Word: poitier
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...will turn out to be a friend of a friend of a friend. When a well-spoken young black man bursts into a Manhattan millionaire couple's home, bleeding from an apparent mugging and claiming to be both a Harvard chum of their children and the son of Sidney Poitier, the startled Wasp hosts believe him. They accept even his screwiest assertion, that he can get them bit parts in a film of Cats to be directed by his father, because they, like most victims of confidence tricks, are blinded by vanity...
...Blue. Teachers along the way encouraged him to channel his rambunctiousness into acting, and after a brief stint in the Air Force he headed for Hollywood, naively believing he could get an acting job just by showing up at a studio. But he wasn't pretty like Sidney Poitier or Harry Belafonte, the black leading men of the day, and he soon realized that his chances would be better in New York City's grittier theater scene...
...Hollywood the black man's burden is to be all things to all people: stoic Sidney Poitier and sassy Eddie Murphy, angelic sitcom kid and fuming rapmaster. Lee's movie bravely tries both approaches. It gives you sweet, then rancid, but without explaining why it turned. He holds the film like a can of beer in a paper bag -- the cool sip of salvation on a blistering day -- until it is revealed as a Molotov cocktail...
Trashmaster John Waters goes PG with the bright, air- headed Hairspray. -- Sidney Poitier returns, cool as ever, in Shoot to Kill...
Both Berenger and Poitier have screen presences which generate their power more from a natural dignity than from affability or audience sympathy--more like Nicholson than William Hurt, for example. But in a dog like Shoot to Kill, an actor needs to be liked more than respected; it's impossible to keep a regal bearing in a circus of fools. The writers seemed to have recognized this problem, but their attempts at humanizing humor fall far short. In one scene for example, Poitier and Berenger are confronted by a bear, do a "Yikes!" take, and run away. Not even...