The curiosity of Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown is Robert Forster's worldly wise bail bondsman Max Cherry, the most alive character in this adaptation of Elmore Leonard's Rum Punch. The Academy Awards saw it the same way, giving Forster the film's only nomination. The film is more "rum" than "punch" and will certainly disappoint those who are looking for Tarantino's trademark ...

Manufacturer: Miramax Films
Starring: Tangie Ambrose, Michael Bowen, Robert De Niro, Bridget Fonda, Robert Forster

Based on Chester Himes's novel, this film marked actor-writer Ossie Davis's directing debut. Godfrey Cambridge and Raymond St. Jacques play Himes's volatile police detectives, Gravedigger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson, who are on the trail of white men who pulled an armed stickup at a Back to Africa rally in Harlem. The money belongs to the poor people who paid for a chance to return to the ...

Manufacturer: MGM (Video & DVD)
Starring: Godfrey Cambridge, Raymond St. Jacques, Calvin Lockhart, Judy Pace, Redd Foxx
Directed By: Ossie Davis

Manufacturer: Walt Disney Video
Starring: Michael Bofshever, John Capodice, Gary Cervantes, Devin DeVasquez, Don Diamont

Manufacturer: Xenon
Starring: J. Walter Smith, Tobar Mayo, Roxie Young, Gladys Lum, Tony Rumford
Directed By: Frank Packard

The pinnacle of blaxploitation movies, the 1972 Superfly stars Ron O'Neal as a drug dealer who wants out of the business but decides to take out some enemies in the process. With its criminal hero, one might almost think this could be an existential crime movie, but no...it's really just an effective piece of pulp with a strong performance by O'Neal, grim settings, cool direction by Gordon ...

Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
Starring: Ron O'Neal, Carl Lee, Sheila Frazier, Julius Harris, Charles McGregor
Directed By: Gordon Parks Jr.

Manufacturer: Xenon
Starring: Jerri Hayes, Ernest Williams II, Charles D. Brooks III, Leopoldo Mandeville, Malik Carter
Directed By: Jamaa Fanaka

Manufacturer: MGM (Video & DVD)
Starring: Jim Brown, Stella Stevens, Rip Torn, Cameron Mitchell, Don Gordon
Directed By: Jack Starrett

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 ...

Manufacturer: MGM (Video & DVD)
Starring: Victor Arnold (II), Dominic Barto, Sherri Brewer, Drew Bundini Brown, Charles Cioffi

In the opening minutes of Coffy, Pam Grier's star-making role, she blasts the skull of a sleazy drug pusher into pulp like a watermelon and shoots his junkie assistant with an overdose of heroin. Jack Hill knows how to open a movie, and he never lets up on the down-and-dirty action. Coffy is an emergency room nurse by day and vigilante by night, targeting the dealers who made her ...

Manufacturer: Orion / MGM
Starring: Pam Grier, Booker Bradshaw, Robert DoQui, William Elliott, Allan Arbus
Directed By: Jack Hill

Manufacturer: Vidmark / Trimark
Starring: Nathan Purdee, Margaret Avery, Leonard L. Thomas, Christopher Curry, Carlos Carrasco
Directed By: Sig Shore