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African-American Cinema DVDs

Inside The Actors Studio: Dave Chappelle

Sales Rank:14927
List Price: $14.99
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MPAA Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)

Format:

Closed-captioned
Color
DVD-Video
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Director(s):

Actor(s):

James Lipton
Matthew Broderick
Nathan Lane
Alec Baldwin
Arthur Penn

Dave Chappelle's outstanding appearance on Inside the Actor's Studio is certainly one of the high points on that long-running interview series. Not long after his surprising exit from a hugely-successful show on Comedy Central, followed by a trip to Africa that became shrouded in media speculation about the comic's sanity, Chappelle agreed to talk to host James Lipton. Appearing before one of Lipton's typically educated crowds of acting students and others in the performing arts (a flight delay forced the guest to keep them all waiting four hours), Chappelle talks about his early life as a reluctant student yet inspired and daring son of progressive academics. His discovery at age 14 of his life's mission—comedy—is actually thrilling to hear described, as are subsequent anecdotes about feeling the joy of an audience's goodwill (and surviving their collective animosity at times). Chappelle talks about his early TV work and forays into film (he says cracking up Eddie Murphy on the set of The Nutty Professor meant more to him than awards ever could). He discusses his disappointment with the feature, Half-Baked, but how his partnership with co-writer Neal Brennan on that film eventually led to monster hit Chappelle's Show. Most powerful is Chappelle's serious cultural commentary about the extraordinary career and media pressures that can make even the strongest people in showbiz do the unexpected at times—and then be dismissed as crazy. And, yes, he does go into the poignant reasons that caused him to walk away from a $50 million third season on Chappelle's Show. A very funny, smart, and satisfying session. --Tom Keogh

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Constellation

Sales Rank:10821
List Price: $14.98
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MPAA Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)

Format:

Color
Widescreen
NTSC

Director(s):

Actor(s):

Ever Carradine
David Clennon
Rae Dawn Chong
Melissa De Sousa
Hill Harper

An "exceptionally strong cast is the beating heart" (Variety) of this graceful and deeply moving film about the power of love and family. When the Boxer family gathers in Huntsville, Alabama, for the funeral of beloved Carmel Boxer, they are forced to come to terms with the tumultuous past.

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Deceitful Storm

Sales Rank:16619
List Price: $16.98
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MPAA Rating: Unrated

Format:

Color
DVD-Video
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Surround Sound

Director(s):

Actor(s):

Eric Harvey
Stefan Sims
Karyn Lewis
Felicia Kerney

This powerful drama about love pain deceit and betrayal reveals what can happen when people stop believing in God and take matters into their own hands. A dramatic twist and turn of events through abuse neglect and infidelity lead to an explosive conclusion.

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For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf - Alfre Woodard, Lynn Whitfield (Broadway Theatre Archive)

Sales Rank:14896
List Price: $24.99
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MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)

Format:

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DVD-Video
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Director(s):

Actor(s):

Laurie Carlos
Lynn Whitfield
Alfre Woodard
Patti LaBelle
Sarita Allen

This video, from the Broadway Theater Archive of PBS's New York affiliate, WNET, offers an imaginative, if occasionally heavy-handed, television adaptation of Ntozake Shange's poetic theater piece. Originally staged at the Public Theater in New York, this 1982 production is directed by Oz Scott, who transforms what were a series of feminine monologues about the black woman's struggle to find her place in a man's world. What Shange's language conjures by itself onstage, Scott helps visualize on video, a proposition that misses as often as it hits. Language about boyfriends isn't made clearer or more vital by showing us who's being talked about. But the overproduction can't strip Shange's language of its juicy richness--and it is offered with power and humor by a cast that includes then-fledgling actresses Lynn Whitfield and Alfre Woodard as well as Shange herself. --Marshall Fine

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Down in the Delta

Sales Rank:21002
List Price: $9.99
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MPAA Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)

Format:

Closed-captioned
Color
Dolby
DVD-Video
Letterboxed
Widescreen
NTSC

Director(s):

Actor(s):

Alfre Woodard
Al Freeman Jr.
Esther Rolle
Mary Alice
Loretta Devine

This family drama begins in a gritty Chicago neighborhood with a jobless, hopeless mother (Alfre Woodard) pouring her efforts into the bottle and various drugs rather than her troubled daughter and wise-beyond-his-years son. But the movie soon heads south, as the title suggests, when Mom and kids are sent to live with an uncle for the summer. Their lives change, of course, but that's the only predictable aspect of this 107-minute film. First-time director Maya Angelou brings her poetic sense to Myron Goble's elegant script, and the performances are uniformly excellent, most notably the always superb Woodard, Al Freeman Jr. as her uncle, and Mary Alice as her mother. Wesley Snipes takes a break from his action career to do some acting as Freeman's son, and the late Esther Rolle is haunting in the last portrayal of her career. The film's touch of mystery is provided by one of its most devastating characters, a candelabra called Nathan. Rated PG-13, but suitable for ages 8 and older. --Kimberly Heinrichs

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Big Momma's House (Special Edition)

Sales Rank:26807
List Price: $14.98
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MPAA Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)

Format:

Closed-captioned
Color
Dolby
DVD-Video
Special Edition
Widescreen
NTSC

Director(s):

Actor(s):

Martin Lawrence
Nia Long
Paul Giamatti
Jascha Washington
Terrence Howard

No one tries very hard in Big Momma's House, so your enjoyment of this Martin Lawrence vehicle pretty much depends on how much amusement you're able to derive from a guy dressed up as a very ample woman. The setup is of the eye-rolling, only-in-Hollywood nature: Lawrence, as detective Malcolm Turner, is after a killer, and apparently the only way to capture him is to pose as the bad guy's ex-girlfriend's grandmother, who--the film cannot stress this point too much--is quite large.

