01
Eve's Bayou
Why this pick
Its Southern Black family world blends childhood perception, folk spirituality and gathering domestic tensions with the same quietly ominous, emotionally layered force.
A FILM WORTH A CLOSER LOOKTHE FEATURE PRESENTATION
MOVIE1990 1h 41m USA
IF THIS ONE STAYED WITH YOU
Movies like
To Sleep with Anger
Drama
CINEHUNCH / THE NEXT FRAME
Keep the feeling.
SIMILAR PICKS / A PERSONAL CONNECTION
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01
02
Mother of George
Why this pick
Like Burnett’s film, it finds enormous pressure inside a household, letting cultural ritual, marriage and family expectation create a lushly photographed emotional crucible.
03
Losing Ground
Why this pick
An incisive, low-key portrait of a Black couple and their circle, balancing everyday humor with accumulating emotional friction and exceptionally attentive performances.
04
His House
Why this pick
For the unsettling visitor-in-the-home atmosphere, this builds dread through an immigrant couple’s cramped domestic space while grounding its horror in family grief and displacement.
05
Ganja & Hess
Why this pick
Its singular Black Gothic mood, elliptical storytelling and spiritual undertow offer a more experimental counterpart to the uncanny, culturally rooted tension of Burnett’s drama.
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01 / THE STORY
A little about the film.
Harry (Danny Glover), an enigmatic old friend from the South, comes to visit Gideon (Paul Butler) and his wife Suzie (Mary Alice), who haven't seen him for many years, who are delighted to see him again, and who insist that he stay with them for as long as he would like. Gideon and Suzie live in South Central Los Angeles, though they retain some of their rural southern ways, including raising chickens in the backyard. Harry has a charming, down-home manner, but his presence brings to a crisis the simmering trouble that is already in the family—especially as regards the younger son, Samuel or "Baby Brother" (Richard Brooks (actor)), and his relation to his parents, wife, and older brother, Junior (Carl Lumbly). His disruptive presence is dangerous (his influence threatens to break up Samuel's marriage and seems to be related to the illness that puts Gideon in bed in serious condition for a couple weeks), but ultimately purgative: Gideon's extended family is much more cohesive as a result of Harry's visit. Samuel and Junior struggle over a knife in a climactic fight during a storm, which ends in Suzie sustaining a knife wound. During a long wait in the emergency room, the storm clears, and, similarly, the simmering anger that Harry seemed to bring to a boil is also dissipated. Harry's death just before the end of the film suggests, ambiguously, that he has been to a degree a self-sacrificing savior of the family.
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02 / FACES IN THE FRAME
The people who bring it to life.
Paul Butler
Gideon
Reina King
Rhonda
Richard Brooks
Babe Brother
Sheryl Lee Ralph
Linda
Wonderful Smith
Preacher
Ethel Ayler
Hattie
Carl Lumbly
Junior
Danny Glover
Harry