Turman, Glynn

Rebound: The Legend of Earl "The Goat" Manigault

Based on a true story-He is probably the greatest basketball player who never made it to the big time. But Earl Manigault is a living legend on the streets of New York. REBOUND is his story. Shooting hoops in the playgrounds of Harlem young Earl nicknamed "The Goat" discovers he has a special talent for he game a high-speed high-flying agility that soon makes him a champion slam-dunker. As a high school star he reaches the top by pitting himself against future greats like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar but staying at the top proves harder. Seduced by his friends into an easy lifestyle of parties and drug abuse earl soon finds himself slipping from the top-and his battles are just beginning. Confronted by a team that consists of harsher realities-a brutal coach a pregnant girlfriend and a drug habit that won't let go-"The Goat" is about to discover that it will take all his energy and talent if he is to break free and REBOUND.Running Time: 116 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA UPC: 026359134821

Cooley High

Black high school seniors and their adventures in the early 1960s.
Genre: Feature Film Urban Drama
Rating: PG
Release Date: 1-MAY-2001
Media Type: DVD

Cooley High has frequently been compared to American Graffiti, and for good reason. Like that classic, Cooley High has a loose, multicharacter structure, autobiographical origins, and the rich texture of its time. Set in Chicago in 1964, the movie follows aspiring writer Preach (Glynn Turman) and local basketball star Cochise (Lawrence-Hilton Jacobs, who went on to star in Welcome Back, Kotter) as they wander their neighborhood, drifting in and out of their classes at Cooley Vocational High School. The two friends pull pranks, crash parties, commit petty crimes, and generally try to enjoy their lives in an impoverished urban environment. Preach falls in love with a smart girl named Brenda (Cynthia Davis), whom he wins over by reciting poetry--leading to one of the silliest and sweetest love scenes you'll ever see. When Preach and Cochise go on a joy ride with a pair of young hoods, they end up arrested. Their history teacher, Mr. Mason (a superb Garrett Morris), gets them off, but the hoods think the boys sold them out and come seeking revenge. Cooley High depicts the rough life of African Americans in the 1960s with honesty and humor, offering no easy solutions or pat lessons. It's a roughly made movie, but Turman and Jacobs are both excellent, and there's an attention to reality that makes it engaging, refreshing, and ultimately moving. The soundtrack is a great compilation of 1960s soul, including the Supremes, Martha and the Vandellas, Stevie Wonder, the Four Tops, and Smokey Robinson. An unjustly neglected film that deserves rediscovery. --Bret Fetzer

How Stella Got Her Groove Back

Based on Terry McMillan's best-selling novel, How Stella Got Her Groove Back stars Angela Bassett as a 40-year-old, Manhattan stock trader and single mom whose static life gets a jolt during a vacation with her pal (Whoopi Goldberg) in Jamaica. Sparks fly when Bassett meets a 20-year-old stud (Taye Diggs) who has an ambivalent career path but a great body and lots of sexual energy to burn. After some prodding by Goldberg's warm-funny secondary character, Bassett gets it on with the fellow--and proceeds to worry about what she's doing with a man half her age. The film is most enjoyable in its sunny, exotic early scenes and becomes more formulaic once the unlikely couple transports their will-we-stay-together-or-won't-we tensions back to the Big Apple. But director Kevin Rodney Sullivan goes out of his way to make a movie unabashedly thick with fantasy and wish-fulfillment for female audiences (it's Diggs who reveals a lot more flesh than the regal Bassett). This is a Saturday-night movie all around. --Tom Keogh

Get ready to groove with this heartwarming comedy full of love and friendship, starring sexy Angela Bassett and comic superstar and Academy Award winner Whoopi Goldberg. Through good times and bad, Stella (Bassett) and Delilah (Goldberg) have always had each other. Now, Stella's so busy building a life that she's forgotten to really live. But Delilah is about to change all that. What starts as a quick trip to Jamaica, ends as an exhilarating voyage of self discovery as Stella learns to open her heart and find love - even if it's with a man 20 years her junior. A captivating comedy that's sure to entertain, How Stella Got Her Groove Back glows with warmth, humor and tenderness.