Apparently, Sherry (Nia Long), the young woman in question--she's as attractive as Big Momma is, well, you know--is none too bright, for she falls for Malcolm's ruse, which of course ostensibly amuses mainly because it's so transparent. She at least has an excuse--she hasn't seen Big Momma in two years--but Big Momma's oblivious friends must be functional morons. Screenwriters Darryl Quarles and Don Rhymer didn't tax themselves very much, as they have Malcolm-as-Big-Momma going through fairly predictable motions--botching a meal and delivering a baby unconventionally (Big Momma's a midwife), but ruling at basketball and self- defense and protecting Sherry while trying vainly not to flirt with her. Paul Giamatti is wasted as Malcolm's partner; director Raja Gosnell's clunky sense of comic rhythm is bewildering, because he used to be an editor (he brought a similar lack of magic to Home Alone 3).

Lawrence won't have anyone forgetting Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in Some Like It Hot, Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie, or Robin Williams in Mrs. Doubtfire anytime soon. Big Momma's House benefits mainly by being first to the marketplace ahead of Eddie Murphy's The Nutty Professor 2: The Klumps; Murphy's work in prosthetics is far more accomplished, versatile, and funny. --David Kronke

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The Breaks

Sales Rank:8398
List Price: $9.98
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)

Format:

Anamorphic
Closed-captioned
Color
Dolby
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Director(s):

Actor(s):

Paula Bel
Paul Benjamin
Lamont Bentley
George Clinton
Loretta Devine

THE BREAKS is a hip-hop hilarious comedy in the tradition of Friday and Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood. Mitch Mullany plays Derrick - an Irish white boy who thinks he's black - facing a day in the hood when everything goes wrong. The luck of the Irish doesn't quite seem to work in the hood. With special appearances by basketball great Gary Payton and funk legend George Clinton.

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Shaft

Sales Rank:13834
List Price: $9.98
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)

Format:

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Color
DVD-Video
Full Screen
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NTSC

Director(s):

Actor(s):

Victor Arnold (II)
Dominic Barto
Sherri Brewer
Drew Bundini Brown
Charles Cioffi

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 gangsters, and a healthy sex life. The script finds Shaft tracking down the kidnapped daughter of a black mobster, but the pleasure of the film is the sum of its attitude, Roundtree's uncompromising performance, and the thrilling, Oscar-winning score by Isaac Hayes. Parks seems fond of certain detective genre clichés (e.g., the hero walking into his low-rent office and finding a hood waiting to talk with him), but he and Roundtree make those moments their own. Shaft had a couple of sequels and a follow-up television series, but none had the impact this movie did. --Tom Keogh

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Do The Right Thing - Criterion Collection

Sales Rank:23378
List Price: $39.99
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)

Format:

Anamorphic
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Color
DVD-Video
Special Edition
Widescreen
NTSC

Director(s):

Actor(s):

Danny Aiello
Rick Aiello
Paul Benjamin
Ossie Davis
Ruby Dee

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 prejudices and stereotypes in all their guises and demonstrating how a deadly riot can erupt out of a series of small misunderstandings. Set on one block in Bedford-Stuyvesant on the hottest day of the summer, the movie shows the whole spectrum of life in this neighborhood and then leaves it up to us to decide if, in the end, anybody actually does the "right thing." Featuring Danny Aiello as Sal, the pizza parlor owner; Lee himself as Mookie, the lazy pizza-delivery guy; John Turturro and Richard Edson as Sal's sons; Lee's sister Joie as Mookie's sister Jade; Rosie Perez as Mookie's girlfriend Tina; Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee as the block elders, Da Mayor and Mother Sister; Giancarlo Esposito as Mookie's hot-headed friend Buggin' Out; Bill Nunn as the boom-box toting Radio Raheem; and Samuel L. Jackson as deejay Mister Señor Love Daddy. A rich and nuanced film to watch, treasure, and learn from--over and over again. --Jim Emerson

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Mo' Better Blues

Sales Rank:16176
List Price: $9.99
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)

Format:

Anamorphic
Closed-captioned
Color
DVD-Video
Widescreen
NTSC

Director(s):

Actor(s):

Denzel Washington
Spike Lee
Wesley Snipes
John Turturro
Linda Hawkins (II)

With Mo' Better Blues, the story of a young trumpeter's rise to jazz-world stardom, Spike Lee set out to counter Clint Eastwood's cliché-ridden biopic of Charlie Parker in Bird. But the final product, a slick, glossy drama (with hip-hop jazz provided by Gangstarr no less), is just as superficial as the numerous Alger-esque stories of music stardom to which movie audiences are accustomed.

Denzel Washington gives a typically charismatic performance as the trumpeter in question, as does Wesley Snipes as his sax-playing rival. And as with most Spike Lee films, there are numerous solid performers in small roles such as Bill Nunn, Latin-music star Rubén Blades, and comedian Robin Harris. One character, however, attracted unwanted attention: John Turturro's role as an unscrupulous music-industry exec. Critics called the Turturro character, who is at once money hungry, swarthy, and perpetually shrouded in darkness, a classic anti-Semitic caricature. But the charge seems almost irrelevant in Spike Lee's cartoonish, overstylized world of impossibly hunky jazzmen, curvaceous hangers-on, and incessant bebop. --Ethan Brown

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