Here Are The 16 Best African American Movies You Can Watch Right Now:
Here’s the thing: too many films alongside all-Black casts are about terrible events, like slavery, or hard times, like facing a racist justice system.
It’s not that those stories shouldn’t be told they are, however, not the only black stories that ought to be shown on TV. The decade of 2010 has been great for movies, and the ones with African-American leads have done especially well.
These movies have broken a lot of rules about the kinds of tales they want to tell. The range of themes has grown a lot since the blaxploitation period, focusing on more than just racism and slavery.
They also show how the characters explore their sexuality and sense of self. Hollywood has changed a lot because of Jordan Peele. He has changed the scary movie type.
When he launched Get Out in 2017, it changed the game. He went on to make other important movies like Us in 2019 and Nope in 2022. Like them, more writers are telling tales from the point of view of black people.
Low movie theater attendance and mid-movie choices in 2021 made Jeymes Samuel’s The Harder They Fall, a great Western film about real black cowboys as well as figures in the West. Shawn Carter was the executive director.
Pariah:
This movie tells the story of Alike, an African American girl. She is a lesbian, but she hasn’t told her family about it yet. She doesn’t like getting dressed up, and her loose clothes make her feel great. She really likes her partner.
However, her mother doesn’t like any of this. Like, she is looking for Alike to go to church as well as make friends alongside girls who will be good for her.
She doesn’t hear much from her dad about it because he needs to deal with some things on his own. The situation gets worse when she sleeps alongside the girl who is meant to “set her right.”
The Best Man:
The best man and girl of honor should be there for the couple on the “best day of their lives” instead of cause trouble, right? In this romantic comedy, the best man’s first book causes a scandal, and his friends rapidly figure out that it’s based on their own lives. Check out the follow-up, The Best Man Holiday, if you liked this one.
The Harder They Fall:
The Harder They Fall, one of the best movies of 2021, was a big, loud look at the life of a black cowboy within the Wild West. Nat Love makes his way via the West while on the hunt for Rufus Buck, the man who killed his family. This is Samuels’s first full-length film as a director.
Love and Buck get their teams together and go after each other. There is a lot of fighting, reggae needle drops, and one smokey train. Majesty, Elba, and Lindo are all at their best, and Regina King really shines.
Lakeith Stanfield does a great job with the setting; to be honest, this movie knows what time it is and doesn’t mind telling you. Just hit play.
The Last Black Man In San Francisco:
“The Last Black Man in San Francisco,” made by Joe Talbot in his first movie as a director, is a semi-autobiographical look at Jimmy Fails’s life. Fails plays a made-up version of himself who lives within the San Francisco Bay region in the show.
As he walks around town alongside his best friend Mont one day, he tells Mont regarding a house that his grandfather made but is now owned by people who are unable to take care of it.
He attempts to get the house back with Mom’s help, which takes them both on a journey of coming to terms with who they are.
Love And Basketball:
Monica and Quincy are childhood pals who both want to play professional basketball. They are the perfect pair in this female movie that was ahead of its time.
As ESPN wrote in an oral history to celebrate the film’s 20th anniversary, “What made the film so indelible is that it shows a female athlete questioning her partner, her sport, as well as the status quo without being painted to be a shrew, undesirable, or any other limiting descriptor.”
Da 5 Bloods:
The movie Da 5 Bloods is about the lives of a group of African American soldiers of the Vietnam War. Netflix released the intense war thriller Da 5 Bloods by Oscar-winning director Spike Lee to a lot of people in the summer of 2020.
The movie had great performances by Delroy Lindo, rising star Jonathan Majors to be his son, as well as one of the best performances of the great Chadwick Boseman. However, the Oscars didn’t recognize it, and it didn’t matter because the movie did a lot.
It was about what it was like to be black in Vietnam during the war. It was also a violent war movie. It even dealt with politics and relationships between a father and son, and the ending felt like an action or heist movie.
Lee has been doing his thing for decades, as well as Da 5 Bloods showed that he not only has his finger upon the pulse but will also keep his foot on your neck in the theater world.
If Beale Street Could Talk:
If Beale Street Could Talk is set in the 1970s and is about a man who is arrested for a crime he didn’t do and his wife’s fight to get him released.
Fonny Hunt and Tish Rivers decide to start a new life together by moving to New York City. Because of their race, it’s hard for them to find a place to rent.