The Inkwell

This sophomore effort by Matty Rich seems surprisingly run-of-the-mill, considering his first film was the low-budget success story Straight Out of Brooklyn.

Set in Martha's Vineyard during the summer of '76, this feels very much like an updated, African American version of Summer of '42. Larenz Tate is the shy teen from New York who, along with his politically radical parents, vacations with wealthy Republican relatives. When not confiding in his wooden doll, he learns a little about life and even more about sex. Inkwell, by the way, is the name of the beach where the African American population of Martha's Vineyard owns homes.

Clumsily written and executed, this is sweet enough on the surface, but too slick to feel genuine. Also released as No Ordinary Summer. --Rochelle O'Gorman

At Inkwell Beach, summer's never been so much fun! It's a time and a place where cool clothes, hot music, and good friends turn a dull family trip into the summetime vacation of a lifetime! Critics everywhere praised THE INKWELL -- the hot, big-screen comedy treat that delivers outrageous summertime fun and good time entertainment, all set to an irresistible soundtrack! Spend some time down at the shore with the funniest folks you're ever going to meet -- summer fun doesn't get any better than this!

The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat

That infamous cat and his twisted life are back! Staying within the tradition set by the audacious and racy Fritz the Cat, director-co-writer Robert Taylor takes Robert Crumb's way-cool felinecharacter from the boundary-pushing '60s to the harsh realities of Vietnam, racial riots and Watergate of the '70s in a sequel ripe with "pure silliness [and a] hip story-telling style" (Variety)! Fritz has got the post-college blues he's married to a mouthy wife who beats him constantly, and he's out of work and on unemployment! To escape his sad, nagging reality, Fritz launches himself into a psychedelic haze with a mind-blowing catnip that takes him to his eight other lives. There, he lives out fantasies as an out-of-this world astronaut, an aide to President Kissinger and worse...an orderly to Hitler! But as his star-crossed hallucinations put him on a collision course with reality, Fritz becomes a casualty just waiting to happen!

J.D.'s Revenge

It's been branded with the "blaxploitation" label, but there is little that's exploitive in J.D.'s Revenge, a film of well-drawn, articulate characters dragged into a supernatural showdown. Glynn Turman (Cooley High) is especially fine as the sensitive and quiet Ike, a determined student moonlighting as a cab driver, so wound up he's on the verge of cracking. Enter (literally) the ghost of J.D., a violent, vengeful gangster murdered in the opening moments. He could be Ike's own Mr. Hyde, a dapper, flamboyant ladykiller with a fiery temper and a straight razor who slowly smothers Ike's easygoing personality. Driven by flashes of memory, he sets his vengeful sights on fire-and-brimstone preacher Reverend Bliss (Louis Gossett Jr.), whose dark past is intricately tied up with J.D.'s murder. Director Arthur Marks (Detroit 9000) sidesteps the usual spooky clichés to stir up a modern New Orleans gumbo of ghost story, gangster tale, and character drama. J.D. is both devilish sadist and avenging angel, while the tortured Ike awakens from J.D.'s violent rampages with a hole in his memory but a sick feeling from his imagined complicity in the crimes. The story gets wrapped up a little too neatly in the end, but the dark character shadings and the evocative mystery at the center of Ike's possession makes J.D.'s Revenge an unexpectedly compelling supernatural thriller. --Sean Axmaker

Outta the grave and into the ghetto comes the tortured spirit of a 1940's tough-as-nails gangster who pries his way into the body of a hip and likable young soul brother (Glynn Turman How Stella Got Her Groove Back). With terrifying twists and turns this spine-tingling "sharp hip and offbeat" (Boxoffice) adventure delivers pure urban action excitement!Ike (Turman) is having a night on the town when he volunteers to be part of a hypnotist's nightclub act. But when the demonic spirit of a long-dead gangster muscles its way into Ike's mind all hell breaks loose! Calling himself J.D. Ike thinks he is the reincarnation of the murdered gangster as he launches a rampage of revenge to destroy those who did him in years ago. It seems no one can stop this killing machine until one of his soon-to-be-victims a reformed hood turned preacher (Academy Award® winner* Lou Gossett) comes to the ghastly conclusion that if he hopes to survive he must save Ike's soul himself!*1982: Supporting Actor An Officer and a GentlemanSystem Requirements:Running Time: 96 Min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE Rating: R UPC: 027616870452 Manufacturer No: 1002855

