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The Color Purple
: essential video:Steven Spielberg, proving he's one of the few modern filmmakers who has the visual fluency to be capable of making a great silent film, took a melodramatic, D.W. Griffith-inspired approach to filming Alice Walker's novel. His tactics made the film controversial, but also a popular hit. You can argue with the appropriateness of Spielberg's decision, but his astonishing facility with images is undeniable--from the exhilarating and eye-popping opening shots of children playing in paradisiacal purple fields to the way he conveys the brutality of a rape by showing hanging leather belts ...
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The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh
:Description:Slapstick comedy about a losing basketball team. At the end of their rope, the players decide to try astrology - it can't hurt, right? Features a disco soundtrack.
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The Jacksons - An American Dream
: :The miniseries The Jacksons: An American Dream begins in the 1940s, when Joseph Jackson (Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs) and Katherine (Angela Bassett) meet and fall in love, and ends in the 1980s, when their sons reunite for the 1983 Victory Tour that brought them back together as the Jacksons. During the first part, 'The Early Years,' the couple starts a family, and although times are tough, Joseph still finds time to play music on the side. When he discovers that his sons have inherited the same talent, the Jackson 5 are born. They sign with ...
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Which Way Is Up
: :This 1977 American variation on Lina Wertmuller's The Seduction of Mimi, the story of a stupid man's troubles in sex and politics, is a run-of-the-mill Richard Pryor vehicle. Noteworthy only for its casting of two good actresses, Lonette McKee and Margaret Avery, and Pryor's multiple roles as an orange picker, a lecherous old man, and a minister, the film is made without a lot of care or effort to rise to Wertmuller's satiric accomplishment. --Tom Keogh
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Scott Joplin
: :This 1977 American variation on Lina Wertmuller's The Seduction of Mimi, the story of a stupid man's troubles in sex and politics, is a run-of-the-mill Richard Pryor vehicle. Noteworthy only for its casting of two good actresses, Lonette McKee and Margaret Avery, and Pryor's multiple roles as an orange picker, a lecherous old man, and a minister, the film is made without a lot of care or effort to rise to Wertmuller's satiric accomplishment. --Tom Keogh
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Magnum Force
: :This first sequel to Dirty Harry was written by a couple of strong voices, writer-directors Michael Cimino (The Deer Hunter) and John Milius (Farewell to the King). But that doesn't mean the film is particularly good. After Don Siegel's ferociously dark style in the first movie, Ted Post's blocky, television-ish direction in Magnum Force is a huge letdown. The story doesn't win any prizes, either. Eastwood's San Francisco detective Harry Callahan (apparently having retrieved his badge after throwing it away at the end of Dirty Harry) takes on a vigilante squad within the ...
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Set Up (1995)
: :This first sequel to Dirty Harry was written by a couple of strong voices, writer-directors Michael Cimino (The Deer Hunter) and John Milius (Farewell to the King). But that doesn't mean the film is particularly good. After Don Siegel's ferociously dark style in the first movie, Ted Post's blocky, television-ish direction in Magnum Force is a huge letdown. The story doesn't win any prizes, either. Eastwood's San Francisco detective Harry Callahan (apparently having retrieved his badge after throwing it away at the end of Dirty Harry) takes on a vigilante squad within the ...
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White Man's Burden (1995)
: :The premise is interesting, but the execution fails to live up to any of its potential. White Man's Burden imagines an America where black people are the ruling class and whites are underprivileged minorities. John Travolta stars as a factory worker who is fired after making a delivery to the house of the factory owner (Harry Belafonte) and accidentally peeping the man's naked wife through a window. Now jobless and unable to support his family, his wife (Kelly Lynch) leaves him. In desperation he kidnaps Belafonte. The best part of the film is ...
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The Return of Superfly
: :The premise is interesting, but the execution fails to live up to any of its potential. White Man's Burden imagines an America where black people are the ruling class and whites are underprivileged minorities. John Travolta stars as a factory worker who is fired after making a delivery to the house of the factory owner (Harry Belafonte) and accidentally peeping the man's naked wife through a window. Now jobless and unable to support his family, his wife (Kelly Lynch) leaves him. In desperation he kidnaps Belafonte. The best part of the film is ...
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Return of Superfly
: :The premise is interesting, but the execution fails to live up to any of its potential. White Man's Burden imagines an America where black people are the ruling class and whites are underprivileged minorities. John Travolta stars as a factory worker who is fired after making a delivery to the house of the factory owner (Harry Belafonte) and accidentally peeping the man's naked wife through a window. Now jobless and unable to support his family, his wife (Kelly Lynch) leaves him. In desperation he kidnaps Belafonte. The best part of the film is ...
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