This February Hollywood Suite celebrates Black Excellence and Bad Romance with a series of unique classic films running On Demand and On Air throughout the month. Here are eight must watch options this month:
Black Directed Classics – Stretching from pioneering 70s films like Mario Van Peebles’ Watermelon Man (1970) and Gilbert Moses’ Willie Dynamite (1973) to amazing 90s debuts from Rick Famuyiwa with The Wood (1999), Leslie Harris’ Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. (1992), The first Black-directed animated feature Bebe’s Kids (1992) and Danny Glover behind and in front of the camera in Bopha! (1993) to Oscar winners Get Out (2017) and If Beale Street Could Talk (2018) these films show the amazing range and diversity of Black film history.
Airport ’77 (1977) – This classic disaster movie brings together an epic cast including stars like Jack Lemmon, Jimmy Steward and Olivia de Havilland and traps them together in a plane sunk to the bottom of the Bermuda Triangle.
Elizabeth Taylor the Queen of Bad Romance – Taylor was the best at prickly relationships onscreen (and off!) and we’ve got a few classics with Taylor winning an Oscar for Tennessee William’s Suddenly Last Summer (1959) and Elizabeth acting alongside her husband Richard Burton in The Taming of The Shrew (1967).
Oscar Nominated Actors – The 2024 Oscar race is heating up and we have plenty of nominated actors in great turns including Robert De Niro in The Untouchables (1987), Robert Downey Jr. in Wonder Boys (2000), Ryan Gosling in Blue Valentine (2010) and Mark Ruffalo in Spotlight (2015).
Cisco Pike (1971) – Unappreciated in its time, this story of a washed-up rockstar entrapped by corrupt police launched the big screen career of Kris Kristofferson and delivers a vibrant vision of 70s Los Angeles and the countercultural scene.
Celebrating Chadwick Boseman – This month we remember Chadwick Boseman with two of his great biographical performances as Jackie Robinson in 42 (2013) and as Thurgood Marshall in Marshall (2017).
Body Heat (1981) – Kathleen Turner made a stunning debut as a crafty femme fatale alongside William Hurt in this tale of Bad Romance that helped kick off the erotic thriller boom in the 1980s.
Horror History – This month’s premiere of Blumhouse’s Compendium Of Horror explores horror history and we’ve programmed a series of classics alongside it from drive-in classics like The Blob (1958) to 80s slashers like Friday the 13th (1980) to modern classics like The Babadook (2014)