Because of bias, a police officer arrests Fonny for rape. His best friend and fiancée back up his story, but it’s not believed, and things get even worse when the victim says he raped her. But Tish knows the truth as well as won’t stop until everyone else does too.
Deliver Us From Eva:
To be honest, a few of the greatest movies are new takes on old Shakespeare plays. Ten Things I Hate About You, She’s the Man, The Lion King, do I need to go on?
Bring Us from Eva was the same way. Like in “The Taming of the Shrew,” smart guys try to set up a sassy woman so she can spend time alone with her sisters.
Judas And The Black Messiah:
When Chairman Fred Hampton was in Chicago working with the Black Panther Party to build the Rainbow Coalition, Judas and the Black Messiah looks at his life. It also looks at the events that led to his murder, which was partly planned with help from William O’Neal’s information to the FBI.
Judas looks at how involved the government was in the death of this young black man. It has a strong group of young black actors, led by Kaluuya and Stanfield. Judas, which has already been talked about as a possible Best Film of 2021, was the right film for the cause at the right time.
Luce:
Some individuals try to escape their past even though it’s hard to do. particularly those who are given a second chance at a better life. Luce was the only one who really knew how important it was to hold on to this life.
He had been a kid fighter in Eritrea, which was at war. Adopting Peter as well as Amy Edgar changed his life.
They love Luce more than anything else, and the fact that he does so well in school makes them even more proud of him. A school teacher telling the Edgars about Luce’s bad speech, on the other hand, is a cause for worry.
Poetic Justice:
This love story was a huge hit thanks to the star power of Janet Jackson, Regina King, as well as the late Tupac Shakur. Justice finds comfort in writing poems after her lover is killed.
She finally gets a ride to Oakland, where she meets Lucky and starts to like him. It’s just that she may not be completely over her ex yet. I know it’s hard.
One Night In Miami:
Regina King’s first movie as a director is based on Kemp Powers’ 2013 play One Night in Miami. It’s about a made-up night in Miami with four famous black people: Malcolm X, Cassius Clay, Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, as well as Sam Cooke.
The four icons have an interesting back-and-forth regarding what the community needs, how that fits with their own work and goals, and other things. This may help us understand these people better and why they did what they did. Add this important movie to your list of black films.
Blindspotting:
As of now, Colin Hoskins is not in jail because he is on parole. There are only three days left, and Colin promises not to get into any problems during that time. But trouble comes his way when he sees a white police officer shoot and kill a harmless African American.
He can’t decide whether to tell anyone about what happened or keep it to himself. Another person who is going via an identity problem is Miles, his best friend. This makes things worse between the two of them.
Fresh:
Many people might just brush off a movie like Fresh as another drug-related street crime movie, which is what it is. What’s wrong is that the majority of those movies end with a lot of shooting. However, Fresh is mostly regarding the chess game that is being played.
Sean Nelson, who you might recognize from The Wood as well as HBO’s The Corner, played Fresh, a smart kid with big dreams and a lot of ties to the streets, in this movie early on. He also plays chess all the time, and the scenes involving his missing father help him come up with a plan after some of life’s worst moments.
Can he get out of the drug game just as quickly as he gets out of a chess game? The movie also has famous actor Giancarlo Esposito to be the bad guy and N’Bushe Wright within a smaller but more important part.
Miss Juneteenth:
Channing Godfrey Peoples’s first movie as a director is set in Texas, the state where Juneteenth began. The movie tells the delicate tale of Turquoise Jones, a single mother as well as former Miss Juneteenth who is struggling to keep her bills paid and her daughter on the right track, which leads to her own Miss Juneteenth pageant.
It’s based on a true story, and Beharie takes the film by storm in a way that fans have been waiting for. The way she plays Turquoise makes her seem more real. This woman might not have all the answers, but she has a good heart as well as is determined to make her own way.
The point of Miss Juneteenth is not to teach you about the past of Juneteenth. The movie shows what everyday life is like for black people, and the lead actress gives an amazing performance that makes you think of your own aunts, moms, and cousins.
The Help:
“The Help” has a great group, including Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, Emma Stone, Jessica Chastain, as well as Bryce Dallas Howard. It’s one of my personal faves. The movie takes place in Jackson, Mississippi, in the early 1960s and is based on Kathryn Stockett’s book of the same name.
Aibileen Clark cleans for a white family as a maid. Even though she loves the child she is responsible for, she has to deal with racism every day. There is a big change in the relationship between the managers and the maids when hopeful author Eugenia Phelan asks to write her story and the stories of other girls.
