1863. Glory achieves its powerful impact by meticulously setting up the terrible conditions under which these neglected soldiers fought, and by illuminating the tenacity of the human spirit from the oppression of slavery to the hard-won recognition of battlefield heroism. Although Denzel Washington deservedly won an Oscar for his supporting role as a runaway-slave-turned-soldier, Glory faced some tough competition at the 1989 Academy Awards (against popular hits like Driving Miss Daisy and Dead Poets Society) and was shut out of nearly all the major categories. Since then, it's been duly recognized by historians and critics as a classic film of its genre. --Jeff Shannon

Click here for Customer Reviews and more...

What's Love Got To Do With It?

Sales Rank:3853
List Price: $14.99
Lowest New Price: $6.40
Lowest Used Price: $4.59
MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)

Format:

Closed-captioned
Color
DVD-Video
Letterboxed
Widescreen
NTSC

Director(s):

Actor(s):

Angela Bassett
Laurence Fishburne
Rae'Ven Larrymore Kelly
Virginia Capers
Khandi Alexander

Tina Turner, that dynamic diva of pop/soul/R&B from the '60s to the '90s, sings like a woman whose life story is every bit as rough and tough as her voice. And What's Love Got to Do With It, based on her autobiographical account (in I, Tina, written with Kurt Loder) of her years under the iron fist of her abusive husband and musical partner/Svengali Ike, is further proof of what we've always known about Tina: She's what you call a survivor. The movie is sort of the Disney version of Tina Turner's story--a glossy but thoroughly enjoyable, old-fashioned showbiz biopic with laughs, tears, great music, and outrageous (but faithful) period decor, costumes, makeup, and hairstyles. Our Heroine triumphs not only over the rigorous demands of her career in the music business, but finally manages to bust out of her troubled, violent marriage as well and become her own person. This is a movie that'll have you shouting at the top of your lungs: "You go, girl!" --Jim Emerson

Click here for Customer Reviews and more...

Friday (New Line Platinum Series)

Sales Rank:2933
List Price: $12.98
Lowest New Price: $4.95
Lowest Used Price: $2.06
MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)

Format:

Anamorphic
Closed-captioned
Color
Dolby
DVD-Video
Widescreen
NTSC

Director(s):

Actor(s):

Kathleen Bradley
Tony Cox
Ice Cube
Anna Maria Horsford
Anthony Johnson

Friday is the rarest specimen of African American cinema: a 'hood movie refreshingly free of the semiseriousness and moralism of shoot 'em up soaps such as Boyz N the Hood, yet still true to the inner-city experience.

Scripted by rapper Ice Cube, Friday is a no-frills tale of a typical day in the life of a pair of African American youth in South Central. Cube plays Craig, a frustrated teen who endures the ultimate humiliation: getting fired on his day off. Then unknown Chris Tucker plays Smokey, a marijuana-worshipping homeboy whose love for the green stuff lands him in predicament after predicament.

Sitting on the stoop of Craig's rundown home, the two hilariously confront a kaleidoscopic array of gangbangers, weed dealers, crack heads, prostitutes, scheming girlfriends, and neighborhood bullies--all of whom, it should be noted, come off as sympathetic even as they are being caricatured, a true achievement in the crass, "booty call" environment of '90s African American comedy. --Ethan Brown

Click here for Customer Reviews and more...

Previous | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | Next

Quick Links

Home
Amazon
Our Shops
Merchants
Reviews
Blog
Price Drops

Check out our new blog! We'll be posting great discounts and deals there often.

African-American Cinema DVDs

Quick Links

Categories