The Seat Filler

In The Seat Filler Derrick (Martin) is a struggling law student who takes a job as an awards show seatfiller to make ends meet. One day he is seated next to the beautiful pop superstar Jnelle (Rowland) who mistakes him for a well-known industry executive. With an instant chemistry the unlikely pair begin to date. But Derrick must scale creative heights to keep up the charade. When the couple begins to fall for each other Derrick must chose between his conscience and the love of his life.System Requirements:Running Time: 87 MinFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: PG-13 UPC: 876964000093 Manufacturer No: 10009

A slight but charming romantic comedy, The Seat Filler stars Duane Martin (Scream 2, Above the Rim) as Derrick, a young man struggling to make ends meet as he studies for the bar exam. To make some extra cash, Derrick takes a job as a "seat filler"--a person who hops into an unoccupied chair at a televised awards show to make attendance look perpetually full. At one event, Derrick happens to be seated next to recording star Jhnelle (Kelly Rowland of Destiny's Child), and breaks one of the cardinal rules of seat-filling: he starts a conversation. Things click, and soon Derrick's small fibs become major lies as he tries to sustain the mutual romantic attraction. From there the movie travels in mostly expected directions, but it's quite funny, especially spiked with the manic antics of Derrick's best friend, E.J. (DeRay Davis). The Seat Filler is the initial entry in a new way of distributing films called the Momentum Experience. Instead of traditional movie-distribution deals, the Momentum Experience presents African American-themed movies in non-traditional venues, preceded by live music and comedy. The Seat Filler isn't a movie that will change the world, but the Momentum Experience may in a small way change an industry. --David Horiuchi

Men of Honor (Full-Screen Edition)

The story of Carl Brashear, the first African American, then also the first amputee, US Navy diver.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: R
Release Date: 2-SEP-2003
Media Type: DVD

Men of Honor presents a great role model for younger viewers, yet it's rated R due to abundant use of the F word. With appropriate discretion, parents should allow their preteen and teenaged children to see this rousing if altogether conventional biopic inspired by the life of Carl Brashear. Played with gravity and gumption by Cuba Gooding Jr., Brashear was the first African American to become a master diver in the U.S. Navy, despite the lingering effects of segregation, opposition from Navy brass, and the amputation of his left leg following a tragic on-duty accident. Robert De Niro adds marquee value and salty bluster as Billy Sunday, the drunken, redneck (and fictionalized) Master Chief who watches, with gradual admiration, as Brashear attains his ultimate goal through sheer force of will.

This is all quite uplifting on its surface, but in attempting to hit the requisite highlights of an inspiring biography, director George Tillman Jr. (Soul Food) reduces Brashear's achievement to a succession of clichés, forcing Gooding and De Niro to battle sentiment with their noteworthy performances. As Sunday's neglected wife, Charlize Theron is completely extraneous; Hal Holbrook's diving-school commander is a ranting caricature; and newcomer Aunjanue Ellis barely registers as Brashear's wife (in part because their obligatory romance is handled with an utter lack of finesse). There's no question that Brashear's efforts are heroic and worthy of recognition, so Men of Honor serves its basic purpose. Still, one can't help but wonder if Brashear's story would be even more impressive with a more authentic treatment. --Jeff Shannon

Buffalo Soldiers

This Turner Network Televison movie tells the true story of the black calvary corps known as the 'Buffalo Soldiers.' These troops patrolled America's wild west after the civil war. In addition to keeping the peace they fought the racism of their commanders and other white corps soldiers.Running Time: 94 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA UPC: 053939747027 Manufacturer No: T7470

Race to Freedom: The Story of the Underground Railroad