MovieSorter

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Barbershop: The...
Really Great 66 Points 2016

Barbershop: The Next Cut should be a Best Picture contender but won’t be. Not because it’s black, because it’s a comedy. Comedies get no respect from the Academy. Can I get a witness? Somebody?

While LOL funny, Barbershop 3 is not your ordinary comedy. Instead, it bridges several paradoxes…

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WikChip Video Cube, Common, Cedric & Nicki, oh my!
Keanu
Great 83 Points 2016

Key & Peele come to the big screen in a big way in Keanu. As always, Black America is their subject: the contradictions, the testosterone, the taunting. Yet in a clever bit of misdirection, they focus on a tiny kitten.

Worked for me as a fellow owner of a gray tabby. Mine’s named Buddy, not…

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WikChip Video Most of the best bits from Keanu
Free State of J...
Really Great 83 Points 2016

Newton Knight is a newly essential Matthew McConaughey role that finally knights Newt Knight as a true American hero. Even more, Free State of Jones is an only-in-America story, so corny it could only be true. A deeply moral white man frees enslaved blacks and marries a black woman during the C…

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WikChip Video CBS Sunday Morning feature on Newt Kn...
The Birth of a ...
Very Good 83 Points 2016

Why don’t slaves revolt? In the South two centuries ago, in the Warsaw ghetto during the Holocaust or even in Asia now? The Birth of a Nation helps answer that complicated question. Unfortunately the movie itself is complicated. Its creators apparently raped a woman while college students in 19…

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WikChip Image Nate Parker's movie: engaging & affec...
Hidden Figures
Great 83 Points 2016

Behind every successful man is a strong woman, three in the case of John Glenn and the Mercury Seven astronauts — strong black women in fact, smart too, very smart. Hidden Figures smartly tells their tale, a can’t-miss concoction of civil rights, space race and romantic drama. Lots of star powe…

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WikChip Video Great Women. Great Americans. Great M...
Get Out
Really Great 83 Points 2017

Get Out melds edgy African-American humor with classic horror movie tropes, the admixture delivered with near Hitchcockian mastery. That’s how Jordan Peele’s brilliant movie brings the Black Lives Matter sensibility to horrific life. The conceit is not that whites don’t care if blacks live or d…

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WikChip Video The multifaceted Mr. Peele
Marshall
Great 66 Points 2017

The American hero who almost single-handedly defeated institutional racism personified his unique first name. Lots of Marshalls, just one Thurgood, which is why Marshall is a poor title for this stirring biopic. OTOH, Thurgood sounds like a thoroughly good historical drama about Thurgood Mars…

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WikChip Video Thurgood Marshall, American action hero
Black Panther
Great 83 Points 2018

Black Panther joins Wonder Woman as the second cultural-phenomena superhero blockbuster in half a year, each a terrific specimen of the superhero genre, yet transcending it in social impact. Females saw themselves anew in Gal Gadot; The African diaspora gains a new and fantastic folklore in *…

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WikChip Video Very Strong Cast
Uncle Drew
Great 66 Points 2018

Uncle Drew has great timing, both when it hit theaters and how it rolls its comedy. It premiered on-time and on-target: three weeks after the NBA playoffs concluded, just as my basketball jones started to kick in. Plus, it’s populated with proven NBA superstars, including Shaquille O’Neal, Amer…

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WikChip Video Original Uncle Drew short films
BlacKkKlansman
Very Good 83 Points 2018

Spike Lee found a true American tale worthy of his talents in the exploits of detective Ron Stallworth, the black officer who led a successful takedown of the KKK in late Seventies America. It’s crazy funny.

Stallworth is a true American hero, straight up, the only one unblemished in Lee’s ted…

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WikChip Image Real Ron Stallworth, American Hero