Best Black Movies

My brain is still on vacation from the politics of the past two years, that has actually continued to swirl around our first chocolate covered first family.

So while the Obama’s are touring the world, that fool in North Korea is firing missiles that he says sing songs about him into the air, and everyone else is going crazy killing people while the rest of us pretend there is no gun problem in America...

I choose to think about movies....

I got started on this subject because I’m working on an article about the dumbing down of America, kids, and grown ups via education, television and the mass media....

Which brought to memory movies that I needed to see again, one of which was NETWORK, the Paddy Chayevsky story about an anchor man, played by the late Peter Finch who goes crazy on air. The network allows it to happen strictly for ratings. ..The movie is on point for my article and also a prediction of what we are currently experiencing......if you haven’t seen it...you should dial it up and watch and learn....

There is also this movie channel network called THIS....Don’t know who owns it.... It’s playing movies that I had forgotten existed, like...they played back to back.....IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT, followed by THEY CALL ME MR TIBBS, followed by THE ORGANIZATION, followed by PRESSURE POINT....all Sydney Poitier movies, where he was not playing the acquiescent Negro.


THIS tends to play black movies and cowboy movies like....Jane Fonda, James Caan and Jason Robards in COMES A HORSEMAN....This channel even plays the old Bat Masterson series with Gene Barry..On Saturday, it plays THE OUTER LIMITS.....watching that program as a kid was one thing...watching it from the future is amazing....

All this got me thinking about the number of best ever movie lists and how many of them contain movies by and about black people....

I found two lists of best 100 that listed THE COLOR PURPLE....I found one list that included Spike Lee’s DO THE RIGHT THING....after that nothing.....other than lists made up completely of black movies....no comparisons or competitions between "regular" movies and our
movies...

Regular movie lists always start with GONE WITH THE WIND or CITIZEN KANE...


So without further ado....I’m giving you my top 20 list of black movies...

1. In the Heat of the Night
2. The Defiant Ones (the original)
3. A Soldier’s Story
4. Shaft-(both of them)
5. Come Back Charleston Blue
6. Sweet Back
7. New Jack City
8. Lady Sings the Blues
9. Set it Off
10. Harlem Nights
11. Inside Man
13. Trading Places
14. Car Wash
15. The Mack
16. Man on Fire
18. Spawn
19. Blazing Saddles
20.Cotton Comes to Harlem

This list differs from my favorite all time list which is has more action...in no certain order

1. Aliens
2. Alien
3. Star Wars
4. Raiders of the Lost Ark
5. The Magnificent Seven
6. Seven Samurai
7. To Kill A Mockingbird
8. Moby Dick (gregory peck version)
9. The Three Musketeers
10. Psycho
11. When Night is Falling
12. Bound
13. Matrix
14. The Usual Suspects
15. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy
16.The Tin Drum
17. Batman Begins
18. Chocolate
19. La Femme Nikita
20. Gladiator

Honorable mentions: The Count of Monte Cristo, Rage in Harlem, Glory, The Debaters, The Killing of Sister George, Midnight Cowboy and Victor/Victoria, The Sting, Deserts Hearts

My criteria....I will watch these films anytime they are on, can quote lines, and have memorized segments such as when the emperor demands that the gladiator say his name in the arena and gladiator turns and says..........."my name is......etc"

Torture Porn

I learned a new phrase today while scanning through a review of the movie SAW IV, due in theaters tomorrow. I was thinking of going to see it, since I own the previous three versions of this series.

Torture porn, was the reviewer’s way of describing this latest flick and others of the genre. I am wondering when we moved from slasher flicks to torture porn, but then that’s what it means to get old. When I hear a phrase these days it’s probably already out of date rather than cutting edge. Anyway, back to the subject at hand.

The phrase alleges that people who watch these kinds of movies have basically become numb to the violence, blood and guts that permeates these films (are they still films and not videos?!). That it’s a new way to “get off” so to speak, hence the term “porn.”

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm......I liked the first SAW..the second was pretty good too...but the third one was forgettable....can’t even remember the plot...and there was a plot in both of the first two....

I think that’s why I didn’t like HOSTEL or any of the Jason movies or Hellraiser movies or even Texas Chainsaw movies. I still need plot to go along with the violence. It can’t be gratuitous violence. I don’t mind gratuitous sex if it’s done artfully and with a point to do something other than get me hot, unless it is porn, of course.

The difference for me is that porn I can watch again and again, until I’m bored. Gratuitous violence and blood and guts is a one time thing. I won’t watch the first time, if I don’t perceive that a story is behind the work. Watching people die violently is not entertaining to me.

I still prefer a story first. What surrounds and tells the story comes second. I prefer “scares” to be psychological or more in my mind. That’s why the scariest scene I have ever witnessed remains Hitchcock’s shower scene in Psycho. I was more disturbed by reading “The Exorcist” then by seeing it. Most books I read twice. I have never been able to read that one a second time.

Yet, I don’t know what it is about the SAW movies. I really do want to see this latest one. I know that it is going to be bathed in blood and torture. I am fascinated by the torture methods for one. The previous ones have all been drawn from real history. I want to see how Jigsaw accomplishes it since he was dead at the end of the last one, too. I guess he’s found another disciple to carry on.

When I think about scary movies a few come to mind and this is after I started facing them. When I was a kid, I would hide my eyes or dive into the back seat at the drive in rather than watch the horror unfold. I would only listen and that was so much worse than watching. My nightmares absolutely killed me. My dad finally told me to make myself watch and then it wouldn’t be so bad. He was right. Once I started watching, the scares went away.

Scary movies for me......Psycho....Revulsion (french)....Halloween....The Fog....Scream (opening scenes with Drew Barrymore).....Jeepers Creepers (opening scene, kids in car)....The Exorcist....Darkness Falls.....Nightmare on Elm Street......Alien.....Friday the 13th (Jason was not the killer).....The rest of the slasher genre are unoriginal or remakes of the ones I just listed.

You know what, after writing this..the SAW movies don’t scare as much as they interest me. Hmmmmmmmmm....maybe it is porn after all. .