Author: Alex Fisch

Us

Set in present day along the iconic Northern California coastline, Us, from Monkeypaw Productions, stars Oscar® winner Lupita Nyong’o as Adelaide Wilson, a woman returning to her beachside childhood home with her husband, Gabe (Black Panther’s Winston Duke), and their two children (Shahadi Wright Joseph, Evan Alex) for an idyllic summer getaway.

Haunted by an unexplainable and unresolved trauma from her past and compounded by a string of eerie coincidences, Adelaide feels her paranoia elevate to high-alert as she grows increasingly certain that something bad is going to befall her family.

After spending a tense beach day with their friends, the Tylers (Emmy winner Elisabeth Moss, Tim Heidecker, Cali Sheldon, Noelle Sheldon), Adelaide and her family return to their vacation home. When darkness falls, the Wilsons discover the silhouette of four figures holding hands as they stand in the driveway. Us pits an endearing American family against a terrifying and uncanny opponent: doppelgängers of themselves.

Queen & Slim

While on a forgettable first date together in Ohio, a black man (Get Out’s Daniel Kaluuya) and a black woman (Jodie Turner-Smith, in her first starring feature-film role), are pulled over for a minor traffic infraction. The situation escalates, with sudden and tragic results, when the man kills the police officer in self-defense. Terrified and in fear for their lives, the man, a retail employee, and the woman, a criminal defense lawyer, are forced to go on the run. But the incident is captured on video and goes viral, and the couple unwittingly become a symbol of trauma, terror, grief and pain for people across the country.

As they drive, these two unlikely fugitives will discover themselves and each other in the most dire and desperate of circumstances, and will forge a deep and powerful love that will reveal their shared humanity and shape the rest of their lives.

Friday

When his pot-head buddy smokes all the marijuana meant for the baddest dude in South Central, L.A., a young man is conned into helping his ‘buddy’ raise the money he owes to the drug dealer.

Love and Basketball

Quincy McCall (Epps) and Monica Wright (Lathan) are two next-door neighbors in Los Angeles, California who are pursuing their basketball careers before eventually falling for each other.

Belly

An urban thriller that follows an ambitious upstart street hustler on a desperate quest for money, power and respect, and his best friend, who is equally determined to turn his criminal life around. Features an all-star cast of multiplatinum rap artists. Vividly captures the desperate forces driving today’s urban youth culture.

Love Jones

Get together. Fall apart. Start over. Chemical attraction and something more keep drawing an aspiring novelist and aspiring photographer back together. Critically acclaimed.

Ganja & Hess

Flirting with the conventions of blaxploitation and the horror cinema, Bill Gunn’s revolutionary independent film GANJA & HESS is a highly stylized and utterly original treatise on sex, religion, and African American identity. Duane Jones (Night of the Living Dead) stars as anthropologist Hess Green, who is stabbed with an ancient ceremonial dagger by his unstable assistant (director Bill Gunn), endowing him with the blessing of immortality, and the curse of an unquenchable thirst for blood.

The Five Heartbeats

Coming in on the tail end of a rhythm and blues singing group explosion, The Five Heartbeats (Robert Townsend, Michael Wright, Leon, Harry J. Lennix, Tico Wells) rise and fall within the space of seven years. Along the way, the group deals with all manner of fame and fortune distractions — jealousy, greed, too much womanizing and drugs all take a toll. Their troubles culminate when executive Big Red (Hawthorne James) is arrested for the murder of manager Jimmy Potter (Chuck Patterson).

Poetic Justice

A young urbanite deals with her boyfriend’s violent death by wrapping herself up in her poetry. Jackson’s film debut!

Car Wash

Everybody is cleaning up and getting down in this classic comedy – the first “disco slacker” movie from the decade that brought you the tube top, the polyester suit and lots of good times. It’s just a typical day in the lives of the employees, customers and passersby of a Los Angeles car wash – but what a day! There’s a would-be robbery… an assembly line of the weirdest, baddest, shadiest characters you’ve ever met… and lots of booty-bumping music to pass the hours till quitting time. Featuring outrageously hilarious performances by George Carlin, “Professor” Irwin Corey, The Pointer Sisters, and Richard Pryor as Daddy Rich, a flamboyant Reverend who preaches the goodness of the dollar, Car Wash is a timeless classic celebrating an era devoted to living life in the fast lane.

Devil In A Blue Dress

Set in 1940’s Los Angeles. A reluctant private eye, hired to look for a mysterious woman, finds himself the target of a corrupt politician. Elegant period piece.

Night Catches Us

Set on the steamy streets of Philadelphia during the summer of 1976, NIGHT CATCHES US follows Marcus (Mackie), an ex-Black Panther who returns home to confront his past. But when his path crosses Patricia (Washington) who has tried to move on from their shared history, sparks fly.

Us