Several of my choices are for supporting rather than lead roles, performers who have inhabited a character with such vitality they become almost more memorable than the star turn. Danny Glover in To Sleep with Anger (1990) Curtis Caesar John, film programmer, executive director of The Luminal Theater Rather than amplify an existing choice here, then, I’m going to mention two small gemlike roles in Michael Mann films: Dennis Haysbert’s tiny part in Heat as an ex-con hash slinger who signs up for the big heist on the spur of a bad moment, and Jamie Foxx’s bigger role as the taxi driver who has the bad luck to get assassin Tom Cruise as his passenger. I can’t say why none of the performances in Spike Lee’s magnificent films have made it to my list either. If I think of the term Black Star, for instance, I see Denzel Washington straight away, but I have not picked him here. I suppose I have ducked some of the obvious choices, simply because I couldn’t zone in one of many great roles from the same actor. My choices have been based on performances that have proved vivid to me, and all ten are all equal to me. Never having been inclined to separate out a performer according to their race, I found it impossible to do the ranking here. Priscilla Igwe, managing director, The New Black Film Collective Blade was the kick-ass hero who looked like me and I loved him for it. I liked Shaft but he was my Dad’s hero, Blade was my Dirty Harry, my Man With No Name. One of the great tough guy lines up there with “I’ll be back” and “Do you feel lucky punk?”. Snipes pulls off the classic “Some motherf**er’s always trying ice skate uphill” line. In the late 90s this was a performance that opened my eyes to new possibilities. If ever a single actor’s performance carried a movie, the dark brooding physicality of Snipes’ Blade is it. Blade was a serious comic book movie when comic book movies were resolutely silly and pointed to a different way of interpreting this material. It’s easy to downplay but Wesley Snipes’ first outing as Blade was a performance that changed movies and arguably kickstarted the current dominance of mainstream cinema by comic book movies. Elizabeth Chege, curatorĭenzel Washington in Mo’ Better Blues (1990) His remarkable debut marked the beginning of a 60 year film career that continued, most recently, with Christopher Nolan’s Inception. It is through his performance that film finds its meaning, his sensitivity and courage central to the tale’s themes of trust, friendship and understanding. Bermudian actor Earl Cameron brings an intellectual worldliness and emotional vulnerability to Johnny. The film’s plot involves a botched diamond heist, and most of the characters are involved in a betrayal of loyalty in one form or another, but throughout the drama, it is Johnny Lambert who retains the moral compass. Trust – particularly between friends – is the glue that holds its society together. The ‘pool’ is a site of excitement but also transgression. The film is about the City of London as a place of transition, where the highs and lows of life jostle alongside each other. On Earl Cameron: In 1950, Pool of London was among a new cycle of British social problem films led by Ealing filmmakers Basil Dearden and Michael Relph during the 1950s and 1960s.
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